Additional reading materials to unit 1

1 We are ukrainians

Exercise 1 Read and translate the text and do the exercises given after it.

Ukraine has a population of 47 million people. It is the second most populous country of the former Soviet Union, after Russia. But its population is diminishing due to emigration and low birth rates.

72% of Ukraine’s population are Ukrainians. Other ethnic groups widely spread in Ukraine are: Russians (22%), Belarussians, Polish, Jews, Bulgarians, Hungarians and Tatars (less than 1% each).

More and more people are moving from villages to towns and cities. There are five cities with a population of more than 1 million. These are: Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk and Odessa.

The state language is Ukrainian. It belongs to the Eastern-Slavonic language group. Many people believe that the Ukrainian language is very melodious, the second most melodious in the world, after Italian.

Ukrainians are very kind and hospitable. They welcome visitors open-heartedly and treat them warmly and generously.

Because of a diversity of ethnic groups, Ukrainians do not look alike and cannot be stereotyped to one kind of appearance. However, many think that Ukrainian women are very attractive.

Ukrainians usually have close-knit families of several generations and like to spend time with their family, dining, walking, playing and going on holidays together.

Exercise 2 Match these numbers with the words on the right:

five population

47 million big cities

72% Russians

22% Ukrainians

Exercise 3 Mark the sentences T (True) or F (False). Correct the false onces and translate them.

1 Ukrainians make up 90% of Ukraine’s population.

2 The Ukrainian language belongs to the Western-Slavonic language group.

3 The Italian language is more melodious than Ukrainian.

4 Ukrainian women are quite charming.

5 All Ukrainians are very much alike and may be stereotyped to one kind of appearance.

2 The national symbols of ukraine

Exercise 1 Read and translate the following text.

The National Flag

The Ukrainian Constitution states that the National symbols of the country are the National Flag, the National Emblem and the National Anthem. They were adopted by the Verkhovna Rada in 1992. The Ukrainian flag consists of two horizontal stripes of equal width. The top is blue and the bottom is yellow. These are the colours of the sky, the mountains, the rivers and the golden fields of our beautiful country. Blue and yellow (or gold) were symbols of Kyivan Rus long before the introduction of Christianity. These colours can be found on the ancient emblems of the cities of Mirgorod, Lubny, Pryluky and some others. In the seventeenth century the banners of the Cossacks were blue with gold stars or with pictures of saints embroidered in gold.

The National Emblem (Coat of Arms)

Similar to other European nations, the National Emblems of Ukraine have changed during the millennium of Ukrainian history owing to various political, social, cultural and other factors. The contemporary national coat of arms of Ukraine is a trident. The first image of a trident appeared in the ninth century A.D. when Ihor, Prince of Kyivan Rus sent ambassadors to sign a treaty with the Byzantine Emperor and they sealed the document with a trident. As the official emblem of Kyivan princes the trident was stamped on the gold and silver coins and seals of Volodymir the Great (979–1015); the Grand Prince of Kyiv. You can also see it on frescoes and porcelain dishes of that time. Tridents continued to be used as additional dynastic badges until the 15th century, though the image of Saint Michael the Archangel was the highest national symbol in the 12th century.

The secrets of the origin and meaning of the Ukrainian trident have still not been completely solved by scholars. The archaeological finds of tridents in Ukraine go back to the first century A. D. Undoubtedly, this emblem was a mark of authority and a mystic symbol of one or several of the ethnic groups which the inhabited ancient Ukrainian territory and which came to compose the Ukrainian nation. It is thought that the trident represented the division of the world into three spheres: the earthly, the celestial and the spiritual – as well as the union of the three natural elements: air, water and earth.

In 1918 the trident was adopted as the national symbol of independent Ukraine. The Soviet Ukraine replaced it with its own coat of arms – a crossed hammer and sickle on a red shield with a red star above it and the rising sun in the base. Sovereign Ukraine adopted the trident as its emblem again in 1992.