6.1 Party talk

Let’s have a look at the dialogue. It begins with usual exchange of formal greeting Dobryi den! which you already know. After this first person introduces himself and asks the other person’s name: Mene zvut Oleh, a yak vas zvut? (‘My name is Oleh, and what is your name?’). The lady replies Mene zvut Maryna, which means ‘My name is Maryna’. After this they exchange polite phrases Duzhe pryiemno – Meni tezh, which means Nice to meet you – ‘Me too’.

Two next lines in the dialogue contain three words which will give you a clue about the meaning: aktor, profesiia and zhurnalistka. Can you guess their meanings? I hope you recognised words ‘actor’, ‘profession’ and a female journalist. So, let’s go back to the dialogue.

Oleh says: Ya aktor, a yaka vasha profesiia? (‘I am an actor, and what is your profession?). This sentence contains two parts: in the first one he says what he is doing and in the second – asks Maryna about her profession. Listen attentively to the first part: Ya aktor. In Ukrainian, verb ‘to be’ is usually not used in present tense, this is the part of Ukrainian grammar which students really like! So, all Oleh says literally means ‘I actor’. In the second part of this sentence Oleh asks key question: ‘Yaka vasha profesiia?’ which means ‘what is your profession?’ Please repeat this once more: Yaka vasha profesiia?

And the answer is Ya zhurnalistka ‘I am a female journalist’. Now compare English word ‘journalist’ and Ukrainian zhurnalistka: yes, as you have noticed, -ka is added to this word in Ukrainian , although there was no -ka in the word aktor. -ka is added to many professions to denote female ‘doers’.

Now listen to the dialogue once again.