# Ukrainian: Та маєте наш зять посилаєм напамнятку...



## Liandrin

Hello, I have a photo of 2 girls and I think it might be of my grandma and her sister.  There are words on the back of the photo which my family and I think is written in Ukranian.  However, none of us is familiar with the language.  Can someone look at the attachment and let me know if it is in Ukranian and possibly what it says?  Thank you.
View attachment picture 1.doc


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## osemnais

Looks like Ukranian to me because there is 'i' in one place. The last line reads Магмаруська.


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## Selyd

Українською: "Та маєте наш зять посилаєм напамнятку шобистися люди вічли якого чоловіка має маруська"
In English approximately: 
Here have our son - in - law we send memory that the people saw what the husband has maruska.
The text on not a precise dialect.


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## marco_2

Selyd said:


> Українською: "Та маєте наш зять посилаєм напамнятку шобистися люди вічли якого чоловіка має маруська"
> In English approximately:
> Here have our son - in - law we send memory that the people saw what the husband has maruska.
> The text on not a precise dialect.



I think it is *шобистися подивили*, but it doesn't change the general meaning.


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## Duya

Can someone please clarify Selyd's translation, at least for the original poster's benefit? I get the gist of it, but it's not quite clear what's the role of the son-in-law in the story.


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## marco_2

I guess that in the picture, apart from 2 girls, must be some guy, who is the son-in-law of one of them, called Marus'ka and the photo was sent to someone from the family. Or if they are really young women, he is the husband of one of them, and Marus'ka is her mother - she doesn't necessary have to be in the photograph.


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## Selyd

It is necessary to look the photo.
Та маєте - Here have
наш зять - our son
посилаєм - we send
напамнятку - memory
шобистися люди - that the people
 вічли - saw
якого чоловіка має маруська - what the husband has maruska.
The text on the dialect about the right coast (Dnepr) of Ukraine.
The customer is silent.


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## swintok

The text is definintely Ukrainian.  It is written phonetically, which was common before the spread of standardised education and also a standardised orthography.  It is definitely from Western Ukraine, given the confusion between the letters и and е.  These two letters are pronounced very similarly in the western dialects and so are even today sometimes confused.

The original text reads:

Тамаєте наш зять посилаєм вам напамнятку шобистися подивили якого чоловіка має маруська

In modern, standard Ukrainian this could be:

Ось наш зять посилаємо вам на згадку, щоб подивилися, якого чоловіка має Маруська.

I've purposefully left out punctuation in the first part of the text, since where you put it changes the meaning of the text.  If I would just have the text and not know anything about the photograph, I would have said that the photo is of a man.  In that case, the most possible translation of the text would loosely be:

"Here is our son-in-law.  We're sending you (this) as a souvenir so that you see what (kind/type of) a husband Maruska has."

One other possibility, depending on the punctuation, is that the photo is of a man and it is being sent to the writer's son-in-law.  In that case, the text would translate as:

"Here you go, son-in-law.  We're sending you (this) as a souvenir so that you see what (kind/type of) a husband Maruska has."

I have to say that if the photo is of two women and no men, the text really doesn't make any sense and I cannot for the life of me figure out a reading that would have it make sense.


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## VelikiMag

swintok said:


> The original text reads:
> 
> Тамаєте наш зять посилаєм вам напамнятку шобистися подивили якого чоловіка має маруська


So, in the past, reflexive _-ся_ used to go before the verb in Ukrainian? Such construction is almost identical in Serbian: _што бисте се_ _задивили_...


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## swintok

VelikiMag said:


> So, in the past, reflexive _-ся_ used to go before the verb in Ukrainian? Such construction is almost identical in Serbian: _што бисте се_ _задивили_...



It was never standard, but more of a dialectal thing in Western Ukraine.  It is still common in some Western Ukrainian dialects, especially those spoken in Poland, Slovakia, ex-Yugoslavia, and Ukrainian communities abroad (North and South America, Australia, and the older communities in Western Europe).


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