Idiomy v kartynkakh: Learning Ukrainian Through Idioms in Pictures

This series began with my students, who often challenge me in class with questions about Ukrainian expressions. Why would anyone bake crayfish? Why does a cat cry? I love those challenges, and they make me smile a lot, because I remember learning English and being totally unsure why people said “it’s raining cats and dogs.” Every language has its pictures, and Ukrainian has some wonderful ones.

While I am not teaching Ukrainian in person for now, I am moving our learning online, here on the blog and on Facebook. Everyone is welcome to join: beginners, heritage speakers, people learning English, and anyone who has always wanted to try.

How to play

1. Guess the meaning of the Ukrainian idiom. Each card shows the idiom, its transliteration, how to say it, and its literal meaning, with a small hint.
2. Guess its English cousin. Most Ukrainian idioms have a matching English idiom, and each post gives a clue to find it.
3. Bonus: try it out. Use the idiom in a sentence of your own in the comments.

What each answer brings. The next post reveals the meaning, an example sentence, the English cousin, the picture behind both idioms and, where reliable sources record it, where each idiom comes from. Blog posts carry full references. Posts come when time allows, and our goal is 365 idioms and, one day, a book of fun ways to learn Ukrainian.

About the pictures. The cards are simple drawings. I describe each idiom to my AI assistant, it draws the picture, and I check every card before it goes up. It is part of how I am learning to use AI for teaching.

Our first idiom

Як сніг на голову (yak snih na holovu), literally “like snow on the head.”
Say it: yak SNIH na HO-lo-vu (stress the capital letters).

A small hint: my friends say my Facebook posts keep arriving yak snih na holovu, so you may already know the answer from experience.

English cousin clue: in English, this kind of surprise arrives from a colour.

Coming up in the first seven

1. Як сніг на голову (yak snih na holovu), literally “like snow on the head”
2. Кіт наплакав (kit naplakav), literally “the cat cried”
3. Ніде яблуку впасти (nide yabluku vpasty), literally “nowhere for an apple to fall”
4. Як з гуся вода (yak z husia voda), literally “like water off a goose”
5. Пекти раків (pekty rakiv), literally “to bake crayfish”
6. Як риба у воді (yak ryba u vodi), literally “like a fish in water”
7. Як сир у маслі (yak syr u masli), literally “like cheese in butter”

Join in. Share your guesses in the comments. Do you have a favourite Ukrainian idiom, or one your grandparents used to say? Tell me, and it may become one of the next cards. On Facebook, follow along with #IdiomyVKartynkakh.

Love. Care. Share.