пішки хвилин десять
“пішки хвилин десять” — about ten minutes on foot in Ukrainian. Phrase, level B1. The same flipped word order as English "ten minutes or so": khvylyn desiat — minutes ten. Pishky, "on foot", never changes its shape. It is ten minutes on foot to the station. In a live sentence: “Туди пішки хвилин десять” — It is about ten minutes on foot to the station. A word from the everyday Ukrainian course, level B1.
In short
| Written in Ukrainian | пішки хвилин десять |
| Translation | about ten minutes on foot |
| Part of speech | phrase |
| Level | B1 |
Why it looks that way
The same flipped word order as English "ten minutes or so": khvylyn desiat — minutes ten. Pishky, "on foot", never changes its shape. It is ten minutes on foot to the station.
A word with a story stays in memory longer than one learned as a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.
In a live sentence
A single word almost never appears alone in conversation. A sentence shows where it fits and what stands next to it.
- Туди пішки хвилин десятьIt is about ten minutes on foot to the station
How not to forget this word
Reading a word and remembering it are different jobs. A day later, little survives of a single reading — and that is not bad memory, that is how memory works.
- This has been tested on foreign words too. The difference shows up most when you test yourself a few days later rather than straight away.checked many timesKim & Webb, 2022, Language Learning 72(2) · 48 experiments, 3,411 participants, 98 comparisons.
- Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
- An answer you worked out yourself sticks better than one handed to you.checked many timesBertsch et al., 2007, Memory & Cognition 35(2) · 86 studies, 445 comparisons, d = 0.40.
Frequently asked
How do you say “about ten minutes on foot” in Ukrainian?
«пішки хвилин десять». In a live sentence: “Туди пішки хвилин десять” — It is about ten minutes on foot to the station. Phrase, level B1.
Why does this word look the way it does?
The same flipped word order as English "ten minutes or so": khvylyn desiat — minutes ten. Pishky, "on foot", never changes its shape. It is ten minutes on foot to the station. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.