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Decoding the Riddle, Mystery, and Enigma | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| jedimindtrick Diglot Groupie United States 8monthsinukrain Joined 5224 days ago 90 posts - 119 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 92 11 August 2010 at 10:56pm | IP Logged |
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Привет друзья! Mind if I join your ranks? :p
My goal is to improve my Russian. It's gotten me through 5 years of study, travel in Russia, and long dinners with the future in-laws (well, mainly listening desperately, not contributing to the conversation)...but I am a notoriously lazy student. I'm starting this thread to make/chronicle my progress, share a little of my story, and pass on cool resources to other students of Russian. I was working in refugee resettlement so the past year was intense and filled with learning tiny smidgens of unusual languages like Nepali (I can say "rent", "tomorrow", "it's raining", "no") and Somali (hahaha, I tried but didn't get very far with this one!) There was no leftover energy for studying for personal pleasure. Now, however, I've got all this free time (it's like a dream! no job hunting until at least the end of August!) and the energy is coming back. My dream is to move to Russia for 1-2 years to work AND on this note, my wonderful fiancé has recently applied for 3 jobs in his field in Russia. Of course, that is a long shot but he/we do have certain qualifications (will explain more later) so who knows?! If I do get the opportunity to move there, I want to be ready for it! Will you join me on this journey from your computer screen? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jedimindtrick Diglot Groupie United States 8monthsinukrain Joined 5224 days ago 90 posts - 119 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 2 of 92 11 August 2010 at 11:27pm | IP Logged |
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Since this seems to be standard operating procedure, here's a list of the resources I am using now:
- Usborne First 1000 words This will take you to recorded vocab that corresponds with the book pages, but you could use it without the book. There are several other languages offered as well. It's good for basic 'around-the-house' vocab (http://www.usborne-quicklinks.com/usa/usa_menu_areas_pages/ languages/languages.asp?type=subject&menu=s64) - Anki To review the 1000 words and practice pronunciation (http://ichi2.net/anki/) - Katzner's biligual dictionary My fav Russian dictionary ever! (http://www.amazon.com/English-Russian-Russian-English-Dicti onary-Kenneth-Katzner/dp/0471017078/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=boo ks&qid=1281561048&sr=8-1) - 501 Russian Verbs It took me a long time to come to value this book, but now that I understand the difference between the imperfective and perfective aspects, it's a great resource (http://www.amazon.com/Russian-Barrons-Foreign-Language-Guid es/dp/0764137433/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1281561365&s r=1-1) but I have the 1992 version - Book 2 of Начало I am slowly working through the textbook, workbook, and audio CD. This was leftover from my uni days. For any beginners out there, you could start with the Начало program...except that it's expensive and designed for use in the classroom. I was never that satisfied with it before (probably because the book wants you to work hard and I'm lazy). - A very old Conversa-phone Russian study guide I have no idea how old this is because the cover is torn off, but if appears to be from the 60's. I've carried it with me for years; it wasn't super-useful before, when I didn't know much, but now I enjoying reading through the explanations of grammer and even memorizing/testing myself on the sentences. That's all I will detail now. Like you do, I've got tons of other 'just-in-case' materials but since they're not being used now, I'm not going to list them. The only other resources I want to mention are Russian songs (esp rock like Кино and ддт, etc),the Russian flims I'm watching from Netflix, and my 4 Russian penpals. That's it! That's how the magic is happening right now! I hope this helps some other students :) I think it's important to only focus on a limited number of materials at a time- otherwise you run to the bookshop, spend $150, try to divide up your attention between 6 manuals, and end up losing patience and focus. Edited by jedimindtrick on 11 August 2010 at 11:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5561 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 3 of 92 11 August 2010 at 11:42pm | IP Logged |
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Welcome to the forum, jedimindtrick, and best of luck with your journey and bringing Russian to the next level! :)
1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6708 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 92 11 August 2010 at 11:48pm | IP Logged |
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We shall indeed follow your journey towards Russia and Russian from our computer screens ...
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jedimindtrick Diglot Groupie United States 8monthsinukrain Joined 5224 days ago 90 posts - 119 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 5 of 92 12 August 2010 at 4:36am | IP Logged |
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Dear Teango and Iversen,
Thank you for your words of support! It means a lot to me :) You motivated me to go a little further than I would have gone on my own. ************************************************************ ** Today's stats: Anki/Usborne 1000: studied 90 cards today listened and repeated vocab on pages 8 & 9 three times (сад vocab.) These are the words that surprised me the most: газонокосилка (lawnmower) because I absolutely could not pronounce it correctly until I heard it pronounced. живая изгородь (hedge) because when I first saw the word I thought “living city-something”...I would have never guessed this meant hedge. (FYI: Recently I have been painstakingly studying specific verb pairs to really get a feel for them.) I did a Google search for various sentences of идти/пойти but didn't have as much luck as I usually do with my searches. I found more idioms than the kinds of sentences I was looking for, unfortunately, so I am going to keep working on these verbs. I did find a funny question: “Если я буду идти пьяным по улицам Риги - меня заберут в милицию?” (If I go around drunk in the streets of Riga, will the police take me away?) and a useful phrase “Я буду идти против врагов до последнего.” (I'll go against the enemies until the very end.) Who knows when that one might come in handy? :p Anyways, that's a study tactic I used before with Spanish and am now using with Russian: Google searches. I enter the word (noun, verb, whatever) that I am learning and see what the search engine pulls up. This is useful because you will find everything from newspaper articles to informal IM's using the word, and it's all been written by native speakers, plus you get a lot of reading practice as you try to dechiper the links- but a warning, it can be very time-consuming! One last thing I did was complete 3 pages in my начало workbook. It felt really good because I'd been unsure of the material and kept putting it off. But wrong or right, I'll get it corrected tomorrow and then finally be on to Part 2 (Chapter One still, haha.) It's weird, although I did struggle some I was suprised at how much I did know. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| jedimindtrick Diglot Groupie United States 8monthsinukrain Joined 5224 days ago 90 posts - 119 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 6 of 92 13 August 2010 at 4:18am | IP Logged |
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Today's stats:
Anki/Usborne 1000: Reviewed cards, later listened and repeated all vocab from pages 4-9. I encountered some of yesterday's new words and recognized several of them right away (hooray!) Others I am still stuggling with. I added vocab from pages 10-11 (мастерская-workshop). While this doesn't seem like the most exciting of topics, I ironically encountered 2 words today that gave me a lot of trouble earlier this year: while working with Russian-speaking clients, the words теплица (greenhouse) and коляска (baby stroller) came up numerous times and would have saved me a lot of trouble if I had known them already! I guess it just goes to show that even the obscure words eventually pay off :p I'm sure you other learners out there have had this happen to you too. Anyways, so I will dutifully be learning such words as опилки (sawdust) starting with tomorrow's Anki review, even though it's hard to see me in that kind of future situation. One tiny little word from today I wanted to bring up, божья коровка. Do you know what this means? Ladybug! It's such a cute word, "God's little cow"; божья from Бог (God) and коровка from корова (cow, the 'ка' makes it diminutive.) Does anyone know the origins of this word? I guess it's just as funny as the English word though (think about it, lady-bug.) Also, my native speaker recorded some of my 'search-engine' sentences for me (see yesterday's post) so I can listen to them carefully in the future. I also got my workbook pages corrected, started Часть 2 and did a few more workbook pages. It's getting into уходить/уйти (to leave) and приходить/прийти (to come back, at arrive) which interests me. I'm determined to get some of this у-при-пере-до-за-вы-ходить business hammered out. Eventually. Edited by jedimindtrick on 13 August 2010 at 11:06pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| jedimindtrick Diglot Groupie United States 8monthsinukrain Joined 5224 days ago 90 posts - 119 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 92 13 August 2010 at 4:34am | IP Logged |
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I just wanted to post a link to a cool blog entry about the origins of the the word понедельник (Monday)
http://shininghappypeople.net/rwotd/blog4.php (August 9th entry) Who would have guessed?! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jedimindtrick Diglot Groupie United States 8monthsinukrain Joined 5224 days ago 90 posts - 119 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 8 of 92 14 August 2010 at 5:02am | IP Logged |
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Okay, so I did study today. I started with Anki (easy, and guess what word I remembered the first time through? That's right- опилки. Do you remember?) and then when I ran into slightly confusing material in my textbook- instead of just skimming, noting my lack of understanding, and going on to the next concept- I really got into it. Deep.
And then I thought I had it figured out, and wrote a long, grammatical post that some of you may have read (and if you did, I apologize.) Then I realized that no, I hadn't figured anything out at all and got really frustrated. That's the short version of the story. Isn't it funny that our ability to comprehend is so limited but the concepts and phrases in our native language? And how no matter how flexible we think our minds are, we usually need concepts translated into "our" words before we can really start to understand? I've had this long stuggle in Russian with aspectual pairs and verbs of motion and I picked today to get it all straightened out. But of course, alas, no luck. I understand simple things like Я смотрела фильм I watched the movie (but maybe didn't finish) vs. я посмотрела фильм I watched the movie (finishing it). Easy. But when it comes to something like я буду ехать vs. я поеду I get stuck. Does anyone have any suggestions? (See, I need the concepts translated into English for me :p) I was working with идти/пойти, ехать/поехать, уходить/уйти, and приходить/прийти (for anyone more beginner than me, that's respectively: to go-on foot, to go-by transport, to leave-on foot and to come-on foot.) And I get the past tense- it's like the Spanish preterite and imperfect, right? Он шёл в университет когда пошёл дождь (He was going to the university when it began to rain) vs. Он пошёл в кафе (He went to the cafe) What confuses me the most is the future tense, like я буду ехать and я поеду. What's the difference? How do you know if you're going to finish getting there or not? Or am I thinking of it the wrong way? Do you have any examples, pretty please? Edited by jedimindtrick on 14 August 2010 at 6:17am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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