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geordie Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 5089 days ago 24 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Russian
| Message 89 of 221 14 March 2011 at 4:31pm | IP Logged |
I have nothing but good things to say about Pimsleur Russian. I'm actually finding it goes at the perfect pace for me. Just when I'm about to forget how to say something, I'll be reminded me of it. I'm going through the lessons fairly quickly though (~2 per day) so I'm hoping that I'm not tricking myself into storing all the words in my short term memory. Also, I try to google translate the words as I go, to learn the spelling as well as pronunciation, but I'm not always near my computer when I listen.
That's a great idea of having Russian materials spread around like that. For me I try to just bring them with me when I go somewhere, but I often end up forgetting them. Luckily I take my phone with me everywhere I go, and I have some Pimsleur on there and internet access so I can't really complain.
The dictionary I mentioned is fantastic! It's about a thousand pages and each page has well labelled diagrams in English, Spanish, French, German and Italian. Everything from astronomy to sports to food to anatomy. I would highly recommend it, even though you speak all the languages fluently. It'll definitely come in handy for me when I tackle those languages :)
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| kraft Newbie Russian Federation Joined 5225 days ago 34 posts - 45 votes Speaks: Russian*
| Message 90 of 221 14 March 2011 at 4:40pm | IP Logged |
Could anyone tell me if the following sentences are correct in Russian:
1 Наташа здесь. Она толЬкО что пришла. Она дома.
2 НаташИ нет. Недавно ушла. Её нет дома.
3 Кто-то принёс цветы. Вот они.
4 Владимир утром увозит дочь в школу на машине, а вечером привозит.
5 В дверь постучали
- вОйдите – сказал Борис
- В комнату вошёл Иван
- Здравствуй, Борис – сказал Иван. – Дай мне, пожалуйста, словарь.
- Вот, возьми.
Иван взял словарь и вышел из комнаты.
So it seems all is correct.
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| dragonfly Triglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 6481 days ago 204 posts - 233 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, Mandarin
| Message 91 of 221 15 March 2011 at 7:19pm | IP Logged |
1 .
2 .
3 - .
5 .
- .
.
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| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5336 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian
| Message 92 of 221 29 March 2011 at 10:05am | IP Logged |
@nuriajasmin: Thanks!
@geordie: I'll try to look that up then,
@kraft: Thanks for your help!
@dragonfly: I am afraid I could only see strange signs on your post, but thanks for trying to help!
So what have I done lately? Since I am going to Ukraine in three weeks, I am focusing on Russian, though with little steps.
RUSSIAN
I have been quite good at keeping up with Anki
I have entered a lot of adverbs in Anki
I have gone to four lessons of Russian
I have repeated a lot of Pimsleur Russian, to make sure it really sticks
I set out to watch “The Battleship Potempkin” only to realize that it was a silent movie, and I was unable to read the texts in Russian. After reading the French ones for 15 minutes I just turned it off in frustration
I then watched “Operation babysitter” for a second/third time in Russian and I do understand several sentences there now.
I listen to a lot of Assimil on a much higher level that I am at, to try to get accustomed to picking out the few words I can understand and try to make sense of them, as that is the situation I will be in when I go to Ukraine.
Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 29 March 2011 at 9:02pm
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| kraft Newbie Russian Federation Joined 5225 days ago 34 posts - 45 votes Speaks: Russian*
| Message 93 of 221 29 March 2011 at 7:30pm | IP Logged |
To read the dragonfly's post you'd just try changing the encoding of it into Windows-1251 in your browser.
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| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5558 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona
| Message 94 of 221 29 March 2011 at 8:56pm | IP Logged |
Solfrid Cristin wrote:
I set out to watch “The Battleship Potempkin” only to realize that it was a silent movie, and I was unable to read the texts in Russian. |
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I've got that one still sitting on my shelf in its plastic wrapping...and yep, looking at the back cover now - "silent, black and white, 74 minutes" (lol). Maybe I'll watch "The Admiral" instead. ;)
Just 3 weeks now and you'll be in Ukraine - how wonderful! :)
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| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5336 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian
| Message 95 of 221 30 March 2011 at 10:02pm | IP Logged |
Thanks Teango, good to know I am not the only one to have made that mistake, and yes, I really do look forward to going.
RUSSIAN
Today was a really good Russian-day. If I had had more of those, I might actually get somewhere.
Talk more
First I worked for two hours on Talk more: Russian on CD-ROM, which was quite fun. You get to see and hear the sentences and then you can tape yourself when you repeat them. (If it is not good, at least it is funny ).
Then there are three different sorts of quizzes. In the first you can listen to questions or pick out the picture that is best suited to a statement, or choose from between different spellings of words. (High point of a dyslexic’s day…) Actually I did well on that one, as I got 19 of 20 right, and the only mistake was whether a certain word was spelled with an ы or an и. That sort of mistake I can live with.
In the second quiz you got a question, and then you would tape yourself reading out the answer. I did fairly well on that one too, but I realize that I still have a lot to do when it comes to pronunciation, particularly when it comes to stress. I seem to put that all over the place. And my voice seems to go up and down in the sentence at all sorts of inappropriate places. I really need to listen to more Russian. If you ever watched the Swedish cook on the Muppet show, you will know what I mean. Swedish and Norwegian sentence patterns are fairly similar, and sound absolutely crazy when transferred to another language.
The third quiz was tougher, because here you got the question, and then had to remember/figure out the answer. I did not do quite so well on that on, but I’ll work on it.
The frustrating part is that this was for beginners, and I had thought that since I had read so much Russian since the last time I looked at it would be a piece of cake. Unfortunately it was not. There were still words and sentences which were new to me.
Today I worked through the chapter on greetings and did quiz one, two and three, and the I worked through the chapter on going to the restaurant and went through the first quiz.
Anki
Then I went through 170 words in Anki. The strange thing is that 80% of the vocabulary seem to just enter like a breeze, but 20% seem to slide off my Teflon brain and refuse to enter, even if I repeat them a 100 times. I am working hard on not falling behind, because if I have too many words I do not have the guts to repeat the ones I do not know, and then there is really no point in doing Anki.
Teach Yourself Russian Conversation
Then, while cleaning the house and folding clothes I listened to lesson 1-5 of CD nr 3 of TYRC. I call this passive listening, because sometimes I will focus, listen and repeat what is said, and other times I will just listen passively while my mind wanders off to something else. I do like the courses like Pimsleur and TY which allows you to learn while you are in the car or gardening or doing housework. I always used to loathe Linguaphone, because the method demanded that I sit down and study, and it was limited how much I would pick up by just listening to the tapes.
I then tricked my youngest daughter into doing some Russian on the computer, to prepare for our trip to Ukraine. (Yes, I am willing to use every dirty trick, in order to teach the children more languages). She actually impressed me, by answering correctly on all the 6 first questions on personal pronouns. I think it was just beginner’s luck, but it made her happy.
9 months
I finished the day trying to watch the film “9 months” with Hugh Grant. I even had to change the settings for the PC in order to allow for the Russian format – and then I only had the stomach to watch 10 minutes, because they were talking in Russian and English at the same time, and my ear picked out more English than Russian. I HATE that. It is incomprehensible to me why a market of millions and millions of speakers of Russian, would not be considered as important enough to make a proper translation.
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| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5336 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian
| Message 96 of 221 03 April 2011 at 11:19pm | IP Logged |
RUSSIAN
Yesterday I did 20 minutes of ”Russian in 10 minutes’ a day” on CD-ROM. It is fun, and it is light, and sometimes I need a little break. I then did my Ankis, and proceeded to make an attempt at reading ”The Little Prince” in French and Russian. This would probably have worked just fine if I had used my regular method and just read on, sentence by sentence, first in Russian and then in French, but since there was such a vast amount of Russian words I did not understand I started looking them and up, and trying to figure out which French word or expression matched with the Russian one, Unfortunately this was no easy task, since the Russian translation did not follow the French one too closely. I mean, the general meaning got through, but they changed the sentence structure, so that half of one sentence appeared to be missing, and then I found it again half way through the next sentence. It probably makes for good Russian, but it does not make easy reading.
After having done less than one page in an hour and a half, I decided to change the method, so that I would only write down the words which were easily identifiable from the French translation. Looking up anything at all otherwise takes FOR EVER. I was able to progress slightly faster after, but after 2 hours I was mentally exhausted, and had some breakfast with the family.
After breakfast I put on Teach Yourself Russian – the first lessons, because I was cleaning the living room with the help of my daughters, and I was hoping that some of it would sip in. They listened and repeated for a short while, and then we proceeded to filling their list of 100 Russian words which they must know before we go to Ukraine. My 15 years old (she turned 15 on Friday) then worked a bit on Russian in 10 minutes a day, and then we had a Russian quiz during dinner, so their father could see what they had learned. It wasn’t that much, perhaps 20-30 words, but it is a very good start.
In the evening I watched “Twilight” with both Russian language and Russian subtitles. I find that my brain works harder to catch up when I do not have an English “crutch”.
This morning I was inspired by a suggestion on this forum, so I went on MasterRussian.com and went through the list of most common words for about an hour. I knew a lot of them but the word “face” for example was unknown to me. From the same page I ordered some Russian stickers for my computer. From the same thread I also got a tip for a great Spanish based book on Russian cases, so I ordered that too. Can’t wait to get it!
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