Russian Audio-books, etc... (Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies) Language Learning Forum

Russian Audio-books, etc...
Tags: Audiobook \| Russian
Share with: Delicious Digg reddit Facebook StumbleUpon
Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies

24 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3

furyou_gaijin
Senior Member
Japan
Joined 6385 days ago
540 posts - 631 votes

Speaks: Latin*

Message 17 of 24

28 July 2007 at 4:43am | IP Logged

breckes wrote:

For modern Russian, here is an interesting link : it's a
page about Victor Pelevin, for a few of his stories or novels, there is an
audiobook : Тексты / Виктор Пелевин ::
сайт творчества.

Excellent link, breckes. This qualifies both as good literature (imho) and a
source of modern language.
1 person has voted this message useful

Walshy
Triglot
Senior Member
Australia
Joined 6941 days ago
335 posts - 365 votes

Speaks: English*, Spanish, German

Message 18 of 24

28 July 2007 at 8:03am | IP Logged

furyou_gaijin wrote:

FSI wrote:

Ardaschir himself

I just love the sound of this... :-)

Yet I remember reading somewhere that his Russian wasn't great?..
Anyway, that's totally beside the point.

Ardaschir wrote:

After I spent a month living with a family and taking intensive private tutorials, I spent about another year reading Russian literature for at least an hour a day (often much more) using translated texts as a crutch rather than having recourse to a dictionary. At first I read a translated chapter, then the Russian original back to back. After about six months, I started reading the entire translation first, then the entire Russian work. After this, I found that I could dispense with the translations altogether and simply read the original with a sufficient amount of pleasure and understanding, grasping the meaning of unknown words from their context and only looking them up in a dictionary when I saw them repeatedly.

Ardaschir wrote:

I know that my Russian is not as good as any Romance or Germanic language that I have ever had any active exposure to, and yet have I passed the airplane test and expressed myself adequately on every topic when I was in Saint Petersburg.

The airplane test constitutes reading a minimum 400 page novel by a difficult author, which you haven't read in any language before, and understanding all but a few words.

furyou_gaijin wrote:

FSI wrote:

one could well become advanced in Russian simply by
internalizing the contents of a Tolstoy novel - to the point where native
Russians might state one spoke better Russian than they did; not merely
in word choice or sentence structure, but in pronunciation and prosody.[/
b]

Better? Oh yes!... Russians can be polite: so - better? Why not?!
Maybe weird - by word choice and sentence structure - but they would
still appreciate the effort... so why not make a compliment?!...

And the Japanese will tell you your skills are 'o-jouzu' once you've
internalised the first three lessons of Pimsleur or whatever that thing is
called. :-)

How is that a fair comparison? Aren't the Japanese characterised by vast over-politeness?

Edited by Walshy on 28 July 2007 at 8:06am
1 person has voted this message useful

furyou_gaijin
Senior Member
Japan
Joined 6385 days ago
540 posts - 631 votes

Speaks: Latin*

Message 19 of 24

28 July 2007 at 10:46am | IP Logged

Walshy wrote:

The airplane test constitutes reading a minimum 400 page
novel by a difficult author, which you haven't read in any language before,
and understanding all but a few words.

Good for him. I still love the 'himself' part that made me chuckle first time
round... Nice name for a test, though, I've never come across it before.

Walshy wrote:

How is that a fair comparison? Aren't the Japanese
characterised by vast over-politeness?

And aren't the Russians characterised by vast over-compassion?
1 person has voted this message useful

Walshy
Triglot
Senior Member
Australia
Joined 6941 days ago
335 posts - 365 votes

Speaks: English*, Spanish, German

Message 20 of 24

28 July 2007 at 10:27pm | IP Logged

furyou_gaijin wrote:

Walshy wrote:

The airplane test constitutes reading a minimum 400 page
novel by a difficult author, which you haven't read in any language before,
and understanding all but a few words.

Good for him. I still love the 'himself' part that made me chuckle first time
round... Nice name for a test, though, I've never come across it before.

It's called the airplane test because the book is supposed to be read in a "marathon" style, for example, on an intercontinental flight.

The 'himself' part was definently pompous, but Ardaschir has made many friends on this forum, has contributed a lot to this forum, and is a great polyglot worthy of our respect. You won't make many friends here, particularly amongst the older members, if you seek to denigrate him.

furyou_gaijin wrote:

Walshy wrote:

How is that a fair comparison? Aren't the Japanese
characterised by vast over-politeness?

And aren't the Russians characterised by vast over-compassion?

Really? They have never left me with that impression.
1 person has voted this message useful

furyou_gaijin
Senior Member
Japan
Joined 6385 days ago
540 posts - 631 votes

Speaks: Latin*

Message 21 of 24

29 July 2007 at 4:57am | IP Logged

[QUOTE=Walshy] Really? They have never left me with that impression.[/
QUOTE]

(Over-)Compassion is a quality that reveals itself over a prolonged, full-
time interaction, as opposed to automatic and meaningless politeness
that becomes apparent even during a superficial contact.

'Жалеть' and 'сердобольный' are two words that help greately in
characterising the collective soul of the country that has massively wept
while watching Mexican telenovelas for years. And it certainly helps is the
object of compassion is relatively remote: thus foreigners qualify above
'eigenes Volk', so to speak...

Yet this goes well beyond a linguistic discussion and is taking us
nowhere...
1 person has voted this message useful

Eve
Triglot
Groupie
United States
Joined 6674 days ago
67 posts - 67 votes

Speaks: Russian*, English, Spanish

Message 22 of 24

30 July 2007 at 11:31am | IP Logged

Furyou, it's interesting that you mentioned Mexican telenovelas in relation to Russians. I have to vouch for that! My elderly mother (80) who lives in US and has very limited English is watching 3-4 telenovelas a day thru Russian TV station that has translated Mexican, Brazilian , Italian etc telenovelas (and now also Russian) and broadcast them almost 5-6 hours a day.
There is something about "russian soul"

Edited by Eve on 30 July 2007 at 11:32am
1 person has voted this message useful

Arti
Diglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 7011 days ago
130 posts - 165 votes

Speaks: Russian*, English
Studies: French, Czech

Message 23 of 24

30 July 2007 at 1:48pm | IP Logged

Hi guys/galls/amateurs of Russian! :D

I ve found something to explain ;-)

furyou_gaijin wrote:

Жена узнала, что муж был в связи с бывшею [FG: archaic form] в их доме француженкою[FG: archaic form]-гувернанткой

all words are from contemporary Russian.

Бывшею comes from бывать, I'm not so good in grammar, but this word is OK, just like француженкою (instrumental case from "french woman")

Quote:

Все члены семьи и домочадцы чувствовали, что нет смысла в их сожительстве и что на каждом постоялом дворе

домочадцы - a bookish word, but not outdated, постоялый двор - here you are right, it is used only for describing period when people used horses, it's a place where you can change them, have a rest and continue travelling on new horses.

Quote:

англичанка поссорилась с экономкой и написала записку приятельнице, прося приискать

экономка - can be used now as well, because now there are many rich people in Russia and they begin having servants like before revolution. Экономка is kind of office-manager in a private house, usually it is a woman, if it is a man, he's called "завхоз" (ЗАВедующий ХОЗяйством), but завхоз is used as job title in big companies as well.

приискать - ordinary word, though a bookish one, synonim is подыскать, it is more heard in spoken language, but usual найти is the most popular of course (to find)

Quote:

черная кухарка и кучер просили расчета.

черная кухарка и кучер - professions which don't exist now, just because we don't use coal at the kitchen and don't use cabs like in 19th century

расчет - is a good word in contemporary Russian, it means "money which you get when you leave your job"

Quote:

From that perspective, a contemporary Russian crime story or - in the case of Japanese - a manga book would probably do more to acquiant the reader with the present-day usage while providing exactly the same amount of exposure to grammar, etc...

on the one hand I agree, on the other hand such books especially contemprory Russian crime novels are full of slang and "dirty, bad" language, I'm not sure if it is good for beginners, though of course it is also part of language and it's better to know major insults ;-)
1 person has voted this message useful

furyou_gaijin
Senior Member
Japan
Joined 6385 days ago
540 posts - 631 votes

Speaks: Latin*

Message 24 of 24

30 July 2007 at 3:13pm | IP Logged

O dear... somehow I knew this little example will eventually be
challenged.

Arti wrote:

Бывшею comes from бывать, I'm not so good in grammar,
but this word is OK, just like француженкою (instrumental case from
"french woman")

So both words are ok, then?! Excellent: so now it's ok to say 'расстался с
бывшею девушкою' without sounding like a character from
peasant stories of the 60's by Vasiliy Shukshin?

Arti wrote:

домочадцы - a bookish word, but not outdated

What's the subtle difference then?.. That aside, how useful is the word
'домочадцы' to a beginning learner (which happens to be the point here)?

Arti wrote:

экономка - can be used now as well, because now there are
many rich people in Russia and they begin having servants like before
revolution.

And how many families do you personally know that in this day and age
are using this word for their servants?

Arti wrote:

Экономка is kind of office-manager in a private house,
usually it is a woman, if it is a man, he's called "завхоз"

Why 'завхоз'?! And what happened to the equally old-fashioned 'эконом'?
Here's what the dictionary says:

ЭКОНОМ м.
1. устар. Тот, кто ведет хозяйство; домовод.
2. разг. Бережливый, хозяйственный человек.

Oh, and doesn't it say 'устар.'?!

Arti wrote:

приискать - ordinary word, though a bookish one, synonim
is подыскать, it is more heard in spoken language, but usual найти is the
most popular of course (to find)

Euh... so what's your point? :-)

And if 'приискать' is an ordinary word, I guess you can hear modern age
people looking to 'приискать себе новую работу' all the time? And they
are not using it with a grain of salt?!.. I rest my case.

Arti wrote:

расчет - is a good word in contemporary Russian, it means
"money which you get when you leave your job"

Great point. Let's try to imagine a bored modern-day secretary talking to
her friend on the phone:

'Ма-а-арин, меня-я так уже эта контора задолбала... Пусть дают мне
расчёт, я лучше пойду к Славику работать...'

Still nothing wrong with the above?

To be fair, I do believe that 'рассчитать' someone in the sense of 'fire
from a job' is somewhat more frequent in the modern language.

Arti wrote:

on the one hand I agree

So what is your point, then? :)

Arti wrote:

on the other hand such books especially contemprory
Russian crime novels are full of slang and "dirty, bad" language, I'm not
sure if it is good for beginners

Not every single one of them. Alexandra Marinina's novels aren't full of
slang and I'm sure there are plenty like her. Someone like Boris Akunin,
on the other hand, is not a good choice for beginners as his language is
highly stylised to sound like the nineteenth century...

Edited by furyou_gaijin on 30 July 2007 at 3:16pm

1 person has voted this message useful

This discussion contains 24 messages over 3 pages: << Prev 1 2 3

If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register

Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum

This page was generated in 0.4839 seconds.