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Russian Boot Camp

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Michel1020
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Belgium
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Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Dutch

 
 Message 9 of 27
09 June 2014 at 11:33am | IP Logged 
I add this serie in my group of "food on screen" material including Tampopo - Eat Drink Man Woman - and the opening credits of Dexter.

I am starting russian from scratch or very close to.
My first goal is speech understanding.
I already downloaded the first 10 episodes and extracted the soundtracks into mp3 files.

I am going to transliterate the transcripts into french style with
http://www.russki-mat.net/trans2.html
(they have other styles than french).

I am also doing some German where my still low level is already better than my zero or so in russian. For German I use dvd of Star Trek Voyager where I can refer to other languages. I also have a few episodes of Tatort radio show with neither transcription nor translation.

For the first time I am going to try a course with German as a base language. http://www.russlandjournal.de/podcasts/.


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Teango
Triglot
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United States
teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5555 days ago

2210 posts - 3734 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Russian
Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona

 
 Message 10 of 27
09 June 2014 at 10:41pm | IP Logged 
@Michel1020
Being a "foodie" myself (I only recently watched "Chef" at the cinema ;) ), I quite like your idea of grouping food related films and series together. I enjoyed watching Tampopo (many moons ago now), but don't think I've seen "Eat Drink Man Woman" yet - I'll keep an eye out for that one.

If your main goal is to initially understand spoken Russian, I'd be slightly wary of transliterating Russian text into other languages, as spoken and written Russian don't match up as closely as other languages. For example, consonants (without a soft sign: "ь") are devoiced at the end of words, e.g., друг (friend) sounds more like "druuk" with a rolled r and a hard "k" sound at the end. Another good example is "молоко" (milk), which sounds more like "mulakór" (and even that transliteration doesn't do it much justice)

The sounds of Russian are also quite different to the sounds symbolised in English or French transliterations. For example, the "у" in "лук" (onion) is pronounced a little further back and with less rounding, and the sound "ы" doesn't generally exist in English at all (although not sure about French).

I find the most important thing for Russian pronunciation is to know where the stress falls within each word, as this gives me a good idea how to pronounce other unstressed vowels. This is, however, quite unpredictable from the text alone, at least for a native English speaker like me, which is why I'd advocate lots of supplementary listening.

It's funny you're following Voyager, as I've been watching it with my wife recently too. Unfortunately I'll have to forego it for the duration of my project (unless I can find the following episodes in Russian of course). It does indeed contain plenty of food related scenes with Nelix.

Удачи тебе! I look forward to hearing how you get on. :)


Edited by Teango on 09 June 2014 at 10:53pm

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Teango
Triglot
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United States
teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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2210 posts - 3734 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Russian
Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona

 
 Message 11 of 27
09 June 2014 at 10:57pm | IP Logged 
Perfect timing, Prof. Arguelles! I look forward to watching this in Russian once I've completed studying my first episode of Кухня. :D

Assimil Perfectionnement Russe

(Еще раз спасибо, Henkles!)


Edited by Teango on 09 June 2014 at 10:59pm

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Teango
Triglot
Winner TAC 2010 & 2012
Senior Member
United States
teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5555 days ago

2210 posts - 3734 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Russian
Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona

 
 Message 12 of 27
11 June 2014 at 10:10pm | IP Logged 
Russian Boot Camp: Day -2 (false start)

I began by chatting ineptly in Russian with my wife before she headed off to work in the morning, and then just tried to think in Russian throughout the rest of the day, be it whilst out taking my morning walk, shopping, or indulging in introspective reflection back at home.

Being surrounded by English, I found thinking in Russian quite a challenge, but did my level best to maintain a small cosy Russian microclimate around me at all times. One technique I came up with is to sing (and I must confess, beatbox), when I feel a strong urge to start thinking in English again. Keeping my mouth busy with other sounds helps me from reverting back to internal English monologue, and every now and again, I even throw in some rhyming Russian lyrics for good measure. It's a fun technique to use at home or whilst performing one's morning's ablutions in the shower, but I'd advise a modicum of caution whilst out shopping in the vegetable section at Safeway.

Sadly, I didn't get to hear any Russian on the street today (which sometimes happens, Hawai'i being so full of tourists), but I did get to overhear a couple of shop assistants chatting away in a Chinese language I couldn't initially recognise. When I asked them which language they were speaking, they informed me it was Hakka, and I took the opportunity to learn a new phrase (and my only phrase so far) in Hakka, "多謝" (thank you), which, with my new Russian head firmly screwed on tight, reminded me of "доч(к)а" at the time.

The shop assistants also wanted to know where I was from, as they guessed I wasn't quite "loco" (Pidgin: local, not Spanish: crazy) or from the US mainland. In fact, I learnt that they had on a previous occasion made a bet on this, and were sure I was either Italian or Spanish. Sorry to say, all bets were off this time. Despite looking considerably non-Italian, I find that locals often mistake me for being Australian or from any other country in Europe but England! Perhaps they they just don't see many Brits this side of the Pacific, and I guess my largely Irish demeanour (my mother is Irish and my father part Welsh) probably doesn't quite fit the English Holywood "baddie or bashful" stereotype abroad.

Finally, with regards to my Russian studies today, I fell short of the mark by a long shot. The first minute of Кухня was a baptism of words, spoken at breakneck speed, and the following dialogue was full of idiomatic language as expected. Tripping over the first few high hurdles, and after a brief flirtation with the transcripts for the series, I resorted to other lighter activities. I felt exhausted by the end of the day, but I'll endeavour to do better tomorrow!

Фраза дня: Белый друг (slang for "toilet"). ;)


Edited by Teango on 24 June 2014 at 9:39am

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Teango
Triglot
Winner TAC 2010 & 2012
Senior Member
United States
teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5555 days ago

2210 posts - 3734 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Russian
Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona

 
 Message 13 of 27
11 June 2014 at 10:52pm | IP Logged 
Russian Boot Camp: Day -1 (false start)

I gathered a little more speed today, and managed to complete my studies for half of episode 1 of Кухня by the end of the day. With the help of some kind members on our Forum, I also found a couple of useful browser apps for checking grammar, and to my absolute delight, placing stress marks on Russian words in a web page:

LanguageTool (grammar checker)
RussianGram (stress marker)

With only one day's light immersion and study, I noticed that I spoke Russian considerably faster this morning, and could communicate more detail in conversation whilst out with my wife in the evening. I probably learnt well over 200 phrases (I haven't counted yet), some of which are a couple of words in length, whilst others are full sentences. Here's an example of a rather bizarre one: "Но ножом он тебе ноги побреет так, что ты даже не заметишь" (don't ask!).

I hope to complete the second half of Кухня tomorrow, and am currently working on tweaking my learning strategy to make more efficient use of my time. I'd love to get it to the point where I can study the transcript for one episode a day, and then watch it in the evening, but this might be wildly overoptimistic. Мы узнаем!

Фраза дня: "С газом, без газа?" (with or without gas?). I chose this one to showcase how infuriating Russian can be to a simple-minded англичанин like me. You'd imagine the same case would follow the prepositions "with" and "without", but that would be far too easy!


Edited by Teango on 24 June 2014 at 9:38am

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chokofingrz
Pentaglot
Senior Member
England
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241 posts - 430 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German, Italian
Studies: Russian, Japanese, Catalan, Luxembourgish

 
 Message 14 of 27
12 June 2014 at 12:06am | IP Logged 
Teango wrote:
"Но ножом он тебе ноги побреет так, что ты даже не заметишь" (don't ask!).


I enjoyed this too. Didn't have a clue what he said when I watched the episode, but after I read it through and looked up побреет, the quip became quite beautiful!
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Teango
Triglot
Winner TAC 2010 & 2012
Senior Member
United States
teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5555 days ago

2210 posts - 3734 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Russian
Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona

 
 Message 15 of 27
24 June 2014 at 9:40am | IP Logged 
Russian Boot Camp: Day 1 (project restarted here)

I was called away to deal with some important personal matters over the last fortnight, so I've reset the start date of this project to begin afresh today. After an exceptionally busy weekend, I was dog tired this morning, and set off at an even more leisurely snail's pace than usual once out of the gates. I managed to study half of episode 1 of Кухня again (which is where I got up to last time), listen to a couple of episodes of Vasily Strelnikov's Big Podcast in the background, and spoke mostly in my own inimitable form of pidgin Russian throughout the day. I won't deny it's hard work progressing through the first transcript, especially in the beginning, but the one thing that keeps me pointing the right direction is that I absolutely love this funny sexy series!

Фраза дня: "Моей душе покоя нет" (taken from one of my all-time favourite films, it means "there's no peace for my soul").

Study today: 6 hours, 1,000 words studied (Кухня 1.1), 216 phrases learned.
Project total: 6 hours, 1,000 words studied, 216 phrases learned.
 

Edited by Teango on 30 June 2014 at 2:21am

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Teango
Triglot
Winner TAC 2010 & 2012
Senior Member
United States
teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5555 days ago

2210 posts - 3734 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Russian
Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona

 
 Message 16 of 27
26 June 2014 at 1:12am | IP Logged 
Russian Boot Camp: Day 2

After reviewing half an episode of Кухня from yestereday, I became a little distracted and started surfing the Internet, oblivious to the dangers of certain procrastination. Catching up on a host of emails and other posts of course led me down a rocky road and straight into a thorny thicket of "What happened to learning Russian?". The end result was that I was unable to complete episode 1 as originally planned, and watched an episode of the comedy series Сваты with my wife instead in the evening (recommended by johnbnine on the Polydog forum). It was also quite exciting to hear some of the new words I'd only just committed to memory already popping up on the Big Podcast today (e.g., "очень прикольно", "придурак"), and I've further noticed how moving the front of my tongue towards the mid-palate helps improve overall pronunciation.

Фраза дня: Я тебя́ ненави́жу ("I hate you" - certainly not a nice thing to say to anyone, but it offers an amusing literal translation: "I don't look at you!").

Study today: 4 hours, 400 words studied (Кухня 1.1), 64 phrases learned.
Project total: 10 hours, 1,400 words, 280 phrases learned.


Edited by Teango on 30 June 2014 at 2:21am



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