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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5734 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 25 of 195 27 May 2010 at 5:38am | IP Logged | |||||
Google translated that as "one more patron" and I thought it may have had something to do with Spanish "patrón", pattern. Combined with the line about the drum, my interpretation of the song was very weird. I saw she bought a gun, but she never used it... then she talks about patterns in her life... and then she says she may as well be a drum? Something's wrong here. ;) Thank you very much for clearing that up.
Yes, I'd say so! I'm guessing she really loved this guy. It's a very dramatic move to make, isn't it? Once again, thank you very much for helping me. I really appreciate it. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5734 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 26 of 195 27 May 2010 at 10:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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So, right now I'm very interested in the history of Russian orthography. Basically,
what changes has the original Cyrillic alphabet gone through to make the modern Russian alphabet? Looking at the original Cyrillic script, you can see a lot of letters that aren't used in Russian nowadays, like the yuses. Many letters have a different phonetic value than they do today. The fascinating part, however, is how some letters came to take on political significance. Before 1918, Russian orthography was quite unphonetic and chaotic. It reminds me in some ways of English (though it's not as bad). Words ending in a consonant had the hard sign even though the sign was completely superfluous and didn't have its own sound anymore. There was a letter called 'yat' which sounded just like 'je', which already had a letter. As such, the new Provisional government issued out decrees saying that the letter 'yat' was obsolete. People made a huge deal about it - how dare anyone get rid of the beloved letter yat! Eventually, everyone accepted it (whether they liked it or not) and now yat is but a memory. In my opinion, the old orthography is ugly and just terrible. I'm quite happy that I'm learning Russian with this new orthography. Look at this. It's unreadable to Google translate and it's just a pain to look at. What spurred this sudden inquiry into Russian orthography? Well, it's about a very good resource for learning the history of language: Google Books. If you look up a language and click on "Full View", you'll get a bunch of books with that keyword for free. Since works published in the 1920s are in the public domain for the US, there are a lot of old grammar books from the 1920s, 1910s (even 1890s!). These books often contain old orthography, old grammar (I came across a Swedish grammar that said that Swedish had three genders. Oh, and some very weird conjugations for some pronouns which apparently no longer exist). It's fascinating to look into the history of the language you're studying. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5734 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 27 of 195 28 May 2010 at 5:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm looking at this essay about the old Russian orthography, written IN the old orthography, but it's so hard to read. :( I hate all the unnecessary hard signs... and the 'yat' letter is just wtf for me. Plus, a huge amount of unknown vocabulary. Yuck!
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5734 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 28 of 195 29 May 2010 at 5:02am | IP Logged | |||||
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Word count: 292 (+10)
I'm very close to 300 words! :o I'm putting all my new words into Surusu (it's a free, online SRS provided by All Japanese All the Time) so that I can remember them. Surusu can be accessed with your mobile phone, too, so this means that even on the go I'll be able to practice Russian. Hmm, lunchtime at school... Anyway, I love reading through the language articles on Russian Wikipedia; they make me feel like I know so much Russian. :) There's a lot of common vocabulary and new words can easily be deduced from context. Some of my new words done there come from the Russian version of "Russian language". I've found a website about Estonian news written in Russian: http://moles.ee/ It's cool, especially since Estonia is a country we don't hear about often. The first Russian primer was published in Estonia yesterday; apparently Russian children had been using primers from Russia. These new primers will teach about Estonian rather than Russian culture. I thought that was pretty cool. There's also a link to an article on Forbes on how Estonia is Europe's unsung hero which I intend to read sometime. являться/явиться: to show up, to report (as a person), to be. Russian actually has quite a few verbs for 'to be', all with different shades of meaning. государственный - official букварь (m) - primer руководитель (m) - leader праздник - holiday отмечаемый - observed, celebrated по сути - in fact внешне - externally, outwardly (adverb) невоспетый - unsung (an uncommon word, doesn't get a lot of results on Google?) везде - everywhere Edited by lynxrunner on 29 May 2010 at 3:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5734 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 29 of 195 30 May 2010 at 7:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Ugh, I still have a long way to go. :/ I tried listening to a Soviet movie today and
barely understood anything. Same thing with some cartoons. The actors speak so quickly in the movie and they use all sorts of difficult words in the cartoons. I hope I'll get better as time goes by, but right now I'm feeling down. I still haven't finished my course, though, so maybe I'll get better as time goes by. Hopefully. Words today: 297 (+5) а точней - more precisely Поклон - bow Шикарно - gorgeous обожать - to love, worship Чадра - veil, chador Edited by lynxrunner on 31 May 2010 at 7:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6755 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 30 of 195 30 May 2010 at 9:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You have studied French so far, which is much closer to both English and Spanish than Russian is. You will just demotivate yourself if you transfer the sense of how things ought to progress from that experience to Russian.
Movies are generally harder than talking one on one, or watching the news, for example. Sometimes one gets stubborn and decides to watch a movie anyway. What helps me in such cases is to watch it multiple times, alternating between watching it with and without subtitles. I would imagine finding a Russian movie with Russian subtitles is not easy, but English subtitles are helpful too. Don't expect to get to the point where you understand 100 percent - be content with understanding a bit more every time. Sometimes you'll be surprised how much more. Edited by frenkeld on 30 May 2010 at 10:09pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5734 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 31 of 195 31 May 2010 at 4:21am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank you for the encouragement, Frenkeld. I think I'm just setting my standards too
high. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6755 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 32 of 195 31 May 2010 at 5:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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If it's not a secret, what was the movie?
P.S. I didn't mean to suggest that an English speaker can't ever reach a 100 percent understanding in Russian, only that there is no reason putting this type of pressure on yourself this early. Edited by frenkeld on 31 May 2010 at 6:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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