On break

I've decided to take a break due to demands from my job.

I hope I don't lose all my Russian language knowledge because I intend to keep learning when my job settles down!

Robin Williams Russian improv

I saw Robin Williams on The Graham Norton Show this weekend. I was surprised that he actually knows a few words of Russian and a few words of French well enough to use them during his improv. I can't imagine speaking Russian well enough to make jokes on TV!

New word, but no new flashcard

I learned a new word today, пиндосы (pindosy), but I've made the executive decision to not make flashcards for naughty words.

old school flashcards

I know, I know, flashcards are so old school.
I decided my lack of vocabulary progression requires drastic measures, so flashcards it is.
These two cards are
муха 'fly'
внезапно 'suddenly'
which are words I recently read on languagehat.
These flashcards are both printed and scripted in Russian so that I can become more familiar with script. I don't yet know all the rules of writing script, so I am just doing my best.

tag(s): Russian Language

Why do you learn another language?

Last night an acquaintance asked me why I learn lots of languages. Is it for work or for fun? Then I wondered, do people think that language learning is a drudgery?

Why does anyone strive to be multi-lingual? Are there many jobs which require multi-lingualism from people who don't want to learn more languages? Internet, please enlighten me!

изак, кошка

We had a sad summer when one of our cats, Simon, died unexpectedly. He was a very playful, affectionate, gentle cat and his absence is acutely felt. Even today it is hard to believe that he is gone.

Last week we adopted a kitten. He's Korat and we named him изак. We adopted him from the pound, where he had been bitten by a mean, adult cat. His health has been making great progress since we brought him home and he loves his new home where he gets lots of attention.

Asian Grocery

I popped into the local Asian grocery shop this afternoon to get a break from the office and to get out of the never-ending rain. I was hoping to find some Russian items- perhaps caviar, chocolates, or tea. Instead the aisles were filled with east Asian delights such as preserved duck eggs,














fish snack,



















Snake Brand prickly heat powder,














and a little bit of jasmine rice.

The Neighbor

OK, so I still can't get the neighbor to talk to me. However, I've almost decided that she's not speaking Russian. The problem is that I can't get close enough to really hear what she's saying. She goes silent when I get close enough to potentially make out clear syllables.

In the meantime, I decided to distract myself with some Portuguese lessons. I feel so dorky when speaking Brazilian Portuguese! Why? The only reason I can conjure up is that I have never heard Brazilian Portuguese spoken in real life, so it sounds really artificial when I fumble a few words out. Beside Portuguese, the only other language that I've studied, but never heard in real life, is Esperanto. I felt pretty dorky with Esperanto, too, but that might be for a different reason.

stalking neighbors

We have new neighbors down the way. It is a blond woman, a plump man, a little blond girl, and a big dog. I think I heard the woman speaking Russian. When I smile and say hello, she turns her head away and acts like she doesn't hear me. Her little girl is cute and friendly, but each time that the little girl makes neighborly eye contact with me, the woman yells at her.

I haven't heard the woman speaking in her native language long enough to make out if it is truly Russian or another slavic sounding language. I think this means that I need to do some more neighborly spying chatting.

борщ

This evening I was treated to a very fancy and fun supper at The Russia House in Herndon, VA. Two great friends chose this restaurant since they know I'm studying Russian. Not only did they chose a great restaurant, but they chauffeured me to and from my hotel and paid for the whole supper. I didn't realize that I was being treated to a birthday meal, so I ordered up lots of stuff from the menu and really ran up the tab! What great friends!

The restaurant itself was warm and friendly. I liked the heavy, red draperies and interesting art. Overall the restaurant owners impressed me because they were very attentive to my vegan nutritional constraints.

I loved The Russia House's borscht. I can't believe I waited so long to try this popular Russian dish. I have had some bad experiences with beets in the past, so I was never terribly keen on trying borscht. However, I had a fantastic beet dish while in Geneva recently, so I decided to give beets a second chance and I am glad I did. For me the borscht was served without sour cream and I loved the flavor of the fresh beets and vegetables. I will definitely chose to order борщ again at my future Russian meals.

Sorry, I should have taken some photos for you, but I forgot.

tag(s): Russian food

My annual comparison of language learning tools.

Periodically I am asked about my opinions of various self-paced language learning tools, but I am sometimes reluctant to comment on this topic.

I am an independent user of language learning tools and I have lots of opinions based solely on my personal experience of purchasing and/or using them for learning Russian.

I previously gave a comparison of Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone on this blog. I did not, however, recommend one over the other because I feel that they should be used with different purposes in mind. Pimsleur focuses primarily on conversational skills and you get nearly immediate satisfaction from using it; Rosetta Stone offers instructions in reading comprehension, spelling, listening to vocabulary words and phrases, speaking with speech analysis tools. It has lots of bells and whistles and does not use the speaker's native language as part of the instruction process.

Before choosing your tools, I think that you need to understand what your ultimate language learning goal is. Do you want to travel to that country and be a tourist? Do you want to read a novel in that target language? Do you want to correspond with people in the target language? Do you plan to study abroad? If you need to learn conversational skills, then Pimsleur is the best way to work on this goal in your home. (The very best way is immersion, of course.) If your goal is more for reading and writing, then you can choose from several options including Rosetta Stone or Mango Languages.

Since Mango Languages is currently free, I think that everybody should at least check it out once. It is in beta test, so you may find bugs and it may not have as many bells and whistles as Rosetta Stone. The one thing that I dislike about Mango Languages is that it does use your native language as the instructional language. However, it is online 24-7, free, easy to use, and fun.

I have used several other language learning packages that I don't talk about much on this blog because I wasn't impressed with them. They will remain nameless here, but they are mostly comprised of textbooks with accompanying audio dialogs. I have never been able to learn much from these methods when used in a self-paced setting. I did begin learning French by using a textbook, audio dialogs, and classroom instruction when I was very young... but I ultimately became fluent in French by living in France. When you have to eat salad with no salad dressing for 8 weeks because you don't know the word for salad dressing, this makes a lasting impression....
(It's called "la sauce" in French. How stupid did I feel when I finally figured that out?!?)

As a side note, I have had some problems running Rosetta Stone on my Mac (v 10.4.11). I plan to call the Rosetta Stone people in Virgina this week for technical assistance. One problem with the Rosetta Stone format is that the lessons are on discs and you MUST use the disc each time you access your lessons; if the disc get scratched, you're in trouble. I've had great past experiences with their customer service, so I'll keep you posted.

tag(s): Pimsleur Mango Languages Rosetta Stone Russian Language

Review of Mango Languages Beta Software

Today I decided to try out the Mango Languages software. It's an online language learning software for self-paced, self-acquired, second language. There are lots of languages to choose from, most are geared towards English speakers.

After registering, I started out by trying the Use Mango tab and selecting Russian for English speakers. It uses Flash Player 9 to show slides with the lessons. Your progress is charted by showing the number of slides you've completed. The first Russian lesson has 71 slides- that was a bit daunting to me.

Instructions are given by an English speaker. Russian phrases are spoken by a native Russian speaker with accompanying Russian text on the screen.

The first few slides were easy, since they are a repeat of what I've learned in Pimsleur. However, since Pimsleur is only listening and speaking, it was a bit strange to see the written text on the screen.

After the first few slides, I was in uncharted waters. The Russian speakers don't pronounce the phrases with long pauses, so I had trouble understanding the onslaught of foreign phonemes in my ears. Nevertheless, I did like being able to see the text; this aided my comprehension of the sounds. Some "phonetic transcriptions" are provided for the Russian words with a mouse roll-over, but because the phonetic spellings did not use IPA, I found them confusing.

The English instruction is mixed in with a different Russian speaker pronouncing certain words. However, the English and Russian sound bytes aren't clipped together too well and there are annoying pauses in between different speakers in the middle of sentences.

Here is a visual example of one of these stitched together bi-lingual sentences:



I did like these interesting and helpful cultural notes.

I plan to continue to use the software and see what enhancements are added as the software progresses. Overall, I am very pleased with it: It functions well technically, the sound quality is good, it is self-paced and free! I encourage you to check it out. I'd like to hear your comments on the software.

tag(s): Russian Language

Font fetish

After searching the web for some fun Cyrillic fonts, I decided to go with eternal fonts. This site has some interesting fonts including several Cyrillic fonts for $14.95 via paypal. Basically you pay the $15 and have access to all of their fonts. It was a quick and simple download to satisfy my font fetish. It says the download for the Mac is a .bin file, but I could only find .zip files. This still worked fine and I have several new Cyrillic fonts installed.
Initially I tried to install all of my new 5000+ fonts... what a bad idea! I think that I will stick with using only the few hundred that I like.

tag(s): Russian Cyrillic

Russian Yarn Card from taiga yarns

tag(s): Russian

вязание

One of my favorite things about learning another language is figuring out how words are connected. Today I have learning that the words knit and bind are connected. I guess these two words might be cousins on a big family tree of words.

In an attempt to read some of these Russian knitting magazines, I decided to bring out my dictionary, look up words, and make and attempt to remember how to spell them.

I am using the dictionary widget that came with my MacBook. It takes me a really long time to type Russian words because I do not have my Russian keyboard stickers on the MacBook keys, so I spend a lot of time trying to guess which key corresponds to which Russian letter. The MacBook is great to switch keyboard inputs with the click of the mouse, but then you have to know how to use the requested keyboard.

As I slowly typed in the word for knitting, the dictionary widget was translating as I was typing:




and the final Russian word:
I assume that the wording binding is the same as the word knitting. That would make sense. Here's the definition of knit from the Oxford American dictionary:

knit |nit|
verb ( knit•ting ; past and past part. knitted or (esp. in sense 2) knit )
1 [ trans. ] make (a garment, blanket, etc.) by interlocking loops of wool or other yarn with knitting needles or on a machine.
• make (a stitch or row of stitches) in such a way.
• knit with a knit stitch : knit one, purl one.
2 [ intrans. ] become united : disparate regions had begun to knit together under the king | [as adj., with submodifier ] ( knit) a closely knit family.
• (of parts of a broken bone) become joined during healing.
• [ trans. ] cause to unite or combine : he knitted together a squad of players other clubs had disregarded.

ORIGIN
Old English cnyttan; related to German dialect knütten, also to knot 1 .
The original sense was [tie in or with a knot,] hence [join, unite] ( sense 2 ); an obsolete Middle English sense [knot string to make a net] gave rise to sense 1.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to pronounce the Russian word and I will be set!

tag(s): Russian Language

Russian knitting magazines

I also ordered some Russian knitting magazines. I was thinking that maybe I could learn some new vocabulary while getting to feed my knitting obsession. My Belarussian friend Наташа told me that it would be a bad idea to try to learn some Russian from these magazines, but I did not heed her advice and ordered two magazines.
When they arrived, I realized that the Russian version of Joe Millionaire's Zora was on the cover of one, and Ally McBeal was on the cover of the other.
You may be wondering what Russian Zora is wearing. It looks like a furry-collared coat. At closer inspection,

you will see that it is a knitted halter top, knitted long skirt, with a furry-collared sweater.

Other notable knitting patterns in these magazines:

Clown costumes for children


Long-sleeved sweater with noticeable missing fabric on upper arms

Retro '80s pullover. This pattern is not too extraordinary, but the model looks like the Russian women I see in Hollywood movies.

tag(s): Russian Language

Spoonful of Russian

Today I've been listening to Natalia's Spoonful of Russian podcasts. Natalia has a nice voice for podcasting and her relaxed, confident tone makes it seem like Russian is easy to learn. These lessons are easy to listen to while I am knitting and doing housework. As I listen to her podcasts, I realize that I remember more Russian than I had expected. Yay!
Maybe I will find a microphone and actually do some of the homework lessons she assigns (record yourself speaking the dialogues) and post them here. I am not sure that I want to hear my own voice recorded and posted on the web, but we'll have to see.

tag(s): Russian Language

Remember me?

OK, so I got a bit disenchanted with both my Russian lessons and with my computer, so I took a long hiatus from both.

I am ready to start back. I have a new MacBook and a renewed interest in my Russian lessons. I plan to review my old Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone lessons and move forward.
During this second phase of the learning process, I plan to focus on writing more. I need to learn to spell and how to properly write Russian with a pen and paper. Before, I wanted to gain some conversational fluency so I wasn't very concerned about minor details like spelling and reading.

tag(s): Pimsleur Rosetta Stone Russian Language

Unity Day

My Google Calendar tells me that Saturday is a Russian holiday called Unity Day.
What on earth is that? After searching the trusty Johnson's Russia List, I discovered that it is a new holiday, started in 2005, to unite the country.
Here's the article by Francesca Mereu: Unity Holiday Creating Discord
I wonder if this holiday was actually successful last year and if it is predicted to be successful this year.

tag(s): Russian

Reminded by Manpower

Thanks to Manpower's comment, I did go and watch Aladdin's A Whole New World clip dubbed in Russian on YouTube and it reminded me that I should be looking for Russian music, radio, magazines and other pop-culture bits to keep me interested in doing my lessons.

Thanks Manpower!

tag(s): Russian Language