Monday, August 26, 2024

Elementary Russian: Сегодня! Today in the Lab, Unit 1 Week 1....

Добро пожаловать в лингафонную общину!!

Welcome to Elementary Russian in the Language Commons!

Today we're working on some basic competencies like handwriting, alphabet, listening skills, and counting. You can do this lab in the Language Commons, or wherever. (In case you missed it, here are some resources for learning the Russian alphabet.)

Make sure you have a lab worksheet ! They're available in the lab, or you can print them out for remote work. (Did you know there are free printers all over campus?)

Every lab begins with individual, computer work like watching videos, listening to recordings, etc.

First:

Check out this illustration from Leo Tolstoy's primer, published in the 1870s to help schoolchildren learn to read print and cursive. It's the letter "m" in various typefaces (fonts) and cursive, and a word that readily comes to mind that starts with "m": медведь, bear.


Like English, Russian handwritten (cursive) is somewhat different from print (type). This is how the phrase 
Съешь же ещё этих мягких французских булок да выпей чаю! 

is written out by hand, in cursive. like this:

Eat these soft French buns and drink some tea! 

That's all the letters in the Russian alphabet... probably the shortest iteration, like our "Quick brown fox"... (The word же doesn't really mean anything, it's like, "you know" in English, which mostly doesn't mean "you know." It emphasizes the verb that precedes it, here, "eat", съешь.) A few things to notice: 1) Not many letters are tall, rising above the middle line. 2) Several of the letters (л, м, я) have "hooks" incorporated into their shape that help differentiate them from other letters. 3) Most of the cursive letters look like the print letters, with the real exception of the letter т (tee), which looks like an "m" (examine the word этих, second line, second letter... looks like an "m" doesn't it?) Like English cursive, Russian cursive MOSTLY looks like Russian print. 


You have four short exercises. It should take you 15 minutes. You need to get this worksheet checked... Either by your instructor or a tutor... There are lots of ways to do this, like bringing it to class, finding a tutor, sending it to your instructor by email (take a picture on your phone!), etc. You're smart... you'll figure it out.

Worksheet stuff... 

Do the following on the worksheet. 

Listen to Числительные (Numerals)... Прослушайте! Ех А, Б, В. These are the THREE exercises (first page) on your lab worksheet, starting with the exercise ""You will now learn numbers..." (We know... some of these are just listening exercises and don't require you to write anything... Listening!)

Finished? Закончили? А теперь... And now, Listen to the list of PRIZES! and check off the ones named on your worksheet...

Now, let's do some reading. Go over Alphabet Lesson 2, Alphabet Lesson 3,  and Alphabet Review (you might not be able to do it all today, however, do it by Friday). Send me the screenshots of the last slides from each lesson. 

Handwriting (aka cursive, по-русски пропись)

On the handout you'll find the phrase from above (the one about French rolls), repeated five times with lines that will help you with size and slant. The best way to learn cursive is... you guessed, copying out phrases. The one on your sheet includes all the letters in the Russian alphabet in its shortest iteration. 

WATCH this YouTube series of videos detailing the correct (but not the only way!) to make your буквы (letters)... Some letters are more difficult to perform than others. Here are the most difficult letters to write out:

The letter Кк (kay)

The letter Жж (zhe)

The letter Хх (kh)

The letter Ыы (ee)


Practice copying out the phrase on your worksheet. Watch the videos for help in how to draw them, if you need it. And bring the completed worksheet to class and/or to a tutor or instructor, who can help you out!

If you need help with anything, just give us a shout!


Or reach out to a tutor!  

Sunday, August 25, 2024

Second Year Russian: LAB 1 UNIT 1


Лингафонный кабинет. Сейчас август. Добро пожаловать в лингафонный кабинет!

FIRST THINGS FIRST, PRACTICE FOR THE VOCAB QUIZ (10 минут)

Print this lab worksheet . Do all assignments there and have this worksheet checked by me or by tutors before you add it to your portfolio as usual.

Начнём! 

First listen to the numbers in their inflected, genitive form.

Линк на слушание (Numbers in Genitive), А. и Б.

You'll hear выше (higher), ниже (lower), около (about), от (from) до (up to)... These words demand the genitive case of the nouns that follow them. Around five=Около пяти́. (That's the genitive form of the cardinal number five.)

Here are some more genitive forms of numbers...

Oколо ноля (around zero), одного (one), двух (two), трёх (three), четырёх, тридцати́, двадцати́, семи́, тридцати́ пяти́.... It's frustrating that they give you no explanations... But just remember, you're hearing the genitive form of numbers...

Around thirty=Около традцати́. Higher than 18=Выше восемьна́дцати. Lower than 2=ниже двух. (Двух is the genitive form of два, two...)

On your handout, jot down the numbers you hear in Б. Now do the telephone numbers.

Вот... Поняли? Don't get bogged down here with the inflected forms. Part of the point is that you can understand the meaning ("around 5") without understanding the underlying grammar.

***
Что такое безличное выражение? What's an impersonal expression? It's how you say "I'm cold!" Мне холодно! You never say "я холодная" in Russian. say мне холодно
  1. Impersonal sentences in Russian are sentences that don't have a grammatical subject.
  2. In English, impersonal sentences have a grammatical subject, but not a logical one:
              It is very cold in January. 
    The subject, it, in this sentence does not refer to anything or anyone in particular. 
  3. Russian often uses an adverb as the predicate in impersonal constructions:          Здесь холодно. It is cold here          Завтра будет тепло. It will be warm tomorrow.


Russian often uses impersonal construction when describing how a person feels. The person IF EXPRESSED in such constructions will be in the dative case:
  • Мне холодно здесьI feel cold. (Compare the sentence Здесь холодно.)
  • Сергею там было интересно. It was interesting for Sergei there.
  • Наташе здесь будет холодно. Natasha will feel cold here.


Dative Case памятка... 

You'll need to recall the dative forms of the personal pronouns..

Dative CaseМнеТебеЕмуЕйЕму
Dative CaseНамВамИм




Saturday, August 17, 2024

(Kind of) learn to read Russian in 15 minutes!

This cartoon introduces you to the letters in the Russian alphabet, a subset of Cyrillic. It's pretty good... it has a lot of terminological problems, and some outright errors, but as a pragmatic and quick guide to learning the letters, it gets the job done. Enjoy! It continues here...






A world of languages...

Twenty-three languages make up the native tongue of 4.1 billion people of the 7.2 billion inhabitants of earth. (There are at least 7,102 known languages.)

Russian is spoken as a mother tongue by 166 million people (and by many others, for whom it is used as a language of study or business). But not all the speakers of Russian are from Russia... Click on the infographic to embiggen in!