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leaflet · Joined: 01 Nov 2004 Posts: 10

Does your language school provide Russian classes for you? How long did it take for you to be comfortable talking to the market lady? What "slangs" do ya know? Very Happy

expatella_girl · Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2004 6:08 pm Post subject: *sigh*

I've been taking Russian classes 3 days a week for a year....and don't speak Russian. Ok, I admit I never study, don't do my homework a lot of the time...but still you'd think that there would have been SOME progress in a years' time. Even sponges would be more successful than I.
However, the upside of taking classes for a year and seemingly getting nowhere--I find that I can often make out about 50% of what people say to me. Hey, that's something!

I was in Seventh Continent one Saturday afternoon and there was a fellow with 2 little kids, one a toddler parked in his shopping cart. The kids were talking to each other and I was suddenly horrified to realize that this 2 year old spoke better Russian than I did Sad

. The humiliation. I honestly think that I may never 'get it'. Is there any hope for a language that conjugates EVERYTHING including proper nouns?? God, and I thought Spanish was bad....

So I toodle around in my own little Moscow world. People could be insulting me everywhere I go and I'd never know it. I always smile and say "pajolsta!" Ignorance can be bliss.

leaflet · Joined: 01 Nov 2004 Posts: 10

I guess it depends on how much will. Do you get to meet many Russians and hang out with them there?

Personally, I love the language. I'm not studying Russian or anything currently since I'm so busy with other stuff that I have no time for it. But I listen to Russian music and try to keep the interest going.

Castro · Joined: 14 May 2003 Posts: 57 Location: still Russia

leaflet wrote:

Does your language school provide Russian classes for you? How long did it take for you to be comfortable talking to the market lady? What "slangs" do ya know?

There is a small list of Russian slang you can hear in Moscow.
http://www.unbound.ru/2b/

Have you ever heard that word "trouble' in Russian slang is literally "haemorrhoids"? So, slang shows us striking examples of word-formation and back-formation as well! It shows also culture differences: "Bull shit" is "Dog shit" in Russian. Let your imagination run wild: "Grandmothers" is "money" and "money" is "grandmothers" in Russian slang!

Communist Smurf · Joined: 24 Jun 2003 Posts: 330 Location: San Francisco

Great site! Anybody else got one like this?

CS

bobs12 · Joined: 27 Apr 2004 Posts: 310 Location: Saint Petersburg

Respect. They even have Шнурки в стакане.

dajiang · Joined: 13 May 2004 Posts: 663 Location: Guilin!

Great site that.

Do you guys have the LP phrasebook?
Well, in there there was the cool sentence:

Khuem gruzhi okolachivaet

freely translated as:
'he trying to get the pears off a peartree by clobbering it with his d i c k.'
and it means something like: he's wasting his time, or he's busy with some useless activity or something.

I've never heard them say it though.