|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
canuckistan
Mod Team
Joined: 17 Jun 2003
Location: Training future GS competitors.....
|
 Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 7:46 pm Post subject: |
 |
|
| Woland wrote: |
I majored in Russian as an undergrad, took more in grad school, lived in Leningrad at the same time as Anjucat (PM me, mou drug, my dolzhny uznat', znaem li my drug druga ili net. Ya rabotal v Ped. Inst. im Gertsena). My Russian is still pretty good. Before coming to Korea this time I spent six months in Armenia where I used it on a daily basis. Since Coming here, I've met up with one Russian in my university to chat with (unfortunately now away on vacation. I need to track down one of the others to practice with.)
Do learn the Cyrillic alphabet at the start. In my classes, we basically got it down in 3 days. Of course, it took more practice to make it automatic.
The complexities of Russian are 1) the noun declensions. It's fairly easy to memorize the forms, but again it is just practice that willmake it automatic. I remember as a beginner the slow thinking process - "Okay, that verb takes what case? Oh, yeah, dative. Now, the noun, is that masculine - yeah. Okay, what's the masculine dative ending? -U. Crap, it's plural, should be -am." - and finally being to say what I wanted to say. Don't be frustrated by this; it's just gonna take practice to make it automatic.
2) stress patterns in nouns and verbs, which affect pronunciation. Stress is mobile in Russian and can vary within a declension. There are regular patterns to such variation, with about 6 major patterns for nouns; I forget how many (fewer, I think) for verbs. You need to learn which word goes into which patterns and get a feel (which again comes with practice) for what pattern a new word falls into. I make accurate guesses about 90% of the time now with new words.
3) aspect. This is actually the hardest part, I think. Almost all Russian verbs come in two forms, perfect and imperfect, which differ in form (sometimes just a switch in conjugation pattern, sometimes a completely different root). You need to choose which one you are using every time. THe hard part is that this is not a matter a grammar so much as a matter of your perspective on the action - do you see it as complete or not; is your focus on the completion or not? In most cases, it's not a mistake to choose the wrong one, but it gives a different meaning. Getting a feel for how Russians understand and use aspect is still something I have to work at.
4) Verbs of motion up the ante on aspect by having a three-way distinction, rather than a two-way distinction. The good news is that there are only 14 or so of them. Again, getting a feel for the semantic distinction between them is the tricky part.
Most of this stuff you won't have to worry about as a beginner. ANd there is more stuff - alternations in form, pronunciation, etc. But I would say that learning the forms of Russian is not the difficult part; like any language, it's getting a grip on usage that is real trick. My advice would be to learn a lot of useful phrases as vocabulary initially to help you participate in the language more effectively and worry about the grammar of them later.
Oh, yeah, the article business. Russian doesn't have articles for marking definiteness/indefiniteness like English. So, sobaka can mean 'dog', 'a dog', or 'the dog'. Context usually makes it clear. |
Woland, thanks for the great info!
The article mystery is solved  |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
dogbert
Joined: 29 Jan 2003
Location: Killbox 90210
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 8:17 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| BTW, when learning the Cyrillic alphabet, take the time to learn the cursive form at the same time. It will be worth it. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
canuckistan
Mod Team
Joined: 17 Jun 2003
Location: Training future GS competitors.....
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 8:28 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| dogbert wrote: |
| BTW, when learning the Cyrillic alphabet, take the time to learn the cursive form at the same time. It will be worth it. |
What? There's a cursive form? A big part of the trip to Ukraine next year will involve trying to read documents.
Oh *beep* 
Thanks for that info though |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
dogbert
Joined: 29 Jan 2003
Location: Killbox 90210
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 8:56 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| canuckistan wrote: |
| dogbert wrote: |
| BTW, when learning the Cyrillic alphabet, take the time to learn the cursive form at the same time. It will be worth it. |
What? There's a cursive form? A big part of the trip to Ukraine next year will involve trying to read documents.
Oh *beep*
Thanks for that info though |
Sure. Russians usually use cursive instead of block printing when writing, but you won't have any trouble picking it up if you learn both at the same time. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
ajgeddes
Joined: 28 Apr 2004
Location: Yongsan
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 9:35 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| canuckistan wrote: |
| ajgeddes wrote: |
| canuckistan wrote: |
It's a programme through the US Army called "Rosetta Stone". Unfortunately I don't think it's available to civilians who aren't connected in some way to the military. Mr Canuckistan had a few steps to take to sign me up for it.
Got a friend in the army? |
I don't know if you have some special thing or not, but anyone can get Rosetta Stone. In fact, I have the Russian one, and about 10 other languages, you just have to download it off of a torrent. |
It's the same programme. Hub says because it's through the army it's free (so is torrent hey ) hence all the sign-up rigamarole.
Do you think it's any good?--at least for a start? |
To be honest, I have never really taken a look at the Russian one I have. Also, I find both Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur to be a little boring. I prefer to just hire a tutor (It's not always possible), which I have done for Chinese. Rosetta Stone seems like a good enough program once you get into it though, just give it time. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Woland
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: Seoul
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 9:39 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| dogbert wrote: |
| canuckistan wrote: |
| dogbert wrote: |
| BTW, when learning the Cyrillic alphabet, take the time to learn the cursive form at the same time. It will be worth it. |
What? There's a cursive form? A big part of the trip to Ukraine next year will involve trying to read documents.
Oh *beep*
Thanks for that info though |
Sure. Russians usually use cursive instead of block printing when writing, but you won't have any trouble picking it up if you learn both at the same time. |
Yeah, this is true.
If you are dealing with typed documents, no problem. But even in offices, many things that we would type in the west are still handwritten there, so it is best to be prepared.
When I was learning, there were cursive lessons in our books and from early on in the course, we were expected to write assignments in cursive. Here's the catch. When I got to the USSR, I couldn't read what people wrote in cursive. The hand we were taught in the texts was sort off 'too perfect' and didn't reflect people's real writing. I had to make a whole adjustment to read (and did so with my writing, too, after getting too many comments on how cute my handwriting was, like what children were taught).
I learned to read real Russian cursive out of necessity to be able to read the menu at the stolovaya (cafeteria) in my institute so I could better know what to eat and what to miss. (And still, it was no help when whatever meat was being served, whether it previously mooed, whinnied, oinked or barked, was labeled simply 'myaso' (= meat). I guess they really didn't want us to know.)
Aside, if you are going to Ukraine, will the documents be in Russian or Ukrainian? Older official documents will be in Russian, of course, but in recent years there has been a real push to Ukrainianize officialdom.
Also, where are you going, Canuckistan? I've been to Kiev twice in the last five years and once to L'viv. I even made it out to Horlivka once, but I doubt you'll be heading there. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
davai!
Joined: 04 Dec 2005
Location: Kuwait
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 11:32 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Funny, I had a reverse problem. When I learned Russian in school, we always used cursive. When I got here, there were many times I had to/have to use block lettering, so I had to learn it. Now if I could only learn to type Cyrillic.....
Another peculiarity of the Russian native speaking English is the tendency to use the infinitive after using modal verbs. For instance, "I must to read..." is used because their usage is so.
Canuckistan, Moscow is incredible. Can't say enough about it. Wish I had more money! Petersburg is amazing as well. That is the Neva river in my sinature.
Try this, too... The US Government offers online training for a variety of languages, courtesy of the Defense Language Inst. in Monterey, CA. It's totally free and no password necessary. I think they have Korean, too.
http://gloss.lingnet.org/ |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Natalia
Joined: 10 Mar 2006
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 2:21 am Post subject: |
|
|
Ukrainian is the ONLY official language of Ukraine.
And it's about time too.  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
flotsam
Joined: 28 Mar 2006
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 2:28 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Natalia wrote: |
Ukrainian is the ONLY official language of Ukraine.
And it's about time too. |
Well, it's the official dialect, right? I mean I know Ukraine is one of the bigger provinces of Russia, but it's not like it's a different country or something. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Woland
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: Seoul
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 2:53 am Post subject: |
|
|
| davai! wrote: |
| http://gloss.lingnet.org/ |
Thanks, davai!. This is useful. The level three stuff for Russian is at my level, not overly challenging to read/listen to. But it's just right for picking up new vocabulary because I have so much of the linguistic context.
They do have Korean.
| Natalia wrote: |
| Ukrainian is the ONLY official language of Ukraine. |
Didn't mean to imply that it isn't. But Russian was an official language for many years and older documents will likely be in that language.
| flotsam wrote: |
| Well, it's the official dialect, right? I mean I know Ukraine is one of the bigger provinces of Russia, but it's not like it's a different country or something. |
Methinks you may have left off an emoticon there... or you really are asking for trouble. Do not anger Slavic women; I speak from experience.
Edited to fix misattributed quote that may have gotten me into trouble with a Slavic woman |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 3:12 am Post subject: |
|
|
I don't know any Russian except the letters, but it's often good to start out with national anthems. Nice and slow and they're usually pretty easy, just different ways of saying how your country rocks the house. MP3 files for national anthems are usually pretty easy to find to because of the lack of copyright.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%27s_glory_has_not_perished
When looking at the difficulty of a language it's good to remember as well that half of the difficulty comes from the availability of good language resources. If you have to hunt them down then it gets harder, but Russian's studied by a lot of people so that makes it easier. A language like Afrikaans is extremely easy to learn in comparison but finding a place to learn it is hard, and there's certainly nothing like what you can find on Deutsche Welle with free resources every single day to keep you entertained. So yeah, Russian should be doable.
Once your Russian gets up to the basic level you might want to practice by writing simple articles on the Russian Wikipedia about places and things that you know (x is the largest town in the county of y in country z, that sort of thing). If you're not sure whether it's mistaken or not you can hide the text until someone comes along and corrects it, and then you won't annoy anybody if it's wrong. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 3:24 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
| Well, it's the official dialect, right? I mean I know Ukraine is one of the bigger provinces of Russia, but it's not like it's a different country or something. |
I'm not sure if your attempt at satire is going to go down well -- given history present and past.
I was in Kyiv for over a year and Russian was the lingua franca with most older than 20. In the major cities and especially the east. But there has been a great renaissance in Ukranian teaching and renewing the ties with their great history (and Shevchenko isn't only a footballer!).
I loved going to government offices or schools. There you could hear a chatter of Ukranian, as it was the only permitted language of use. I loved it, because knowing Czech, I could understand much more than the garbled Russian.......
Natalia, please hold your temper..
DD |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
flotsam
Joined: 28 Mar 2006
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 3:26 am Post subject: |
|
|
Girls.
P.S. Natalia:  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
RachaelRoo
Joined: 15 Jul 2005
Location: Anywhere but Ulsan!
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 6:59 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Ddeubel, were you teaching English in Kiev? Just asking because I've heard there's almost no teaching jobs available over there... |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
canuckistan
Mod Team
Joined: 17 Jun 2003
Location: Training future GS competitors.....
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 7:23 am Post subject: |
|
|
Woland wrote:
| Quote: |
Also, where are you going, Canuckistan? I've been to Kiev twice in the last five years and once to L'viv. I even made it out to Horlivka once, but I doubt you'll be heading there.
|
Mostly Kiev. Side trips down to Odessa (great history there) and the Crimea/Sevastopol.
| Quote: |
| Aside, if you are going to Ukraine, will the documents be in Russian or Ukrainian? Older official documents will be in Russian, of course, but in recent years there has been a real push to Ukrainianize officialdom. |
Mostly Russian. I should be ready for both though. *Beep*!!!
It'll be interesting to see the differences/similarities between the two languages--assuming I get that far. I will have a translator with me but I would like to be able to navigate the straightforward stuff largely on my own. Being there (an immersion) will be a great opportunity to cement some basic linguistic knowledge.
Oh I've bitten off a lot to chew haven't I?
davai! wrote:
| Quote: |
| http://gloss.lingnet.org/ |
I've bookmarked this site.
At a certain point I'll be looking for a tutor on Ft Carson--there are a lot of Russians who are married to servicemembers (probably in Korea!)--hopefully I can find one who has experience teaching Russian.
For now I have a Ukrainian phrasebook, but have chosen to try and learn Russian first as I've been told it'll be more useful--especially in Kiev (?) It'll be interesting to compare the two languages--I'm assuming they are pretty close?
I'm looking forward to making all those (sometimes embarassing) mistakes that make the locals titter with laughter -- it sure wouldn't be the first time
...which makes me think of another time I flung myself into You're-The-Goof language learning situations. I arrived in Germany to work completely unprepared. Ok I spoke English, French--and Dutch--pretty close to German but that still didn't prepare me for working every day. Never mind, we just blunder through it right? So one day I arrive at work in the summer hot and sweaty from bicycling in. I get to my desk and declare in my directly-translated-from-English: "Oh, Ich bin heiss!!" (I'm hot)---and the whole floor bursts out laughing. I'm thinking "Uh oh" .....when they stopped laughing someone ever so kindly explained...I should have said "Ich ful mich warm".
Well you can imagine what the other meaning of what I said was 
Had a few moments in Korea when they thought I was swearing (I wasn't). I can't remember what I was trying to say but the disapproving looks were enough language learning for that day.
Oh ya, it's all fun |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
