Hi, everyone...

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

I'm a Californian 15-year-old homeschooled high-school student (sophomore, I guess, although I'm on break), and I've been trying to learn Russian for a while now... still having problems with Cyrillic that discourage me when I try to get further in.

Basically, I went by the method of buying a Russian dictionary and a Russian grammar reference... and then looking stuff up online. It works okay (for me), but there are some things left unaddressed.

Mmkay. So I have two main questions:

The first is on the letter "Ы." How exactly is it pronounced? A number of websites I've visited say that it's 'somewhere between the u from put and the i from pit.' Which really doesn't make much sense to me at all. One thing that I've heard is that it's just like the i from pit... but then how does "ый" work?

The second question is on the aspect of the verb. None of the people I have (as of yet) spoken with about Russian are native speakers of English... so they can't really explain it. By the aspect, I mean the whole perfective/imperfective thing (i.e. the difference between прочитать and читать).

Any help here would be much appreciated.
Спасибо.

[EDIT: Thanks for your help, everyone. :)]

Comments

Ы

[alektoeumenides.livejournal.com]

Ы is probably one of the most difficult Russian sounds for an English speaker to get. I still have massive problems with it and generally don't hear it in normal speech either.

The idea of it being somewhere between u and i isn't bad. But you need to hear it to really get an idea.

When my teacher first tried to drill me in pronunciation, I joked that Ы was kind of silly sounding, like a monster making a noise of some sort. As stupid as it is, it sort of works for me.

So think of Ы as an "i" sound, but sort of stunted, left in the throat. Almost like a bit of a burp. Whereas an "i" sound is generally shaped by your mouth (sort of with a grin), "Ы" is, at least for those who have to try and learn it as a foreign sound, more made in the throat.

My 2 kopeks. Hope some of it made sense/helped.

ый works because й is like "y" in yogurt...so the result is a sort of extended ы.

Can't help you with aspect though. That still gets me down.

[pogoda.livejournal.com]

I tried to record a sample using my mic, but I failed to load it anywhere. Can send you by email if you want.

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

Thanks. :) my e-mail's apollotiger @ ix.netcom.com

Re: Ы

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

Yeah... for the aspect, I think the ideal person with whom to discuss it'd be a native Russian speaker who's a linguist... because then they'd know how it works instinctually and how it works logically.

Don't drive yourself crazy...

[bhv.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm a native speaker of English and I'm convinced that if you try to learn Russian by reading books you will drive yourself nuts and end up with a nasty American accent too. So many of the consonant sounds are between a couple of different English sounds.

Go get the Pimsleur tapes or CDs. Buy them used on E-Bay if you need to save money. Learn to speak first, and then read. The alphabet is easy after you know all the sounds and what the words mean.

[aveleen.livejournal.com]

It's a very back-like sound that the letter "y" makes in "Olympics".

[moon-aka-sun.livejournal.com]

>> By the aspect, I mean the whole perfective/imperfective thing (i.e. the difference between прочитать and читать).

It's very easy. While in English you have one verb, which can have imperfect and perfect forms (visit - have visited), in Russian it's usually two different verbs (посещать - посетить), although they are often very alike. They can differ in suffix, prefix or can be even totally different. In general, just remember that

• совершенный вид = perfect


• несовершенный вид = imperfect

I'm not sure if it helps :) Just ask what's not clear.

P.S. In America, there's a tendency to use Past Simple instead of Perfect, which would have better expressed the meaning: e.g. I saw him instead of I've seen him. Ideally, the former would rather say that I saw him maybe several times for maybe long period of time, accenting on the action of seeing, while the latter would expresses just the fact that I saw him, that his's been seen by me at all. ...Well, I'm not a teacher actually and I'm sorry if I couldn't explain that clearly :)

Regarding ы, we've been tought on English courses, that in english words bit and look the vowel is closer to ы, rather than to russian и and у resp., or something in between at least.

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

Ohhh. Okay, that clarifies things... for lack of a better comparison, I'd say that it's kinda like the sound that the bouncing heads in Miyazaki's "Spirited Away" make. And if you have any idea what that is, you're cool.

[moon-aka-sun.livejournal.com]

>> P.S. In America, blah-blah-blah...

I mean, those are the cases, when english imperfect can be translated into russian perfect :)

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

So... basically, it's just the difference between perfect and imperfect tenses?

Like... "Я читаю" is "I write," whereas "Я прочитаю" is "I have written"?

[moon-aka-sun.livejournal.com]

Yes, you can say so.

Я читаю/пишу = I read/write, I'm reading/writing (if it's now)
Я читал/писaл = I read/wrote
Я буду читать/писать = I'll read/write

Я прочитал/написал = I've read/written
Я прочту/напишу = I'll have read/written

e.g. Я прочту эту книгу до завтра и обязательно верну = I'll finish this book by tomorrow and return it for sure :)

[pogoda.livejournal.com]

confusinf write and read
читать,прочитать = read
писать, написать = write

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

Ah. I definitely should've known that. *grins and adds those to his flash cards.*

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

I also did that once in Latin class... confused legere (to read) with scribere (to write), and insisted to my teacher that a phrase made no sense. She waited for me to realize it and feel like a moron.

[moon-aka-sun.livejournal.com]

:)))) That's OK. Those pairs (read/write, go/come, etc) are just too close in our brains.

[margaritka.livejournal.com]

i don't have a cyrillic keyboard right now,
but the sound Ы can be described as making
the sound 'ooy' as one syllable, but doing
it from the back of your throat. honestly,
it's difficult to reproduce the sound
unless you hear it.

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

*smiles* Yeah... pogoda sent me a sound file pronouncing it. That's exactly how I'd describe it as well, but I wouldn't've understood that at all before.

Re: Don't drive yourself crazy...

[velocityb0y.livejournal.com]

I have to agree here. I first started with the dictionary/reference method, and quickly decided that my pronunciation would be horrible. So I picked up the 10-CD Pimsleur set from Barnes & Noble, and I'm learning a lot from it (I'm about halfway through.) The program asks that you don't cross-reference to a dictionary or any other written reference while working through it, and I've been keeping to that.

LOL about your "Spirited Away" reference. I'll have to pull out the DVD and watch that part again :-)

Re: Don't drive yourself crazy...

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

How much is the 10-CD set?

Re: Don't drive yourself crazy...

[velocityb0y.livejournal.com]

About $28 from their online store here (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?isbn=0760744475&itm=1)

[michellio.livejournal.com]

yay spirited away!! =)))) it is the sound they make!! hehe.

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

Welcome to the community!

The sound that "ы" represents doesn't exist in English; it's not the "i" in "pit" at all! It's halfway between the vowel sound in "eat" and the vowel sound in "nude". The IPA transcription of the sound is [ɨ]. ("ee" is articulated towards the front of the mouth, "oo" towards the back, and "ы" in the middle.) Don't listen to websites or people that say it sounds exactly like an English sound, because they're wrong. =)

All of the description in the world won't help you pronounce it unless you're familiar with the articulation of vowels, so what you'll need to do is find a Russian speaker who can demonstrate for you. The sound is easier to hear than it is to pronounce.

As for "ый", it's pronounced about how it looks. "ы" followed by "й". In case you don't know, the latter is like the "y" in "yell", but a bit tenser. You may not hear the "й" in the "ый" endings when people are speaking normally, but in my experience, when my Russian teachers are slowing down their pronunciation, the "й" is audible.

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

Aspect is a difficult subject; the basic rules are simple, but the nuances and exceptions can take a long time to get used to. A lot of practice is required to master aspect.

The elementary introduction to aspect goes something like this:

Perfective verbs are single, complete, and relevant. Imperfective verbs aren't. (The issue of whether an action is relevant comes up less than you would expect, but it's also the trickiest part to do right.)

Some examples will probably help you. I'll use the "читать/прочитать" pair, since you're familiar with it already. Usually, in dictionaries, the imperfective verb will be listed first, the perfective second.

Imperfective:
Я читаю. I am reading.
Я читал. I was reading.
The imperfective verb is used because the action is in progress - an action in progress isn't completed, and therefore not perfective. This is the reason that there is no perfective present tense; by their nature, present-tense verbs are progressive.

Perfective:
Я прочитаю книгу. (I will read the book.)
Я прочитал книгу. (I read the book.)
The perfective verb is used because the action is complete - you've read the book, and you've finished the book. In English, sentences like this could be written as "I will finish reading the book" or "I finished reading the book". In Russian, the "finish" verb isn't needed to dispel ambiguity about whether or not the action is complete, since that's communicated in the aspect itself.

Imperfective:
Я читаю каждый день. (I read every day.)
Я читаю книгу каждый день. (I read/finish a book every day.)
The imperfective verb is used in sentences like these because although in the second example, the action is complete, it isn't single - it's habitual.

One of my books has a set of examples that emphasizes the difference between imperfective and perfective, using the verb pair "решать/решить" - "to decide/solve" (I can't think of a good way to translate the imperfective version, but I'm sure you can deduce what it means).

Мы долго решал задачу и наконец решили её. (We worked on the problem for a long time and finally solved it.)
Мы не решили эту задачу. (We did not solve this problem.)
Мы не решали эту задачу. (We did not work on this problem.)

Relevance is harder to pin down - the way I perceive it is that you don't use the perfective unless you want to bring up that you finished something. For example, if I finished Moby Dick on Tuesday, and someone asks me what I was doing, I would say:

"I was reading" if it doesn't matter to her that I actually finished that monstrosity and I don't want to bring it up. I wouldn't say "Я прочитала", even though I did, actually, finish it. She would naturally ask what I finished reading.
OR
"I finished Moby Dick" if I wanted her to say "oh, wow!" or "you liar, no you didn't." =)

So much for the basics. Knowing these isn't enough to actually know aspect (I could write pages on aspect), but when you're unsure they'll serve you well most of the time.

[cema.livejournal.com]

"Прочитал" would be the past tense. "Прочитаю" is the future.

(Notice also that the former word refers to a singular someone of male gender in the past, whereas the latter refers to the singular speaker of whatever gender in the future. Weird, eh?)

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

Okay... so, perfective aspect in the present/future ending is always future?

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

Always. It's not possible to have a single, complete action in the present tense. =)

[squodge.livejournal.com]

For the ы sound, start with either a 'u' or an 'i' and slide the sound from one to the other. When you get halfway, that's your ы.

And definitely get the Pimsleur Russian, if only to get hours and hours of native spoken Russian, with good accents, although the dialogues are very fake! I've just completed half the course (lesson 15 of 30, Level 2) and it's taking longer to settle in my head :-(

~ squodge ~

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm going to look into getting the Pimsleur Russian. As for the contrived dialogues... well, isn't that the way with most language tapes? :)

[24karrot.livejournal.com]

My russian teacher explained Ы as making an ee face with your lips and making an oo with your tongue...you end up with a strange combination that should fit the sound. (it seems to me to be the simplest explanation I've seen :P)

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Hmmmmm.... to my native Russian ear those green things made the sound like "ooi, ooi", that had nothing to do with ы 8) Probably in English version they sounded different? I've seen both Russian version and original Japanese.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Я прочитаю is the future tense: "I will read it through", literally. Прочитать (infinitive) means to read smth. through, completely. Читать is simply to read. Я читал эту книгу = I did read this book (no matter how many pages.) Я прочитал эту книгу = Ihave read this book through, I have finished reading it because there were no moer pages left in it :)))).
The formal present tense of 1st person singular of прочитать is я прочитываю. It's rarely used, mostly in forms like: я прочитываю пять книг в неделю (I read through five complete books a week.)

P.S.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Sorry for typos. In Russian, I normally say "кривые ручки" (literally, curved small hands) in this case. This is kind of an equivalent to that "fat fingaz" thing that some people use to explain their typos :)

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

As I described above, there IS the persent tense of perfective aspect of some verbs, and прочитать is one of them.
Обычно я прочитываю двадцать две страницы в час. (Usually I read twenty two pages per hour.)
Каждый день мы прочитываем семь страниц на русском языке. (Every day we read seven pages in Russian language.)

The explanation is that прочитать is not exactly the perfective aspect of читать, but a seperate verb with a separate meaning, the verb that has its own perfective/imperfective: прочитать/прочитывать. Here we approach a very complicated topics, the verbs with "neighboring" meanings: читать/прочитать/почитать etc.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nikki/]

Could you send me it too? My email address is cikkolata@ntlworld.com

[ekeme-ndiba.livejournal.com]

Прочитывать is an imperfective verb.

[rimokon.livejournal.com]

^^Lol, that's what I do..

[kelar.livejournal.com]

I am a Russia, who lived for several years in America. Posed with a question of how does the "Ы" sound I couldn't find any decent examle. Yours is very good. :-) Thanks

[kelar.livejournal.com]

Sorry, but "Я прочитаю" is I will read
"Я прочел" "Я читал" is I have read (first version - is I have read it all, the second - I have been reading )
:-)

[pogoda.livejournal.com]

but it's rarely used.
it can be easily replaced by читать

[smorodina.livejournal.com]

Get a copy of the film 'Kin-Dza-Dza' and watch the bit near the end of part one, where the woman on the wagon is trying to get Skripach to make the very Ы sound. He can't get it either (perhaps because he's Georgian?), but it's a good place to hear the sound emphasised several times. If you can't find the film, I'll try to make a short file of this section later...

Скрипач не нужен!

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Why you think so?

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

He cannot get it precisely because he's a Georgian, and Georgian language has no palatalized consonants, that's why any и a native Georgian pronounces goes like ы and ы itself makes no sense for him.

[pogoda.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about some example at that moment )
can't explain now )

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

It's better to provide good arguments when you make a statement. The majority of those who ask for our help here do ask for our real hepl, not for our emotions.
What you felt about the verb прочитывать was just what you felt. Yes, an average Russian speaker would not use this verb as often as читать, but this would not make this verb "rare." In any big Russian dictionary this verb goes as a stylistically neutral word without any "редк." note.

[pogoda.livejournal.com]

I see now. One can only post comments here if he's a certificated philologist, right?
sorry.
no stupid comments any more.
*adressing to myself* shut up! professionals speaking.

[nelis.livejournal.com]

I think "Я прочитаю" should be translated as "I will have read" - future perfect tense.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

I cannot neither agree with this nor deny it: I have never studied English formally, and its verb form system still is a mystery for me.

Ы is simple...

[omerm.livejournal.com]

There's a guy from South Africa in my new workplace. His short i is just like Ы - for example he pronounce "filters" as фылтрз.

Hope that that helps...