[*waves*]

[nur-ein-tier.livejournal.com]

Hello, I'm trying to learn Russian on my own. I have A Simplified Russian Grammar-Fayer, Living Language Russian Coursebook and the Barrons Express Track to Russian books/tapes set so far, and the last one moves way too fast for me. Anyhow, my attempted introduction in Russian follows. I hope it's not too terrible. I installed Russian on my computer, but it still takes me ages to type anything. I had to paint the front side of the keys on my keyboard with the characters and I type with two fingers, just like when I was learning to type (in English). =0)

по-русски: Добрый денъ. Разрешите представиться. Я живу в США. Меня зовут Эми. Я студентка. Я очень рада, что я в learn_russian. Я говорю плохо по-русски, хотя говоритъ хорошо по-русски. Мня нужна практика. Я говорю по-английски, по-немески и по-французски.

по-английски: Hello. Allow me to introduce myself. I live in the USA. My name is Amy. I am a student. It's good to be here. I speak Russian badly, but I want to speak it well. I need practice. I speak English, German and French.

Comments

[hope1972.livejournal.com]

Nice to meet you, Amy.

[nur-ein-tier.livejournal.com]

likewise. =0)

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

A few quick remarks, though not really comprehensive:
1. you seem to interchange Ъ, Ь, and Ы. These are two "signs" that affect the neighbor consonants (Ъ hardens them, Ь softens) and one vowel, Ы, which is probably the worst Russian sound in terms of making an Anglo-American throat to produce it :)) One cannot interchange them. For example, here:
Добрый день, NOT Добрьй денъ.
Очень, NOT оченъ.
2. Я живу в США, an "in" is definitely needed here :)
3. In Russian, the names of the nations or languagesare not capitalized - unlike in English:
по-русски. Я говорю на русском языке. Раньше у меня была японская машина, а сейчас - немецкая. See, none of the nation or laguage names are capitalized here. Therefore, not по-Русски, but по-русски.

[wolfie-18.livejournal.com]

When I began Russian, I hated, HATED, LOOOATHED ъ, ы, and ь. It took me a while to get used to ы, not for the sound, but because it looked like two letters. And it took me a while to get comfortable with the fact that ь usually appears as льн as well as some other places I can't recall right now. But ы is definitely a cool letter.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Well, the coolness of the reality is that it exists, no matter if we hate it or not :))))
I understand that those letters can be a learner's nightmare. Believe me, there's a lot of fun that you miss, since Russians don't use the REAL Russian orthography after 1918 :))) Before that, you had to distinguish the usage of such letters as and Е, I and И, etc. - and note that in the 19th and early 20th century, those pairs of letters represented the SAME sounds, though you could not interchange them, and there was a lot of very strict rules about which one to use!

[kaersaij.livejournal.com]

Just two days ago I just skimmed through an old, thick English dictionary from the 60s where on the back cover it listed the Russian alphabet including all the aforementioned, 1918-abolished characters.

I said WOW!

[nur-ein-tier.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have one like that. Some old cloth-bound 'American college Dictionary.' the grammar book I have talks about them too. Makes for fun reading, anyway. Though I'm glad I don't have to learn any more letters.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Well, this happens :) For me, it's OK to read old Russian, if it's not too far away - but what drives me bonkers is Church Slavonic: not only the language is very different - the ancient Cyrillic letters are really hard to decipher! See the picture: it's a late 18th century edition of the Psalms in Church Slavonic.

[kaersaij.livejournal.com]

Are those stress marks above the letters? Do they put those in texts?

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Apparently, some of the marks above the lines are stress marks. They normally do not use them. Why they are used here is that the text is not in Russian language, but in Church Slavonic (thise are two different languages, though related,) and the purpose of the book is to help during the church readings to those who cannot speak Church Slavonic, but can read it. Since the stressed syllables in Church Slavonic do not necessarily match the stressed syllables in Russian, the printer puts the stress marks into text.
Other marks above the letters mark abbreviations, like ~ sign: some oftenly used words are shortened by omitting some letters, which is marked by ~ sign above the word.

P.S.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

It took me some time to find the English version - it turned out that Psalms have different numbers in Orthodox Christian Bible and in King James' - so what's Psalm 101:21 to 101:25 in Orthodox Bible, is Psalm 102:17 to 102:21 in English:
"17 He will regard the prayer of the destitute, and not despise their prayer.
18 This shall be written for the generation to come: and the people which shall be created shall praise the LORD.
19 For he hath looked down from the height of his sanctuary; from heaven did the LORD behold the earth;
20 To hear the groaning of the prisoner; to loose those that are appointed to death;
21 To declare the name of the LORD in Zion, and his praise in Jerusalem"

Being written in modern Cyrillic letters, the Church Slavonic text goes like this:
"Призре на молитву смиренных, и не уничижи моления их;
Да напишется сие в роде ин, и людие зиждемии восхвалят Господа;
Яко приниче с высоты святоя своея, Господь с небесе на землю призре;
Услышати воздыхание укованных разрешити сыны умерщвленных;
Возвестити в Сионе имя Господне, и хвалу его в Иерусалиме"

[nur-ein-tier.livejournal.com]

thanks for the help, but i think the problem with ы ь & ъ was mostly sloppy typing, I checked my handwritten copy and it didn't have so many errors. I will try to label my keyboard better. =0)

i'm barely trying to talk yet, just trying to repeat what's on the tapes I have as closely as possible.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Is there a written version of what's on the tape? In Russian, it's very important. Since the phonetic system of Russian is very different from English, it's not really easy for the native English speakers to pick up spoken Russian "as is" -- a written version of the same text helps mightily. Otherwise, it's very easy to get confused. Some learners here were trying to write down what they were sure they picked up from some "spoken Russian" audio courses, and it was generally nonsense :((

[nur-ein-tier.livejournal.com]

yes, very elementary too. you read along and you're supposed to repeat the words after the speaker at first, simple stuff, "стол" [pause] "стул" [pause] etc. Without that I probably still couldn't make any sense of the alphabet. =0) the rest are dialogues where you read along. I agree, it's very important.

[rentgenius.livejournal.com]

не по-русски, а по русски!

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

If you cannot write your own language correctly, then why bother trying to teach others?

P.S.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Welcome aboard :)

Re: P.S.

[nur-ein-tier.livejournal.com]

thanks. =0)

[taosu.livejournal.com]

Hi! Your introduction is nice!

Though there are several minor mistakes: you confuse "ъ" with "ь" — pay attention to these letters. Hmm... and this sentence (Я говорю плохо по-Русски, ...) is not very good. It would be better to say something like: "Я пока плохо говорю по-русски, но хочу научиться говорить лучше." "Мня" is wrong, it's "Мне". Note that usually we don't say "говорю плохо", "плохо говорю" is right. Okay, try to avoid repeated words in your sentences and it's better not to use Latin letters "Amy" and try to write names with Cyrillic.

Hope I helped you and it wasn't too strict. Good luck. :)

[talinka.livejournal.com]

Nice start :))
but "поговорить по-Русски" is more like
"talk Russian." not "speak Russian." "говорить по-Русски" sounds better :)

[yms.livejournal.com]

And "говорить по-русски" (lowercase р) also looks better ;)

[talinka.livejournal.com]

does copy-paste sounds familiar?:)

[nur-ein-tier.livejournal.com]

thanks. no, you weren't too strict. i'd rather have my mistakes corrected before they become a habit. =0)

[dr-s.livejournal.com]

Hi, Amy. Your first try is not bad at all. Well done! Still, a few corrections are possible.
Corrected version:
Добрый день. Разрешите представиться. Я живу в США. Меня зовут Эми. Я студентка. Я очень рада, что я в learn_russian. Я плохо говорю по-русски, но хочу говорить по-русски хорошо. Мне нужна практика. Я говорю по-английски, по-немецки и по-французски.

Comments. Pay attention to distinguishing ь, ъ and ы. The adjective русский
is not capitalized. I have changed the position of the adverbs плохо and хорошо. It is difficult for me to explain why but trust me, it sounds better that way. Поговорить is a perfective verb. You need an imperfective verb here (говорить) because you want to speak Russian well not once but always.

[nur-ein-tier.livejournal.com]

thanks. In the books I have, I can't tell what's capitalized sometimes and what's not, so I suppose I'll just try not to capitalize things from now on except when starting a sentence. =0)

[russian-bob.livejournal.com]

Hi and welcome! Great introduction, well done!
Let me give you one suggestion to ease your typing struggle, unless you want to perfect your skills in using Russian keyboard. You may use "translit" instead, that is a program which uses letters and letters' combinations from latin alphabet and converts them to Russian letters based on how these combination sound. For example typing "ch" will produce Russian letter "ч", "o" is still "o", "sh" is Russian "ш", and so on.
There are many translit converters on-line, a very good one is: http://www.translit.ru/
On top of the typing window there you will see letters from the Russian alphabet and on top of them - corresponding letter/letters' combination to type it. Make use of "проверить орфографию", it's a spell-check.

[russian-bob.livejournal.com]

... and just in case:
after you type your text there, check the spelling by clicking "проверить орфографию" - that will open new window with all correct words in grey, and suspected words in red, for slightly misspelled words like "денъ" it will offer a replacement "день", some time it puts in red correct words which may have different meaning if they are spelled diffrent by one letter, then you need to check which exact spelling you need (but this is kind of edvanced usage...)

When you'll correct all the words, you will need to click "сохранить и закрыть" - save and close, to close that window.

Then you just cut and paste text where you need it.

[nur-ein-tier.livejournal.com]

thanks for the link. a spell checker would be quite helpful, methinks.

[pawa.livejournal.com]

You may also use http://www.yandex.ru/keyboard_qwerty.html (http://www.yandex.ru/keyboard_qwerty.html) to type russian text :)
Sure, it's too slow. But I think it's faster then typing with two fingers ;)

But if you want to learn ten fingers touch-typing, you should complete
the "SOLO on the keyboard" course. You can check additional information at www.ergosolo.ru (http://www.ergosolo.ru).

[nur-ein-tier.livejournal.com]

thanks. i'm hoping to eventually get the hang of it though. i have an extra computer keyboard, i'm thinking of just labeling it in huge russian characters and using it only for typing in russian.

[oncogene.livejournal.com]

One of my professors wrote a program to teach cyrillic typing. I'm going to see if I can dig up the link to that.

[lexabear.livejournal.com]

I found that switching my keyboard to a phonetic layout (so that к in on K, у is on u, etc) sped up my typing by a lot. A good link is here (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PaulGor/kbd_e.htm).

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

I have something similar to that — there's a keyboard layout for the operating system that I use that is "phonetic Russian." I've yet to find where the hard mark is, though.

[devinshire.livejournal.com]

This is my favorite phonetic cyrillic keyboard. I can FLY over the keys when I would ordinarily resort to "hunt and peck" on a regular layout: http://shaul.tryam.com/cyr/

[wolfie-18.livejournal.com]

I hate phonetic cyrillic keyboards, partially because it just doesn't feel "Russian" to me, and having one makes me connect Russian with English (or think in English) which I REALLY hate. I hate thinking of something like яблоко as qbloko (the transliteration thing on the keyboard). Anywho, if you want to learn touch-typing without the hassle of downloading anything, and a simple registration, go to http://www.alfatyping.com/index_en.php .

[nur-ein-tier.livejournal.com]

i agree completely. i think phonetic typing would mess me up. i also occasionally see people writing stuff in transliterated Russian, which I can't read at all unless I say it out loud a few times and try to visualize how it's really spelled. =0P

thanks for the link, i'll check it out.

[branwen.livejournal.com]

In my Living Language Russian Coursebook it translates the name Amy as Любовь. I don't know how accurate that is...anybody know?

[nur-ein-tier.livejournal.com]

yeah, i have that too. but i don't see why one needs to translate a name, my name is still Amy regardless of who i'm talking to. but i guess a transliteration would look better in the context of a paragraph in Russian. =0)

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

It's Эми.

[nur-ein-tier.livejournal.com]

ah yes. thanks. wasn't sure if i should do that or not at first. =0)

[branwen.livejournal.com]

My boyfriend calls me Ирка (Ира) around his Russian friends, but usually Erin (my real name) when he's around me and/or other Americans.

[sister-of-night.livejournal.com]

Hey, I have to ask--my name is Erin as well. Is Ира something personal or something that Russians call Erins? If it's an actual word and not a name, I'm sorry for sounding so stupid.

[branwen.livejournal.com]

It is a Russian name that my boyfriend calls me because it sounds similar to my name. Russians in general wouldn't call every Erin by that name--my boyfriend just does that with me. Although, he does it less now, since a relative of his by that name recently moved here! But it is in fact a name in Russian, and isn't some Russian word meaning something else.

[sister-of-night.livejournal.com]

If you don't mind a little copy-pasting, I found that I can type Russian very fast if I just assign shortcut commands to keys in Word. It's really easy then to remember where the letters are because you choose where they are. For instance, my shortcuts are all Ctrl+r+(letter), the R standing for Russian, so if I want to type 'р' I just think, that's the Russian equivalent of 'r' so Ctrl+r+r. Also, that way, I never have to change the language settings on my computer. I just type stuff in Word and then if I want to post it online, I copy-paste it.