Russian through American eyes

[gera.livejournal.com]

The piece below is from the book How to Learn Any Language:

There were forty-five of us in that Russian class thinking varying versions of the same thing when the teacher, a rangy Alabaman named “Tiger” Titus, entered the room. After a formal “Good morning” he went straight to the front of the room and wrote the Russian (Cyrillic) alphabet on the blackboard.
You could feel the group’s spirit sink notch by notch as each of Russian’s “funny looking” letters appeared. Students were allowed under university rules to abandon a course and get themselves into another as long as they did it within three days after the beginning of the term. We had defections from Russian class in mid-alphabet. By the time Tiger Titus turned around to face us, he had fewer students than had entered the room.
“My soul!” exclaimed one of the deserters when I caught up with him at the cafeteria later that day. “I’ve never seen anything like that Russian alphabet before in my life. Why, they’ve got v’s that look like b’s, n’s that look like h’s, u’s that look like y’s, r’s that look like p’s, and p’s that look like sawed off goal posts. They got a backwards n that’s really an e and an x that sounds like you’re gagging on a bone. They got a vowel that looks like the number sixty-one, a consonant that looks like a butterfly with its wings all the way out, and damned if they don’t even have a B-flat!”
The next day there were no longer forty-five members of the university’s first Russian class. There were five.

Comments

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

I have that book! I got a good laugh at that part once I had learned the Cyrillic alphabet...

[gera.livejournal.com]

Well, I can appreciate it too, especially now, that my 19-month old American-born daughter mastered the English alphabet and when she sees Russian letters she calls them by their English names. :)

[juleyah.livejournal.com]

LMAO!! So cool! I remember when I learned the Cyrillic alphabet... I was fascinated, not scared at all... But above might be what my friends saw when they had a closer look at my Russian books! :P

[snowwhitetan.livejournal.com]

"I was fascinated, not scared at all"

That's how I felt about learning the Russian alphabet as well. Now, learning the Japanese 'alphabet'...that's a scary idea!

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Poor people, what if they think what WE feel when we are taught that strange, inversed-looking LATIN alphabet which, leave alone its letters being so distorted and corresponded with the WRONG SOUNDS, lacks so many useful letters like Щ, Ы, Я... and this happens to poor us when we are seven years old!!!


:)))))))))))

[gera.livejournal.com]

Well, no wonder the Russian alphabet is richer since it's based on three alphabets: Latin, Greek and Hebrew. :)

[snowwhitetan.livejournal.com]

Haha, so true!;-)

[gera.livejournal.com]

And by the way, we were ten, when we started to learn English, not seven :)

[schwarzer-tod.livejournal.com]

Don't you sort of grow up with it surrounding you, though? They don't bother transliterating a lot of English stuff, e.g. Playboy instead of Плейбой.

[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

Aww but I kinda like Cyrillic (and I'm American ^_^). I think the Cyrillic alphabet was one of the things that I enjoyed learning the most. Unlike say... Japanese or something, it's pretty damn near impossible to learn Russian without learning the alphabet first. That teacher is smart though. He weeded out all the weak minded people first. If they would have stayed in the class, some of them probably would have brought the other students down just because they weren't as motivated or strongwilled as the others.

[gera.livejournal.com]

I've never had to learn Russian as a foreign language, but in my opinion, the alphabet is pretty easy once you get past the psycohlogical barrier and the shock of the first day.
As far of as reading, it can't get any easier than Russian. But the grammar is pretty difficult, more difficult than the English one.
So my sympathy goes out to all of you Russian learners :)

[wolfie-18.livejournal.com]

Pffft, that's the MAIN reasons I got started with Russian.

To me it was like "OMG! This B sounds like a V! COOL!" Heh heh...

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Still remember one of my American friends on his very 1st day in Moscow -- the guy tried to read everything he encountered in the streets or in stores, so the stop sign (СТОП) went like "kton," and a bottle of Muscat wine (МУСКАТ) went like "my cat" :))

[idealforcolors.livejournal.com]

it's just an alphabet! letters aren't scary, grammar is!

my russian class went from about fifteen to ten. everyone said that that was because they didn't want to go to class at 8:30 AM every day so they'd rather take an afternoon russian lit class instead.

[snowwhitetan.livejournal.com]

"letters aren't scary, grammar is!"

SO true!

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

We pretty much learned the alphabet day one, and cursive day two. I didn't find it intimidating (not after Japanese), but after two months of intensive Russian, I had trouble writing in English.

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

And Arabic, which is a more accurate comparison, being an alphabet rather than two syllabaries and a bunch of pictograms. The Arabic alphabet is MUCH weirder than Cyrillic. Cyrillic isn't intimidating at all, really.

[storm-jack.livejournal.com]

*heheh* I remmember the first time I tried to write in English after 2 months of intensive Russian - I had to write a check out in town. It took me 10 minutes, and I'm sure the cashier thought I was crazy or stupid.

[taschenrechner.livejournal.com]

I had the entire starting lineup from my university's basketball team in my class. Apparently they didn't fulfill their language requirements until the last minute and Russian was the only language left with open seats.

But they figured out most of the alphabet. I mean half of the letters they wore on their fraternity sweatshirts.

[elara-bonnie.livejournal.com]

I always thought Cyrillic looked exotic! I would be in that room thinking "woah...thats so freaky! How COOL!"

[serendipityone.livejournal.com]

)))

[mangiami.livejournal.com]

I've always thought it would be funny to start a fraternity with Russian letters, just to trip everyone up.

That's such a good point though about the fraternity shirts. I remember going to Greektown and being able to read a lot of the stuff just from taking math, physics, and Russian.

[branwen.livejournal.com]

I actually memorized the Russian alphabet really quickly. I guess the same way I learned to read music so quickly.

[0-stalker-0.livejournal.com]

You know, this post reminds me a joke:
Senceless and merciless Chinese Alphabeth! 20000 of hieroglyphs!!!
:)))

[battersby.livejournal.com]

that's depressing