Writing, part I

[kehlen-crow.livejournal.com]

Good evening,

today I was at a scientific conference and bored out of my mind, so I entertained myself in a usual manner - draw the alphabets (Latin and Russian) and tried to bring them to perfection. That's when I remembered several complaints in this community, that it is rather difficult to find a decent "пропись" - examples of how the letters are written on-line. I tried to find one myself, and failed several times, so I decided create it.

Please tell me if I should continue, this is REALLY time-consuming - I have to remember myself how to write according to the school rules.


(click for a larger image)

What is in the picture:
On the left - a scheme how to write a capital letter. You start where the red point is and follow the arrows. In the middle - a phrase starting with the letter (written at the very best of my ability). In the parentheses on the right - a word with a simplistic capital letter, as I usually do them.

The phrases and their translations are as follows

А Роза упала на лапу Азора1 (Арка) Банка с солёными огурцами (Бутылка) Великие озёра (Вилка) Гололёд (Гость) Дадли Дурсль - свинья в парике. (Доска) Если бы да кабы (да во рту росли бобы)2 (Единица) / Also possible: во рту росли _грибы_ Ёж (Ёлка) 3Жили-были старик со старухой (Жестянка) Звали? Я пришёл. (Забор) Ирония судьбы, или с лёгким паром!4 (Икота) Йоркшир-терьер (Йорк)

And a rose has fallen on Azor's paw (Arc) A can of salted cucumbers pickles (Bottle) The Great Lakes (Fork) Ice-covered ground (Guest) Dudley Dursley is a pig in a wig (Board) Literally: If, and oh, I'd wish to - and the bins will grow in my mouth (Unity) Hedgehog (Fir) Once upon a time there lived an old man and his wife (Tin) You called? Here I am. (Fence) Literally:The irony of fate, or have a good bath! (Hiccup) Yorkshire (York)

¹ - it's a palindrom, reads the same way backwards, so the English translation is rather pointless
² - you say this when someone is blown away with dreaming, and also "Мечтать не вредно". (Dreaming does nothing bad).
³ - Try to make the middle line in this letter to be vertical (yes, I know it is difficult, for Russians, too)
⁴ - a well-known comical movie. They say it's difficult to understand what is funny though.

As you see, the phrases are random, from the top of my head.

Comments

[defying-elphaba.livejournal.com]

That's so great! А Роза упала на лапу Азора-- I totally remember this from when I was a kid, but what book was it from??

Aren't солёные огурцы pickles?

[glorfindeil.livejournal.com]

"Приключения Буратино". Malvina tryed ot teach Buratino how to read & write.

[kehlen-crow.livejournal.com]

Wow, and I have already forgotten where it was from :)) only that it was a children book :)

[kehlen-crow.livejournal.com]

Yeah - pickles seem to fit :) thank you for pointing out - I never knew how they were called.

Corrected.

[fionaa.livejournal.com]

vegetables and fruit were our last english subject in uni ^^

[kusin.livejournal.com]

Everything looks just perfect. Can I borrow your writing to show my students? I teach russian to sweeds. Though there is one british guy and a girl fron Finnland in one of the groups.

[kehlen-crow.livejournal.com]

Yeah, sure :)

I'm glad you liked it :)

[kusin.livejournal.com]

Great! Thanks :))

[jadore-vin.livejournal.com]

Super!

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

Wow! That’s really helpful; thank you!

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

If you keep doing this, will you do it for the lower-case letters, too? They seem more straightforward than the capitals, but in interests of completeness … :)

[kehlen-crow.livejournal.com]

Sure, I planned on giving some tips as to how to make what you write a bit more legible.

[fiachasorcha.livejournal.com]

this reminds me of my first semester of russian when we had to learn to write without actually learning the language (apparently knowing what each letter is called/what order they're in isn't as important as I seem to think it is). I was horrible because I had problems with telling where one letter ended and another began. Wish I had something like this 3 years ago. :-)

[kehlen-crow.livejournal.com]

I know, I know. There is this problem with иш and шиш, and also with how to find the beginning of л and м, as well as several others.
I think the only way is to guess the word from context (which you can't do as a beginner), and try to write carefully yourself.

I remember how I taught some 5th graders how to write "v" and "w" correctly, it was fun, and they themselves loved seeing the result :)

[fiachasorcha.livejournal.com]

the funny part is now I've gotten to the point where I have spectacularly neat handwriting in both Russian and English when in the past it was barely legible. The only unfortunate part is that occasionally I confuse alphabets. A bit of a problem when you're writing essay tests in english with russian script.

[kehlen-crow.livejournal.com]

I know this problem, I also have it sometimes. And even when I type, and forget to switch keyboards, I automatically start transliterating! such fun :)

[megilla.livejournal.com]

one remark: во рту росли _грибы_

[kehlen-crow.livejournal.com]

no, in our family, it's _бобы_, but I've heard the second as well.

So I'll add it to the table in my post.

[kehlen-crow.livejournal.com]

oh, and there's even more to it:

если бы, да кабы, да во рту росли бобы, то был бы не рот, а целый огород.

And in your variant, is there a continuation.

[megilla.livejournal.com]

the same but with shrooms )))

[jooniper91.livejournal.com]

Very nice! And Very helpful thanks :-D

I also like your icon!

[kehlen-crow.livejournal.com]

Thank you :)

And the icon actually was made by lothy, you may check her website - there is more nice HP icon there.

[zhirafov-nyet.livejournal.com]

This is really neat. My professor showed us how to write, but it wasn't anywhere near as detailed as this, with the arrows & all. Could you do some more, please?

wow

[victoriaw.livejournal.com]

I joined at just the right time, I think.I needed some refinement on these, and here it is. Thanks for doing this tedious work so that others may benefit!

Re: wow

[kehlen-crow.livejournal.com]

Thank you :)

[mrs-kenobi.livejournal.com]

Hi! I was just directed here from RussianLessons.net, and let me just say a big thankyou-- I've been scouring the net since I first started learning for something like this. Very, very helpful! The only discrepancy I found was where you've written 'огруцами' in the plain text version, but 'огурцами' in the cursive (second line).

Once again, thanks!

Welcome!

[kehlen-crow.livejournal.com]

Wow, thank you for pointing this out (luckily for me it is only a typo, and easy to fix :-) )

[lilyjosephine.livejournal.com]

I found a sheet with what I presume is all the letters that I use while I write. It's easy to put in a folder to take with you.

http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/russian%20alphabet.pdf

[kehlen-crow.livejournal.com]

That it is.
And yet, as most computer-generated fonts, it doesn't show you how to correctly connect the letters (look at the а-в pair of letters for example in the word алфавит), which was the object of my post.

[lilyjosephine.livejournal.com]

yeah. I struggle with that too. I have only studied the language for about a month as a hobby and want to learn it correct