Online Resources

[onekatietwo.livejournal.com]

Hello.

I'm still working on learning the Cyrillic alphabet. I was wondering if anybody could suggest any online resources for learning how to write in Russian. Specifically, how to form the letters on paper. I'm assuming the written form is slightly different than the printed form. I've done a few searches and have found some fairly helpful web pages, but the only images i've found of the written alphabet have been quite small and low-res. They're helpful and usable, of course, but not really the best thing to learn from. Also, they mostly seem to all be fairly elaborate and, uh, 'scripty', like the equivalent of English cursive that my grandmother's generation wrote with. I bet that typical Russian writing doesn't look exactly like that (Although, it's possible that i'm assuming too much).
So please let me know if you are aware of any online resources for learning how to write out the Cyrillic alphabet. Good, clear images would be great, as well as any tips and maybe even different versions of the handwritten alphabet (like very casual writing that one might use to take notes or scribble out a quick note vs more formal and neat, like what one might use for, i don't know, maybe a job application or something.)

As always, thank you for all the help i've gotten from this community. It's been a wonderful resource.

Comments

[khathi.livejournal.com]

Well, as far ar my memories of school years are correct, we were taught exactly that, "scripty" version of handwriting. It's not att that mandatory (at least when you're not in elementary school anymore), and you feel free to write as you wish. All that elaborate strokes are just to show what's possible, in fact. But, anyway, if you want to look for some handwriting guides, they're called "прописи" in Russian. You can find one here, for example: http://www.lang.ourfamily.com/propisi/myhome.html And, as I wrote above, there's no uniform versions of "informal" handwriting, each one devises his/her own. That's the origin of infamous "medical script", which only medics seem to be able to read, for example.

[onekatietwo.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the information.

I was assuming, like with english, everybody's would be a little bit different.
And as for the 'scripty' writing, i'm kind of glad that it's still common. It's very pretty.
It seems like no one of my generation uses cursive for anything besides signatures, especially the gorgeous, elaborate cursive you see on older documents. It seems like it may very well die out in the US at least.

[khathi.livejournal.com]

That's because hardly many people still write lengthy documents by hand -- the real purpose of cursive writing. And for short sentences printing usually works well enough.

[negativeentropy.livejournal.com]

Writing in a mixture of cursive & print is still pretty common by what I've seen; if you're practiced in cursive it's still much faster for taking down notes in lecture and other transcription. I think it's more that you don't see much written communication in general that cursive seems to be gone--short notes will usually be printed to avoid confusion, but you don't see people's notes-to-self, memos, and longer papers, because if they're meant to be read by someone else they'll generally be typed up first.

[oryx_and_crake]

There was a series of posts with copies of samples published in this community, but I honestly don't even remember who posted them and they don't seem to be listed in the community memories. However, you can search online; this thing (samples of writing) is called прописи (singular - пропись).

[oryx_and_crake]

P.S. I found it! Yandex blog search rulez

http://community.livejournal.com/learn_russian/550976.html
http://community.livejournal.com/learn_russian/560790.html

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

I have added it to the community memoires section.

[onekatietwo.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! That's extremely helpful. It'll be fun to practice.

[nitaq.livejournal.com]

There's a podcast http://www.spoonfulofrussian.com where they have an animation in the first episodes to every letter where you can see in which order to make which line in order to form the letters. I quite liked it.

[onekatietwo.livejournal.com]

I listened to a few of the podcasts before and thought they were a really good supplement to learning through other methods. It's also a very good way to hear Russian spoken, which i'm sure is going to help me a lot, especially in perfecting the accent. I never went through to many of the podcasts, though, and never got to the letters. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll check it out.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm afraid that most Russians still write in "scripty" cursive, because this is exactly what they are taught in elementary school (and they are required to use this technique pretty much all over their high school course.) And yes, Russian cursive differs from printed letters, so if you want to master that, you have to practice a lot. Otherwise, just write in block letters, it's quite OK even in the situations when Russians are still required to use cursive (official papers etc.)

[onekatietwo.livejournal.com]

Thanks. That really helped put the whole thing in perspective. Now that i think about it, it seems a little bit silly to assume that the more common version of the handwritten alphabet would be silly.

[pzrk.livejournal.com]

Even more: some official papers require writing in block letters - to avoid misreading.

[waset.livejournal.com]

Here you'll find plenty of examples of what regular (modern) Russian handwriting looks like:

http://evr.livejournal.com/302028.html

[waset.livejournal.com]

^ forgot to add warning: many pictures in the above post.

[onekatietwo.livejournal.com]

This is very helpful! Thank you very much!