(no subject)

[upthera44.livejournal.com]

Two questions..

1. How would you say that you don't have any smaller bills or change? This is a problem that I've faced many times living in Russia, when the cashier will say "Do you have 11 rubles?" or something to that effect, and I always just say "K sozhaleniju net," or something similar. How would you say "I don't have any smaller bills"?

2. If you have a 50-rouble bill and would like to exchange it for five 10-ruble bills in order to, for example, leave a small tip of 20 rubles, how would you ask someone to exchange your 50 ruble bill for five 10-ruble bills?

Comments

[oryx_and_crake]

Мельче ничего нет (I don't have anything smaller)

Нет мелочи (I don't have any change/coins)

Пожалуйста, разменяйте по 10 рублей (please break this into tens)

[alon_68]

1.Мелочь (mostly about coins)
Мелкие деньги (about bills too)
Сдача (change)

2. Разменяйте, пожалуйста, на десятки

[natha1ie.livejournal.com]

1. У меня мЕльче нет.

2. Разменяйте, пожалуйста, пятьдесят рублей. Or much more colloqual: Разбей полтинник.

[wire-shock.livejournal.com]

1 is all right.
2. разменять: "Не могли бы разменять мне 50 рублей / Разменяйте мне, пожалуйста, 50 рублей".

[ob-ivan.livejournal.com]

2. Also common way is to say: разбейте по десять // по десяткам

[baby-rhino.livejournal.com]

or разбейте на десятки
Разбейте полтинник/полтос на десятки would be a really spoken form, mostly used by young people among themselves

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

>a really spoken form

we linguists ;-)))) call it a "colloquial form" (in Russian: разговорная форма).

[baby-rhino.livejournal.com]

I'm a linguist and I'm Russian :D
I just wasn't sure about the spelling of the word "colloquial", so opted for "spoken" instead, since I'm an orthography maniac :D :D :D

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Nobody of our Russian-learning friends here expects us Russians to be too precise in our English spellings. The only thing we need is to keep our postings, er, understandable :) BTW that's why English is the working language here: of our respected Russian learners, not too many have moved much farther than Cyrillic alphabet :)

[baby-rhino.livejournal.com]

I was astonished when I found out that our dearly beloved Cyrillic alphabet is actually challenging for foreigners :)
Anyway, I'm always trying to stick to the correct spelling, no matter whether anyone expects is from me or not :D I'm a maniac, I tell you.

[rjray.livejournal.com]

I didn't find it too challenging when I started out. What threw me more than anything else was equating certain Cyrillic letters with multiple English letters, i.e. "Я" == "ya", "Щ" == "shch", and so forth. That, and the ь and ъ characters... at first, I tried to regard them as rule-based, before I realized that they were just letters, like the other 31, and that their placement was just a matter of spelling. Of course, I'm still trying to get my palate to properly "do" softened consonants let alone have my ear recognize them. If I heard a word that happened to have a ь in the middle, I might not catch that when I was trying to look it up in the dictionary.

[g-l-k.livejournal.com]

I've added you as a friend, hoping you won't mind it.

[baby-rhino.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's the same for us Russians when we begin to learn English: we are used to reading letter-by-letter, while you know what it's like in the English language ;) Diphthongs are a challenge!
Moreover, it's rather hard for most of us to hear the difference between for example (æ) and (e), and we don't distinguish between long vowels and short vowels...
Do you manage to produce palatal sounds after all? I saw on your profile that you are from California, and the guys from California whom I know have actually rather good Russian pronunciation (well, I only know a couple of them, so I wonder whether I can generalize in this case)

[rjray.livejournal.com]

I try. My teacher says I have a good ear for pronunciation (I've been a musician most of my life, so I'm used to listening very closely, I just never thought about it helping in this way), which is a lot of encouragement for me. My situation is a little different than probably the other people you know: I am taking private lessons with a native Russian speaker who is a former professor of French, originally from Uzbekistan before she and her husband moved to California to be with their daughters (who had already moved here and married) and their grand-children. I don't have a classroom environment, and (unfortunately) I only get to speak/practice speaking when I'm in my lessons. So I'm much better at translating written Russian to English than I am at understanding spoken Russian, or at translating from English -> Russian. (I'm not saying that I'm very *good* at Russian->English, just better than I am at the others :-). And, alas, I work long hours and don't get to spend as much time on homework and study as I would like to.

But I really like Russian. It has a certain... symmetry, almost mathematic nature to it. There seem to be more patterns and more predictability in it than in English (though, I've never learned other languages, either, so I have no real basis for comparison). Whether that's real or just my imagination, it's fun all the same...

[baby-rhino.livejournal.com]

Oh, misical ear is a great help in learning languages, not only in pronunciation but also in intonation patterns, so I envy you a bit, since I had to take great pains to at least HEAR the difference, let alone REPRODUCE it correctly.
Your situation with Russian reminds me of my own with German! I study English and German, I'm rather good at translating written texts from these languages into Russian, which is not surprising actually. I can understand spoken English well, given that the person speaks not too quickly, but I am just terrible at understanding German, and unfortunately I see no way out. I'm trying to listen to various texts, such as Audiobooks or just songs, but it's always difficult to figure out what the people are saying/singing at first try.
Thank god I'm a native speaker of Russian, otherwise I would never dare to learn it! It's weird for me that you can see some symmetry in my language, because we Russians cannot see it in most cases :) Good luck though, Russian is really beautiful. How does your teacher estimate your current level?

[rjray.livejournal.com]

I actually have no idea. That's the drawback to having such an unstructured environment :-). I did notice that I was able to pick out a reasonable amount of the Russian dialog when I saw "Eastern Promises" over the weekend.

I should seek out some digitized books-on-tape in Russian, or Russian-language podcasts to train my ear more.

[spiritrc.livejournal.com]

It's nice to meet a brother/sister spelling maniac! :) I'm not a linguist though.

[ex-forest-l.livejournal.com]

Я б даже сказала, что это жаргон! Честно говоря, никогда не слышала такого выражения...

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your input. However, I would like to remind that the working language of this community is English.

[g-l-k.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your reminder. However, I woulld like to remind YOU that you actually can't say "I would like to remnd THAT" without specifying the person you refer to. Thank you.

[g-l-k.livejournal.com]

It's "I would like to remind YOU" that would be correct.
NP, nobody expects nobody to speak perfect English.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Dear g_l_k, it is highly not recommended to mess with community maintainers. We do not have to be perfect English writers, we have to be understandable for beginner Russian learners. Broken English is OK; comments entirely in Russian are also OK -- only if English translation is provided within the same comment. That's the rule, and we're going to stick with the rules or leave the community, is that alright?

[ex-forest-l.livejournal.com]

Sure. :)

I agree

[bakabaka.livejournal.com]

In real life, I've never heard or used "разбейте" in this meaning.
I've seen it once in the "luchshe_molchi" LJ community (in Russian) as an example of a "hated expression".

[eilide.livejournal.com]

1. У меня нет мелочи
2. Не могли бы вы разменять 50 рублей?

[ex-forest-l.livejournal.com]

1. Меньше ничего нет(у).
2. Разменяйте, пожалуйста.

[philinn.livejournal.com]

1. Меньше нет.
Извините, нет мелочи.
And everything already mentioned

2. Десятками не разменяете? I think it is the most usual I use in this case.