Some useful links for students of Russian as a FL

[zveriozha.livejournal.com]

Reading this community I sometimes wondered what good online resources can be recommended for students of Russian and found out that there aren't too many of them on the web, at least compared to ESL resources. Anyway they do exist. For example -

Some nice and easy games for Russian students. (requires java)
http://www.dotty-dingo.com/RU/Contents.htm

Chat topics, news and texts with downloadable MP3 files.
http://www.tasteofrussian.com/

A fast test of your level.
http://www.lidenz.ru/testing/Testing.php3?config=data/test1.cfg

Some easy topics and games for beginners.
http://www.hello-world.com/Russian/EN_Russian.php

Pretty solid test (diagnostic placement test).
http://russian.speak7.com/russian_test.pdf

Online phrasebook. Just a phrasebook, but you can also listen to sentences, and it's not badly organized.
http://www.waytorussia.net/WhatIsRussia/Russian.html

There were others but I've chosen several I liked from a teacher's point of view. Hope it'll be helpful for you, guys. Enjoy learning Russian. ;--)

Comments

[crimeanelf.livejournal.com]

Thanks for cool resources! I gonna check them all.

Two comments:

http://www.dotty-dingo.com/RU/Food_test.htm writes помидор incorrectly, with е.

http://www.hello-world.com/Russian/learn/describe.php says белые волосы, although we usually say светлые.

[crimeanelf.livejournal.com]

Update:
http://www.tasteofrussian.com/index.php?post_id=224657

has common and bad for russian-speaker mistake: should be ищете (are you looking for?) rather than ищите (an order: go and look for!).

:( Sorry, I didn't mean to be so spiteful. :( I'm in a lack of Russian-teaching internet sources and I rushed to all those links full of inspiration (and I still am!).

[zveriozha.livejournal.com]

It'll be cool if some of them can be helpful for you. I didn't do a serious check, but selected some that looked useful and not too boring. When I used to teach English I spent lots of time finding different resources for my students but it's a way easier with ESL.

BTW, if you teach - you can use this article. http://www.antimoon.com/how/lovelearn.htm

Just translate it and change "English" into "Russian". It has a strong positive message. Also - there are lots of cool ideas in ESL resources that can be used to teach Russian. You see, biggest mind job went into ESL teaching, so it's the environment to look for ideas, techniques etc..

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

Well, there're many more resources, if you think about it, and not necessarily all on the internet.
Consider these:
- Grammar books and vocabularies: they are pretty cheap
- Word lists: http://devoted.to/corpora/
- Flash cards: http://www.flashcardexchange.com/

[zveriozha.livejournal.com]

Interesting article in Wikipedia. List of English words originated from Russian.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Russian_origin

[oryx_and_crake]

It is actually very strange. I don't think that "chainik" and "GUM" and other similar words are English words of Russian origin.

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

I also had a bit of suspicion. Either the dictionary from where the words were taken for the article hadn't been written well, or whoever contributed to the article put there words that had never been used in English.

[zveriozha.livejournal.com]

They tried to make this list bigger, so some of the included words are less common than others. Taken from internet, some Russian life situations etc. English words here - used in English without translation but just transliterated like "pelmeni", "piragi". I don't see anything strange here. Of course if you aren't writing this just to nitpick. I like nitpicking too, so I know the feeling. =)

[oryx_and_crake]

I think it is misleading. Chainik is not an English word (as opposed to, for example, sputnik), neither is it a cultural phenomenon that cannot be very well translated (as, for example, troika or samovar). It is just a thing that has a perfectly valid translation in English - "a kettle". I don't see why anyone would call this an English word. It is absurd. The same is true about "GUM". It is not an English word exactly like "Харродс" is not a Russian word. It is a transliteration of a shop name. And this article is full of such phoney entries along with legitimate English words borrowed from Russian.

[zveriozha.livejournal.com]

Chainik here is a substitute for a dummy. They mean this -

http://support.internetconnection.net/DEFINITIONS/Definition_of_chainik.html

Yeah, there are some words like that in that list, but it's not full of it, as you say. Just bear in mind that internet articles tend to have more internet-words, computer terms.. (like "chainik") That's natural. =)

Altogether this is rather interesting article for people who are fond of words.

[oryx_and_crake]

I don't think so. Here's exactly what the entry says:

"Chainik (Russian: чайник, "teakettle")".
That's all.
And even if they meant a dummy, it still does not make чайник an English word.

[oryx_and_crake]

Found several more monstrosities in the list.

Khodebshchik (Russian: ходебщик) A person carrying an advertisement hoarding, or a peddler.

Where did they get that?! This is a horribly obsolete word even in Russian, but someone who says it is an English word must be under influence of some serious mind-altering drugs. FSB and DOSAAF are not English words either. It is ridiculous.

There is more nonsense about "Katorga, A form of penal servitude in during Tsarist Russia, later transformed into the Gulags". The GUlag, as this same article states a few lines before, is "The Chief Administration (or Directorate) of Corrective Labour Camps and Colonies". Therefore, it certainly cannot take the plural (there is only one Chief Administration, by definition), and no "katorga" could be transformed into "gulags" either: a form of penal servitude cannot be transformed into a directorate, this just does not make sense.

[zveriozha.livejournal.com]

Cool findings. Actually you can edit Wikipedia and improve this article if you want to. =)

We can just kill some lines there to make it look more descent.

[oryx_and_crake]

OK, some day, when I get a round tuit ;-)

[just1user.livejournal.com]

it's not surprising - many reputable authors published on reputable sites use it in a meaning of 'labour camp', especially if plural and possessive is mixed-
http://s98.middlebury.edu/RU152A/STUDENTS/Shalamov/gulags.html

"professional criminals and bytoviks ... were all held in the GULAGs."

[oryx_and_crake]

I know, but it is still annoying.

[joliecanard.livejournal.com]

Well, that's one of the things that makes it clear that it's really become an English word - it has taken on the meaning of "labor camp" and can be made plural.

[oryx_and_crake]

"gulag", yes. "Chainik" and "katorga" - definitely not.

[joliecanard.livejournal.com]

я согласна.
I agree.

[ephraim-oakes.livejournal.com]

chainik is used in some jewish vernacular dialects of english in one particular idiomatic phrase, half calqued and half translated from yiddish: 'don't hak me a chainik' (meaning 'don't nag/pester/annoy me'). it's possible this is the usage the article was refering to. i'm not sure if you call it an english word from just that though.

[ephraim-oakes.livejournal.com]

i'm also willing to bet that there are at least a few more words on that list that made it into English as borrowings from Slavic elements of Yiddish rather than from Russian itself. The '-nik' suffix is certainly one of those.

[oryx_and_crake]

Just curious. Do you think that "chainik" in this phrase is indeed related to chainik the teakettle? What's the ethymology?

[zveriozha.livejournal.com]

Well, I gave a link here - chainik is a person who doesn't know anything about computers.

http://catb.org/jargon/html/C/chainik.html

You can also insert into google or nigma a phrase like "виндоус для чайников" and see the results.

[oryx_and_crake]

I know about this meaning. I think you didn't notice that my question was addressed to ephrain_oakes and was related to a particular usage of "chainik" (which clearly has nothing to do with computers or "a dummy"): http://community.livejournal.com/learn_russian/697147.html?thread=10786875#t10786875

[oryx_and_crake]

sorry, wrong link

http://community.livejournal.com/learn_russian/697147.html?thread=10785595#t10785595

[ephraim-oakes.livejournal.com]

yeah, it is. the literal translation is "don't bang/knock me a teakettle". it refers to the knocking noise a kettle makes when the water is boiling out, which pesters/nags a person to go and take it off the heat. So, an annoying person is like the kettle. But "don't bang me a kettle" sounds really awkward in English, so 'hak' and 'chainik' got left untranslated. In really colloquial uses you can just say 'don't hak me'.

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

The vast majority of those words would be totally unfamiliar and useless to many. Sure, words like sputnik, vodka, matryoshka, balalaika, samovar, perestroika, pirozhki, babushka and a few more are popular and in use. Many others force even me to think about some old or not so recent Russian history or some very rare things, few people know or care of. I think a list of the first one or two thousand Russian words would be much more helpful.

[zveriozha.livejournal.com]

I am pretty sure list of one or two thousand most common words would be useful? Could you give a link of it please? I haven't found so far.

[oryx_and_crake]

Here's a list of about 200, may still be helpful.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Swadesh_lists_for_Slavic_languages

Motoj laŭ ofteco

[viric.livejournal.com]

Some time ago I compiled a list of the most used russian words in printable form. I still have the first sheet glued at the door of my холодильник.
http://vicerveza.homeunix.net/~viric/tmp/cxiuj-motoj.pdf

Re: Motoj laŭ ofteco

[oryx_and_crake]

It's nice, but тута is not really a word in Russian, unless you want to look like an ignorant person. And I really doubt that советский should be that high in the list.

Re: Motoj laŭ ofteco

[viric.livejournal.com]

тута appears in my dictionaries as "mulberry" in English, "morusujo" in esperanto.

If you have questions on the sources of the texts from where the word statistics were made, you can check the source:
http://www.artint.ru/projects/frqlist.asp

I simply took the word list and prepared it to be printed in several sheets on order.

Re: Motoj la ofteco

[oryx_and_crake]

Actually, you are wrong. The list says "тута adv" which makes it a colloquial (very grammatically incorrect) form of "тут" meaning "here". Тута the fruit would be a noun; and its making it to the top 100 of all the Russian words would not not make any sense whatsoever, as this tree does not grow in Russia and is by no means important enough to be in the top 100 words.

Re: Motoj la ofteco

[viric.livejournal.com]

You talked about тута, I talked about тута. I don't know why do you say I'm wrong.
If they talk of an adverb, and тут doesn't appear in the list of 5000 most used words, probably they missed the lemma for тут, and wrote тута.

Re: Motoj la ofteco

[oryx_and_crake]

I probably was not clear enough. Тута the fruit cannot appear in the top 100 words of Russian because it is, for Russia, a rare and exotic thing. It has no place in the top 100 words list which contains the most important words of everyday use. That's why I said you were wrong. (Also because тута the fruit is a noun and the word in the list is an adverb.)

On the other hand тута (the adverb) is a bastardized form of тут ("here") which is an important enough word to be in top 100 words of Russian. However, this particular form ("тута") is illiterate and whoever uses it appears an ignorant person. That's why its appearance in the list surprised me.

Re: Motoj la ofteco

[viric.livejournal.com]

I agree. :)

But in the texts appear words, not lemmas. So I guess they noted a wrong lemma for тут. They may have classified all тутs as тута.

[zveriozha.livejournal.com]

"Тута и тама." =)

Here and there. Use them if you want to sound funny, hehe.