(no subject)

[fallingstar12.livejournal.com]

Привет (hello!),

I am a 22 year old female college student from New York. I have always been interested in everything Russian as my ancestors came from Russia three generations ago. I recently decided to teach myself the language and am still in the stage of studying the alphabet. I have found the differences between cyrillic block letters and the script frustrating mostly because I'm not entirely confident I am making my script letters correctly (legibly). Any advice?

So far I really enjoy Russian and am curious to see how much I can learn on my own.

What programs/books/websites are you guys using to help with your Russian? Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Sara

Comments

[kzot.livejournal.com]

if i were you i'd find somebody russian in NYC (it won't be difficult, tell ya) and ask to assist you with this stuff

[badmadnad.livejournal.com]

I can understand your frustration. I am also a beginner and found the different ways of writing really, really annoying:) But if you read enough, you get used to it! What I try to do is read a lot of Russian... even if I don't understand a word, I just read as much as I can to get used to the different letters. Good luck!

[chantfleuri.livejournal.com]

Any courses? Adoptated books, maybe, and talking to somebody who knows Russian

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

If you could make your script look like what this guy suggests (http://www.ia.net/~jcarroll/privet/script.html), you'd do just fine. Believe me, learning Latin script isn't easy for us Russians either, though most of us accomplish it in junior high :)

[fallingstar12.livejournal.com]

Thanks. That looks like what I'm already doing, for the most part.

[fallingstar12.livejournal.com]

If i lived anywhere near nyc, i would agree

[mortimer-ford.livejournal.com]

I use the Pimsleur Audio courses and have a blast with them. I was lucky enough to have them available at the library, and own a CD burner.

I bought a couple of children's books for the reading part. Get the double language books if you can. They have one page in one language and the opposite side is the translation.

Russian movies will help if you can find them.

[tolstobrov.livejournal.com]

I totally concur

[starbax.livejournal.com]

Ok... Hi Sara. My name is Ilya, and i'm 22 (realy)) I am a student, i will be an advertiser. My first education (college) is designer (buildings). I live in Moscow, and i study English.
If you want to associate (i'm not sure at the expense of the word:)), you can write to me, and we... I don't know, we will talk on Russian and English:)

[starbax.livejournal.com]

sorry, forgot it))
This is my mail - l.beeblebrox@gmail.com
or
my ICQ number - 307-496-983 "starbax"
Welcome)

[fallingstar12.livejournal.com]

hmm children's books... thats a good idea. thanks.

neither here nor there, but

[botanik1.livejournal.com]

there's a few thousand strong Ukrainian community in Utica, and they speak Russian too, sometimes even among themselves, though they are pretty insular. I happen to live in Rome at the moment, and I think I'm the only Russian speaking person around here.

Re: neither here nor there, but

[fallingstar12.livejournal.com]

Ukrainian? really? I know there are a lot of russians and Bosnians in Utica

Re: neither here nor there, but

[botanik1.livejournal.com]

The half dozen people I've run into are all either Ukrainian or Belorussian. People from "Russia" here are commonly referred to as Russians, whatever their actual ethnicity.

[petitevache.livejournal.com]

What's really helpful for me is Russian music, but more importantly - finding the lyrics and translating them for yourself word by word.

Here - http://www.lingvo.ru/ - is a REALLY good dictionary which you can use for translations :) What I also do is not only get a word's translation but also write down the more common/interesting figurative expressions it appears in.

I have loads of Russian music, I could send you some if you want. :)

Once you become more advanced, try finding The Little Prince in Russian - it's as close to an adult book as you can get and understand quite a lot.

Getting used to the cyrillic alphabet is a matter of time, with a lot of practice you'll be comfortable with it in no time.

Also, this poetry site - http://www.russianlegacy.com/en/go_to/culture/poetry/russian_poetry.htm - has poems and their translations (both literal and literary), so it's helpful to print them out and have them side by side and compare. :)