Hi there

[bridget-jones-s.livejournal.com]

I am trying to learn fluent russian. Mostly by talking to my russian friends and ... er..boyfriends. Well, in lj I'm managing well, I can easily read and comment, and slang isn't a problem. But this left me completely spechless. I don't understand a word. Though it is russian. Could you please help me out there!

Comments

[haallan.livejournal.com]

that's "old" Russian; Russian of XIX - early XX centuries. honestly, you don't need to understand this text to be fluent Russian speaker :)

[mpgriboff.livejournal.com]

a text about pregnant women flying planes
in old russian style - which you can identify by frequent use of Ъ letter

[brissen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, lots of crap stylization similar to "Ye olde shoppe"

[bridget-jones-s.livejournal.com]

I will skip on that one then
Ta!

[bridget-jones-s.livejournal.com]

good thinking, you are right!
I've never used Ъ myself

[bridget-jones-s.livejournal.com]

most exciting, sir!
got it, ta!

[mpgriboff.livejournal.com]

Ъ is still used - thou rarely - in modern russian (предЪявитель for example), but it's a little bit diffetent letter. the old one is so old that we don't even have it on the keyboards, that's why we use Ъ instead

the old one, called "ять" looks like this:

[bridget-jones-s.livejournal.com]

about that..."ять" thing
It's not a part of swearing in russian. Is it?

[brissen.livejournal.com]

if you're really interested in things like that, try that guy: http://bougaev.livejournal.com/

[bridget-jones-s.livejournal.com]

lol
thanx but no
I'll try modern russian first ^-D

[acuzena.livejournal.com]

Забейте:)))

[khathi.livejournal.com]

As I said, it's a historical orthography. You can just disregard the hard signs at the end of a words and overall go for a phonetic reading. Also, hard sign INSIDE a word is an imitation of a obsolete letter "ять", which basically reads as "e". Anyway, it's just an imitation of an old style -- the use of "ять" had a lot of obscure and pvery specific rules (that was a main reason to drop it -- when it reads as "e", why learn all that rules and not have just only "e"?), and there was also another letter for "ф" (one similar to Greek "phi") and "и" -- so called i-decimal, that is, simply latin "i".

[khathi.livejournal.com]

No, it is not. Would you say about English that "duck" is something close to "*uck"? There's same situation. They just sounds similar.

[aciel.livejournal.com]

Did you know "Y" in Ye is just shorthand for "Th"?

[bellezzarubata.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of that in religious books. It's beautiful, but yeah, if I hadn't already memorized it another way, it would be near-impossible to read.

[bridget-jones-s.livejournal.com]

can it be some kind of sekta?

[bellezzarubata.livejournal.com]

Maybe...I've just always known it as Church Slavonic.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

It is not Church Slavonic. No way. It's just a modern imitation of 19th century Russian (which is still as far from Church Slavonic as modern Russian is.) Church Slavonic is just a DIFFERENT language; it is related to Russian, but no more than to Ukrainian, or to Macedonian, or to Bulgarian.

[ex-beshenov.livejournal.com]

that's "old" Russian
Just a silly parody.

[haallan.livejournal.com]

I used quotation marks just because of that

[aromanov.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid this is not Renee, man ;)

[brissen.livejournal.com]

No, frankly speaking, I just came across this phrase somewhere...

[quizzical-view.livejournal.com]

Renée Kathleen Zellweger (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000250/)

[aciel.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, sure--it's a pretty common phrase, especially in movies and things that are meant to look old-timey. But most English-speakers pronounce it as it appears to be written, which is incorrect; the pronunciation is actually (about) the same as "the old shop."

So "y" there is a shorthand for "th" much like Ъ for ять.