[identity profile] loudasthesun.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] learn_russian
I don't know if there's any of you that read the Post Secret blog, but the current update has one secret in Russian.

I just started learning Russian about 2 weeks ago so I don't know a lick of grammar--we just learned basic greetings and the alphabet so far, but I'm curious as to what this says: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_a7jkcMVp5Vg/SOgLerOj6cI/AAAAAAAAG_0/sDW1darr8ng/s1600-h/mystery.jpg

Also, because I'm trying to practice my Cyrillic handwriting recognition, can anyone correct what I think this postcard says? я надеюсь, что у тебе(?) теперь чицтый(?) кошелек грязь

спасибо!

EDIT: Random question--while I'm on the subject, I figured I'd ask a question I had about Russian handwriting. My textbook and my professor both say that Russians, as a general rule, don't print and almost always write in cursive. Is this really true? In English I never write proper cursive, and I actually don't know many people who do. When I write fast, I inevitably connect letters, but I never write anything like the cursive I usually see in Russian handwriting. What if you needed to write, say, a sign to put in a window in Russian? Would you use cursive still or write big "typed" version letters? What does handwritten non-cursive print look like? Is this typical of all languages that use Cyrillic?

Date: 2008-10-05 07:28 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shimshoni.livejournal.com
it says "Я надеюсь, что у тебя теперь чистый кошелек. Грязь."
it's a very strange sentance:))
"I hope your wallet is clean now. Dirt."

Date: 2008-10-05 07:29 am (UTC)
oryx_and_crake: (Default)
From: [personal profile] oryx_and_crake
у тебЯ
чиСтый
otherwise is OK grammatically, but, frankly, this does not make any sense.

Date: 2008-10-05 08:05 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ryururu.livejournal.com
the meaning of the post card is: "now you are ok. but without me. you may think that you are well and rich, and that i'm bad and worse then you."

on hand writing: yes, we russians write letters always like that. it's very quickly and comfortable. but sometimes not for reading person. not everybody have good hand.
:)

Date: 2008-10-05 10:28 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] quorax.livejournal.com
Just wonder how had you figured out the meaning?

Date: 2008-10-05 05:03 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] quorax.livejournal.com
Me too, but you're still the only one who supposed that the sentence makes any sense. Was it the picture of a girl at the background that made you think about the sentence as a message from someone's ex? Without it it sounds more like a letter from someone's money: imagine a person who once said "деньги - грязь!", they got offended and left him/her) Anyway, the text sounds artificial and awkward, and i wonder why you have no doubts in your interpretation.

Date: 2008-10-05 05:10 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ryururu.livejournal.com
you know this kind of post cards (ready to use). this one is one of them. and they are for most usual cases. this very one is obvious for the ex-girlfriend's one.

Date: 2008-10-05 05:24 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] quorax.livejournal.com
Kind of masochist behaviour for an ex-girlfriend to sign as "dirt"... Anyway, what is her point then? Well, her partner could accuse her of trying to get into his wallet but why "dirt"

Date: 2008-10-05 05:31 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ryururu.livejournal.com
no. it's sarcastic and irony: really she means he did a big mistake, and more: he is dirt, not she. and most of all because he thinks that she is not so wealthy as he is. yes, the point is about money.

Date: 2008-10-05 05:59 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] quorax.livejournal.com
So, these postcards became quite retarded since i've read them for last time. I definitely wouldn't regret for my decision if someday i get something like this.

Date: 2008-10-05 06:15 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ryururu.livejournal.com
yes. from time to time i drop my eye on them near cashier. some of them are very funny.

Date: 2008-10-05 11:13 pm (UTC)
oryx_and_crake: (Default)
From: [personal profile] oryx_and_crake
You have a really rich imagination. I don't think this postcard says any of that.

Date: 2008-10-05 08:07 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ryururu.livejournal.com
and on this very post card the letters are very clear: "...чистый..."

Date: 2008-10-05 08:10 am (UTC)

Date: 2008-10-05 08:15 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] zeqfreed.livejournal.com
Abbreviations are usually written in block letters, but not necessarily.

And if you'd really like to improve your recognition skills, try this one (http://img359.imageshack.us/img359/6514/handwritingnq0.jpg) ;)

Date: 2008-10-05 10:00 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] zeqfreed.livejournal.com
It's not mine as my handwriting looks really ugly :) It's my university group mate's.

I understand it'd be tiring to type all the text, so if you understand everything what's written it's very good, because it takes time even for me to decipher some words ;)

Date: 2008-10-05 02:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] apollotiger.livejournal.com
Is that by any chance about calculus? I caught the word “Differential” at the top …

Date: 2008-10-05 08:03 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lyovchik.livejournal.com
Yep. That's on partial differential equations.
But it seems there's too much words and few formulae ;)

Date: 2008-10-06 03:22 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] zeqfreed.livejournal.com
That is the introductory lection :)

Date: 2008-10-06 03:27 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] zeqfreed.livejournal.com
Yes. And lyovchik is correct about the text being a lecture on PDE.

Date: 2008-10-05 08:17 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] firebottle.livejournal.com
Russians, as a general rule, don't print and almost always write in cursive. Is this really true?
In general, it is - as it really speeds up the handwriting.

What if you needed to write, say, a sign to put in a window in Russian?
Last time I needed that to leave my phone number in my car when I parked locking another car (so another driver can call me and I move my car to get them out), and I used font defined in ЕСКД (common standard for technical documentation) - it looks like:

Image

Date: 2008-10-05 04:51 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ryururu.livejournal.com
yes, in technical documentation in russia we use the standart.

in some official application forms we have to print letters too.

Date: 2008-10-05 08:22 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wolk-off.livejournal.com
Yes, most Russians write in cursive, if they have to write fast. I knew a few people in my college days who have been trying to write fast in block letters just to stand out of the dull rows of commoners, but ended up inventing a kind of "block cursive" instead, thus making their handwriting completely incomprehensible (even for themselves.) Trick is, all Russians are taught exclusively cursive in elementary school, which means that in the early age we write almost always in cursive, while we read both block and cursive letters.

To make a sign to put in a window, most dull commoners ;-) would still use cursive, just because they weren't taught how to make even block letters; except that possibly, their letters wouldn't be connected, that's all. People who use large block letters for things like that, normally have some sort of graphic design training (or, earlier -- scale drawing training, because in Soviet schools scale drawing was a serious course, and Russian scale drawing employs mostly block letters.)

Here's one good example of a handwritten sign (picked up from a magazine sales stand at a jazz concert in Moscow recently ;-)):

Image
Edited Date: 2008-10-05 08:23 am (UTC)

Date: 2008-10-05 09:04 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wolk-off.livejournal.com
Correct. It says that everything on this stand costs one hundred roubles :)

Date: 2008-10-05 10:22 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] khathi.livejournal.com
They teach block letters in elementary school, but most people forgets them, because they rarely ever use them -- except in handwritten notes (when one need to write big letters, which is awkward in cursive) or scale drawings.

Date: 2008-10-05 10:36 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wolk-off.livejournal.com
I had a weird course called печатание in the 3rd grade (which had nothing to do with actual typing -- it was, in fact, "writing in block letters"!), but it was so clumsily taught, and the course itself was so weak (it was obviously introduced to restore balance between cursive writing and block letters, but seemingly not thoroughly prepared) that most of my class never could write in block letters appropriately. I could, because I always had a knack for fonts and unusual handscripts, and so did a few others who were later good at drawing, or scale drawing, or both. BTW my class was the first to study печатание in our school (it was 1976,) so obviously the previous generation was even worse in non-cursive writing.

Date: 2008-10-05 10:48 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] khathi.livejournal.com
We had it in 1st grade in 85, and it wasn't all that weak -- just hardly usable. And most (well, many) kids already could read and write block letters before school, so it wasn't actually anything new for them too.

Date: 2008-10-05 11:00 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wolk-off.livejournal.com
In my time, at least in some schools, teaching kids to read and write BEFORE SCHOOL was considered anti-pedagogic, if not harmful, and was strictly not encouraged. In our school, when parents brought their future first-graders to an interview with the principal, and old lady there (later I learned that she was an experienced elementary school teacher, about to retire) would advise us in barely audible whisper: "just don't tell her you already can write, OK? Our principal believes that reading early is tolerable, but writing early, NOT ACCORDING THE RULES TAUGHT AT SCHOOL, is very, very bad."
I could read and write sine I was four, but at that time it was considered unusual and even harmful by the education authorities. When I was five, I've been taking a little private course called "aesthetic education," which included drawing, plastiline modeling, reading, singing etc.; it was seriously considered "dissident activity," and I was not even istructed not to tell anybody -- I just KNEW I shouldn't :)
Edited Date: 2008-10-05 11:00 am (UTC)

Date: 2008-10-05 11:20 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] khathi.livejournal.com
Well, ten years later things were much less strict already. I could read since 3, and while everybody were surprized that I've started that early, nobody said it was bad. Although I remember some adamantine old-timers who thought that it should be their way only, that's sure. But now not only nobody give a damn, but teachers EXPECT kids to come to school already literate, and reading (that is, teaching HOW to read) course is downscaled significantly.

Date: 2008-10-05 11:42 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wolk-off.livejournal.com
Not sure if I know how it's right now, but 13 years ago, when I brought my kid to the elementary school, it already was more or less as you described. I'll tell you more, I was really surprised that the elementary school teacher did'n care about how well the kids write at all. At leas she really did't care about teaching them the proper hand movement, so they went through really painful time trying to copy the "ideal" cursive with wrong hand movement. I had enough time and patience to teach my kid myself, so his handwriting ended up being not that bad, but when I saw kids in his class drawing shaking, uneasy, uneven letters holding their pens literally in their fists, and making so much effort that their hands should hurt like heck afterwards, I was really, really surprised. Apparently the teached didn't give a damn.

Date: 2008-10-05 04:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ryururu.livejournal.com
everybody learn and know how to write the block letters, but actualy there is no need to do it. we understand it.
:)

Date: 2008-10-05 08:34 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] konstkaras.livejournal.com
What if you needed to write, say, a sign to put in a window in Russian?

I'm a university teacher, I use to white much with chalk, and I use both handwriting and typed letters. Maybe I use typed letters for larger text, written for smaller, but I don't think it's very reasonable.

Font used in the postcard is partly non-standard and obsolete; in 1989 I was taught in the school with other style, which contained less elements and less variants of writing, but needed
more accuracy.

Demand to use standard handwriting style was quite strict during all elementary and secondary school (that is, teacher lowered marks not only for indistinct writing, but also for violation of the standard!). But it's not very rational - the only adult people who strictly use it are elementary school teachers, other one having good hand adopt to write other way.

As far as I know, schools English-speaking have less strict demands, don't they?

Date: 2008-10-05 04:58 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] superslayer18.livejournal.com
Actually most people I know have a pretty interesting mix of the two as they write. For example, I use cursive l, t, e, u, c, etc, but print j, f, r etc. It's purely a matter of speed and comfort for me at this point, and I'd wager that most Americans are about the same.

Date: 2008-10-05 10:59 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] isca-lox.livejournal.com
If I had to write a sign I would probably do it using cursive but with letters separated by spaces. I'd also use a standard way of writing letters instead of the not-so-standard one I usually use, to make sure what I've written can be read by others ;)

And we were told to use standard handwrinting style in school too, just as the commentor above said. But it was in elementary school only, after that all teachers asked for was handwriting easy to read and understand.

Date: 2008-10-05 07:33 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] voltaireontoast.livejournal.com
The handwriting thing's a pretty interesting one, actually. I did Russian for...ooh, four years at my secondary school, and my teacher, probably because (I went to a specialist language school and everyone had to do a language, if they wanted to or not. So a lot of the kids who couldn't be bothered to pick one got shoved in Russian, because there were less people etc etc) there were a lot of kids in our class who were destined for Es, taught us to write in print. Hell, it made her life easier. I didn't really see the problem in this at all and happily went on printing my Russian, as I have god awful writing in English, and it made my life easier too.

Then I went to a different school to do A-level Russian, and was incredibly, incredibly pissed off to find out I'd been taught wrong and that compared to my two classmates, my Russian handwriting looked stupid. And it took me twice as long to make notes in Russian in class, which was really annoying as it wasn't like I sucked at Russian, I'd just been taught wrong. I actually had to re-learn to write Russian, and it's definately easier and faster (although I still skip between cursive and print, but I do that in English as well), as I've done both and realised how damn stupid printing in Russian is. My Russian handwriting is actually more legible than my English. *shrugs* I don't get it either.

Date: 2008-10-05 07:35 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] voltaireontoast.livejournal.com
eta: heh. Sorry, I seemed to have gone nuts with italics there.
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