OK class this is an “introductory” lesson in Russian for those of you that don’t know the language. At the moment I know about a dozen words or phrases that I can speak haltingly. I do know the Russian alphabet now (all 39 characters) so I’m better at “reading” Russian than I am speaking Russian. If you’re interested I’ve posted a brief slide show on my site (URL below - click on Russian) called russian_signs.exe. In some cases the signs will look quite familiar. In others you would have to “know Russian” the way I do. In those cases I’ve provided a translation. In some instances there is a letter-for-letter correspondence in words. In other cases the translation is an approximation. Sometimes, especially at the end of words, letters that you would expect in English aren’t present in the Russian equivalent or they are not sounded out which can be confusing at first. In other cases there just isn’t a direct translation.
In a previous post I discussed the Russian alphabet which will be confusing if English is your first language. Examples: the Russian “P” is an English “R”; a Russian “r” is an English “g”; a Russian “B” is an English “V”, etc. Actually, once you know the alphabet recognizing words isn’t that tough as long as you don’t bias yourself with English letters.
До следующего раза ...
Борис (Boris)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment