Timewaster's Guide Archive
General => Rants and Stuff => Topic started by: RussoEnt on February 20, 2005, 01:51:03 PM
-
Hi there
what do u think about Russia and russian enternatnment web-portals?
thx
-
Do you have any examples?
-
/me looks blank then stares accusingly at Gemm
I... I played on a russian CS server once.
They sucked.
-
Good work Entropy. Now let's go lynch Gemm because we have no concrete evidence except general suspicion.
-
Well, two of my siblings lived in Russia for some time. One is still there, at least for the next couple of weeks.
They loved it there, but I think they are a little biased.
My brother tried to get me to listen to some Russian music he had brought back with him. I didn't really get into it.
-
In Soviet Russia, car drives you!
-
I took russian in college.
-
I have taken Russian for three years now, but this is high school Russian, so it is probably equivalent to one year of college.
-
Knowing what I now know about Russian, I plan on taking espanol when I go back to college.
-
Why do you say that? I think that studying Russian would be more fun than studying Spanish, the language is completely distinct from English, whereas Spanish is a lot more similar.
-
I saw a Russian movie once. Was really... strange. Especially at 2 or 3 AM. It was about some guy being friends with a kid because they had a common like for this tractor. It ended with them walking off together and framing it on the tractor. Yeah....
But honestly, I'd love to know more about the place.
And screw you Entropy. =P
-
Learning a second alphabet bit... I loved the speaking part... but I kind of want to be literate in the second language I speak...
-
It isn't all that hard really, you just have to sit down for a while with the list of letters, and their pronunciations, and memorize. Then you can get into reading, and you won't even notice. The interesting part for me is that I occasionally start writing Cyrillic in the middle of a sentence for something completely unrelated. I have earned a couple weird looks for that. But you will get used to the alphabet, I read it about 75% as fast as I read normally, about the same as I read upside down.
-
It's not the alphabet that's hard, it's the grammar. I've taken two and a half years of Russian, and my grammar is still atrocious.
And I took Russian when I returned to college because Chinese seemed too hard. I still can't distinguished between second and third tones. Even when mapped out on paper.
-
word...
-
What do you mean by second and third tones? We haven't ever really gone into how to arrange a sentence in any depth, we are still finishing up the cases (genitive, instrumental...).
-
The tones were referring to Chinese and why I didn't take it.
Now the cases in Russian start getting interesting when you have to begin memorizing verbs that only take a certain case as compliment. Especially when there's a synonym that takes a completely different case--usually Dative or Instrumental.
And sentence structure is fairly easy. Put the most important information at the end. Otherwise, word order isn't all that firm.
-
Yeah, it is already fun memorizing all of the buildings, and whether it is B or Ha.
-
its been a long, time since I've cracked a russian book
-
Just out of curiousity, Archon, what textbook are you using?
-
The RUssian alphabet isn't that difficult, so many of th eletters being so similar to Greek, which is easy to figure out. There are a startling number of familiar words too. when I visited St. Petersburg I had my wife teach me the alphabet and I could identify pretty much any place I wanted to go and parse out most anything I needed.
-
Old One, we use like 3 different ones, and we don't really stick by any of them. The teacher is very spontaneous, she wants to keep things interesting, so she will randomly give us information packets, and activites that have nothing to do with the book. Oh yeah, all of our books are from before the fall of the Soviet Union too. I don't have them with me, but I will give you their names after I go to school.
-
I actually took Russian in high school before the fall of the Soviet Union. My teacher was an ex-pat, but she was still Soviet. Very Soviet. In retrospect it was rather amusing.
We didn't have a textbook at all for that class, and the teacher created her own packets and had us memorize a few irregular verb conjugations. Mostly we momorized songs like Yolitchka (darn it for not supporting Cyrillic!) and Podmoscovye Vechera, and phrases to use at tea parties:
"Yes, I'd like some chai with lemon, please."
"Here you go."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
And with B or Ha, there are a few exceptions you need to memorize (like post office and kitchen), but if the event is temporary (like a concert) or outside, it's Ha. Otherwise, if the event is ongoing or indoors, it's B. Once you learn aspect, you'll find that most Russian is based on the idea of timeframe--so much so that it affects just about every verb. Especially the six or so verbs that mean "to go."
Isn't Russian a fun language?
-
So what happens if it's ongoing AND outdoors? Or indoors and temporary?
-
Fish,
Ha, and Ha. :P
-
I was cussing the lack of cyrillic earlier too actually...
hard to say Strasvutya tavarich without it ....
Still
I remember a little, but honestly I've decided to study a language that Im likely to speak around here...
-
Yeah, it is very hard to put Cyrillic into English. And yes, it is a very fun language.
Yolitchka oh Yolitchka
Kak Krasivlee Tvayee Vyetvli... That song Old One?
Old One, I thought your last response was laughing at MsFish for a minute.
-
Don't worry, Archon. She was.
-
Well she could have been, but I think she was actually replying Ha (which is pronounced na)
-
LOL. I hadn't even considered that it might be taken as a laugh.
Archon, actually it was Vlesu rodilas yolitchka, vlesu ana rosla . . .
Jeffe, you never know when you might need Russian. I wished I'd spoken it more fluently when I lived in Alaska.
-
Yeah but the DC area has a far greater spanish speaking population than russian...
It can be my third language...
-
Yeah but the DC area has a far greater spanish speaking population than russian...
My brother lives in the D.C. area and he speaks Russian. And since I don't personally know any spanish speakers in the D.C. area. I will erroneously assume that your statement is false. Cause we all know that personal knowledge count more than what anyone else says.
-
Alaska, directly bordering on Russia, is much more likely to have Russian speakers coming in than Spanish speakers, when the closest major source of Spanish Speakers is Idaho.
However, to prove 42's point we can use my family. My wife and Father-in-law speak Russian. The only one who speaks Spanish is my brother-in-law. My brother and his wife both speak Korean, too, which makes that language more prevelant than Spanish. Also, I have a sister-in-law who speaks Arabic, and my father-in-law speaks Finnish as well. My borther speaks Tagalog. Which means that Spanish is no more prominent than Arabic, Finnish, or Tagalog in the region. :D
-
Execept the prevelence of spanish speakers is huge thanks to the many thousands of Salvadorians, Colombians and Mexicans who have emigrated to this region...
-
Yep! Spanish would be more valid in this day and age and in the America to come.
I predict we will be making closer ties with Latin America, now that most of Western Euorope has demonstrated that they have little in common with us anymore.
As to Russia, It is a shame that Putin has taken the country so many steps backwards as of late. But i still have hope that the Russian Republic will REALLY be a republic one day. A Repubic of that Size and potential, with Eastern Europian values... WOuld be a value to us.
-
At work there are about 3 Russian speaking workers there.
-
Execept the prevelence of spanish speakers is huge thanks to the many thousands of Salvadorians, Colombians and Mexicans who have emigrated to this region...
I refuse to accept the several dozen Spanish-speaking workers who gather at the corners near my class as any sort of admissable evidence to this discussion.
-
I know of many people in the DC area who speak Wolof, but none who speak Spanish. Therefore you should learn Wolof instead. Nengadef!
-
What ze heck is Wolof?
-
a quick google search could have told you
Society-WOLOF
The Wolof constitute a large ethnic group located mainly in the western
part of the former French West African colony of Senegal, and extending
southward into The Gambia--a former British colony. Wolof (Ouolof
in the standard French orthography) is the name by which the people
refer to themselves, and the label commonly used in scholarly publications.
But a large number of orthographic variants occur in the literature,
ranging from Chelofes, Guiolof, and Iolof, to Joloffs, Valaf, and
Yuloff.
The indigenous language is also called Wolof. It is classified within
the Northern Branch of the West Atlantic subfamily of the Niger-Congo
language family. The most closely related languages are Serer and
Fulbe (Fulani) (Greenberg 1966: 7-8, 25; Voegelin 1977: 28-29). The
Lebu, a separate ethnic group centered in the Cap Vert peninsula of
Senegal, speak a distinct Wolof dialect. The Wolof language is rapidly
becoming the national vernacular of Senegal. Members of other ethnic
groups are increasingly learning Wolof as a second language, especially
in the urban areas. It was recently estimated that 80 percent of Senegalese
speak Wolof
-
but I didn't WANT to do a google search, I have to have a review written in between calls in the next couple hours.