Last night on the way I home I was determined to get Lesson Two down pat. I turned up the volume to the max and listened several times to the CD’s pronunciation of “not very well” and “very well” and I finally got it. From there it was a breeze to understand the rest of the lesson. By the time I arrived to pick up the kids I was a whiz at saying, “I understand Russian very well” and “I don’t understand Russian very well.” I was very proud of myself.
I showed off to the daycare provider and she complimented me on the accent I was using, saying that it was very good. I explained that I was learning strictly how to speak the words, no writing, no reading. She was suitably impressed, saying that next to Japanese she’s thinks Russian is one of the hardest languages to learn.
Woo hoo!!!
Here is your phonetic Russian word for the day: Hello (STRAHF-stweh-juh)
Russian is hard, German is harder, Japanese is harder yet. In Russian the word order and syntax is much like English and French. In German and Japanese it all starts to fall apart to where it makes almost no sense at all.
Russian sounds so cool when spoken by real Russians (kind of flowing), not just as a bad accent in an action flick. I didn’t realize that until this year. I think it’s awesome you’re doing this, Jaynee! You’re making me want to learn languages in my car, too!!
Privet (Hi) is just as useful