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[sisi-learns-languages]

Soft Sign (ь) vs Hard Sign (ъ): Russian

If you’re anything like me (a beginner grasping at straws trying to learn Russian) then the soft vs hard sign concept is very foreign to you. The signs are not sounds of their own— they are clues telling you how to pronounce the consonant that precedes it. Here is a quick overview of soft vs hard signs:

Soft Sign (ь)

When ь is present after a consonant, this is your indication to palatalize the sound (aka soften). The middle of the tongue should rise toward the roof the the mouth.

Example: стиль - style, фильм - film

Hard Sign (ъ)

When ъ is present after a consonant, this indicates a slight break or pause in the word where the hard sign is located.

Example: объект - object

If anyone has any further resources for this, it would be greatly appreciated! I understand the concept of this, but not entirely grasping the pronunciation. Any YouTube videos or audio lessons would be very helpful! Also feel free to comment more tips for me on this topic!

-S

[sisi-learns-languages]

About Me!

Hello again, Langblrs! It sure has been a minute and a lot has changed since I last logged in! I’ve made a few posts already since I’ve gotten back into studying Russian, but I’m not going to get ahead of myself. Let’s start with the basics:

I’m Sisi (see-see), I’m 25 years old, and I live in the northeast USA. I’ve studied languages in school and autonomously for as long as I can remember. I graduated from college in 2021 with two Bachelors Degrees— one in Political Science and the other in Spanish. During my time at my university, I took classes in Spanish (of course, it was one of my majors), French, Arabic, Italian, and German. Outside of my university, I have studied Russian and Norwegian. I was fortunate enough to study abroad during undergrad as well, so I spent a good portion of 2019 in Granada, Spain perfecting my Spanish to fluency.

Fast forward a few years, I am now a Flight Attendant with the #1 airline in the US and I couldn’t be happier. I have traveled everywhere— North America (I just saw the Aurora Borealis in Alaska!), Central and South America, Africa, Europe, Asia, anywhere you can imagine! I get paid to see the world which has always been a dream of mine. Traveling and interacting with people of various backgrounds, cultures, and languages has been the best experience of my life.

Now more personally, I am vegan! I care deeply about the earth and ALL its inhabitants— every life holds the same value. This sentiment of total equality carries through to my political and world views as well.

Well, that’s pretty much the general gist of who I am. I promise I’m not intimidating so please feel free to pop into my inbox and introduce yourself— I love language-learning buddies! This will be a Russian langblr but I will gladly follow/interact with profiles of any of the languages I’ve mentioned I’ve studied as I can always use more practice!Sorry for the long post, I just wanted to put a persona behind this blog for all of you. I’m happy to be a part of the langblr community!

-S

[sisi-learns-languages]

How To Identify Russian Verbs: Infinitive Verb Endings

While reading in Russian, I often find myself wondering how to know which words are verbs, nouns, etc. Through my studies of various other languages, I know that infinitive verbs almost always have the same ending (usually a variation of 1-3 different types). So, here is a quick (very generic) cheat sheet for identifying a verb in a Russian sentence (this is not a conjugation post— that will come soon!)

-ть → example verbs: говорить — to speak, читать — to read, работать —to work

-ти → example verbs: идти — to go, нести — to bring

-чь (not as common) → example verbs: беречь —to protect, лечь —to lie down

If you are familiar with any other general rules of how to identify verbs in a sentence, please feel free to add! Again, this is very generalized and is not a one-size-fits-all sort of deal-- it's just to help me identify different parts of the sentence as I build up my foundation.

[sisi-learns-languages]

Basic Phrase Vocabulary: Russian

Question Words

Кто — Who → Кто она?

Что — What → Что это?

Где — Where → Где собака?

Когда — When → Когда обед?

Как — How → Как дела?

Other Useful Words

Этот — This (masculine) → Этот студент

Эта — This (feminine) → Эта студентка

Эти — These (plural) → Эти собаки

Это — This (neuter), This/that is…, These are… → Это море, Это дом., Это собаки.

(Please feel free to comment anything that you think would be useful for beginners when building basic phrases!)

[sisi-learns-languages]

Russian Langblrs!!!

Привет! I’m trying to get back into Russian now but tumblr seems a bit more inactive than usual. If you’re a Russian langblr like/reblog so I can follow you! Love having fellow learning buddies :)

[sisi-learns-languages]

A big thank you to all of the native speakers out there who take the time to read and correct posts. Without you the langblr community wouldn’t be the same! We learn from mistakes, so keep correcting :)

[sisi-learns-languages]

Russian Immersion: Music

So I’m a huge advocate of immersing yourself in your target language as much as possible and music is one of the easiest ways to do it. Even if you have no idea what the song is saying, just hearing the words, pronunciations, etc., is already helping you improve your auditory comprehension skills! Just put on a song and do your homework with it in the background for the exposure or take it one step further and look up the lyrics and follow along! My target language is Russian, so I’ve compiled a list of some of my favorite Russian songs, even though I have no idea what they’re saying half the time! I use Spotify so these are all available on there, but I’m not sure about other platforms. Check them out and let me know what you think:

Доза by Dati

Принцесса by Babek Mamedrzaev

Sayonara детка by Eldzhey (love this one because half is in English so it makes me feel like I actually know what’s going on lol)

Судный день by PHARAOH

ТЕЛО by GRILLZY

Крепко влип by LUCAVEROS

Кино by MACAN

Нет сердца by PHARAOH

I’ll be adding more to this list as I find more Russian songs that I like! Also, please feel free to recommend some to me! Disclaimer: I literally have no idea what these songs are saying for the most part so I’m sorry in advance if they’re offensive! I just really like the beats!

[sisi-learns-languages]

Russian - English Cognates

Studying cognates is one of the easiest ways to familiarize yourself with the alphabet of a new language. By comparing words you already know to those that you are just now learning, it’s easier to correlate the new letters to their new sounds. Here’s a list of Russian-English cognates that help me to remember pronunciation:

Акцент - accent

Бюджет - budget

Гитара - guitar

Журналистка - journalist

Комфорт - comfort

Лаборатория - laboratory

Меню - menu

Паспорт - passport

Литература - literature

Парашют - parachute

Университет - university

Яхта - yacht

Хоккей - hockey

Pобот - robot

Зебра - zebra

Принцесса - princess

студент – student

экзамен – exam

идея – idea

центр – center

Пицца - pizza

Фрукт - fruit

баскетбол - basketball

Радио - radio

класс - class

Аквариум - aquarium

Балет- ballet

(Feel free to comment some more, I love finding new cognates!)

[sisi-learns-languages]

Russian Langblrs!!!!

Привет! I’m trying to get back into Russian now but tumblr seems a bit more inactive than usual. If you’re a Russian langblr like/reblog so I can follow you! Love having fellow learning buddies :)

[sisi-learns-languages]

Hi! I have a question about the ABC Languages class you’re doing. Are you able to practice speaking a lot? I’m not learning Russian, but there are two languages I am studying—Thai and Korean— that I’m really struggling to learn to speak (I’m beginner in Thai and low-intermediate in Korean). I was thinking that having a real human teacher might help with that. Do you think an online class with ABC languages would be a good fit for something like that?

Thanks for the question! So I’m doing the online group class for Russian through ABC Languages and, like I said, I love it. Usually groups have a minimum of three students but there are only two in my class (it’s probably at the teacher’s discretion). The maximum amount of students per class is 6. I love this because I get time to personally interact with my teacher, which includes speaking! I’ve tried teaching myself Russian before but it never stuck, but as soon as I signed up for ABC Languages, it clicked! My teacher teaches us common conversational words and commonly used phrases that I would find useful (he taught me how to spell my dogs’ names and to say things like “Where are my dogs?”). He expects us to respond with “да” (“yes”) when he asks us a question— he consistently tries to have us speaking as much Russian as possible even though it’s in the beginning stages. I think that for you and the languages you’re studying, it would be a great fit! I’ve always been too intimidated to do a language exchange so the (online) classroom setting of ABC Languages alleviates a lot of the anxiety! I highly recommend! They also offer private courses if you think that would be more beneficial. I’m sorry this is such a long response— if you have any more specific questions or any questions really, feel free to pop into my inbox! I did tons of research about different language schools before I signed up for ABC so I can try to be as helpful as possible!

-S

[sisi-learns-languages]

Yesterday I had my third Russian class! I really feel myself getting more comfortable with the Cyrillic alphabet and my teacher is so patient with me (even when I absolutely butcher the words). Usually it is me and another girl in the class but her internet wasn’t working very well so she logged off and it was just me and the teacher— it was like a personalized lesson and I feel like I learned so much more! He even helped me learn to write my dog’s names in Russian (Фрэнки and Харли, I just thought that was cool!). I’m absolutely loving this class and I think I’m gonna buy more lessons. I got 8 weeks for $325 so I think I’m gonna try to extend it since it’s going so well. I HIGHLY recommend ABC Languages (it’s based in New York but they’re doing online classes due to COVID). Overall, I’m loving my Russian class!

[sisi-learns-languages]

Question for any native Russian speakers or those fluent in Russian! I once heard that Russians only use cursive for handwriting, not regular printing (like how the letters look when a beginner learns them). Is that true? I was just trying to write something in Russian and it was really hard so if they only use cursive/if it’s easier I would definitely want to learn that, as well. Thanks in advance! Спасибо!

[sisi-learns-languages]

Basic Rules to Determine Grammatical Gender of Russian Nouns

Masculine ➞ usually ends in a consonant letter or -й — студент, музей

Feminine ➞ usually ends in -а or –я — лампа,станция

Neuter ➞ usually ends in -о, -е, or -ё — окно, море

[sisi-learns-languages]

Привет! I think it’s been about a week since I posted (sorry!) but my Russian class was canceled yesterday because of the Fourth of July. I have done some mild studying in the meantime but I plan on doing some intense studying (to make up for the missed class) on Tuesday. I’ll post an update then. Sorry I don’t have a more substantial post for last week, but I promise I’ll upload another batch of Russian words/phrases this week.

Espero que todos estén bien!

-S

[sisi-learns-languages]

Russian: Class 2

So yesterday I had my second Russian class! My teacher is super cool and patient with me (because I’m 100% butchering all the words but he always helps to correct me). He made fun of me because I kept pronouncing things in a Spanish or French accent, both of which I speak, so I’m definitely gonna have to figure out how to fix that. We went over the alphabet for added practice then he introduced us to the Russian words for “my” and “your”. I am having such a hard time pronouncing these words in Russian so I’m gonna have to do a lot of practicing. If you have any tips for how to remember pronounciation, please let me know! Other than that, I think I’m doing really well and I’m really enjoying my time learning Russian. I originally booked it to be an 8-week course but I’m seriously considering extending it indefinitely because I enjoy it so much! We meet every Saturday so unfortunately that falls on the 4th of July next week so there is no class on that day, so I’ll be doing a lot of independent studying. Expect a good amount of posts from me this week!

-S

[sisi-learns-languages]

Basic Russian Phrases

Russian - Latin Phonetic- English

привет - priVYET - hello (informal)

Меня зовут... - miNYA zaVOOT... - My name is...

очень приятно - Ochin' priYATna - Nice to meet you

Как дела? - kak diLA - How are you doing?

хорошо - haraSHO - Good

очень хорошо - Ochin' haraSHO - Very good

неплохо - nipLOha - Not bad

отлично - atLEEchna - Perfect

Здравствуйте - ZDRAstvooiti - Hello (formal)

пока - pakA - bye (informal)

до свидания - dasviDAniya - goodbye (formal)

Доброе утро - DObraye OOtrah - Good morning

Добрый день - DObry dYEn - Good day

Добрый вечер - DObry VEchir - Good evening

спасибо - spaSEE bah - Thank you

пожалуйста - paZHALsta - You’re welcome/Please

не за что - NYEzashta - Don’t mention it

понятно - pah nYAT nah - Is it clear?/It is clear.

[sisi-learns-languages]

What’s on My Phone: Language Edition

Not sure if this is already a thing or not but I thought it’d be fun! A lot of people post “What’s on My Phone” and show their apps and stuff like that, so I figured I’d do one but for learning languages! I’ll give the app name then give a quick little description of how it helps me! If you see this, you should post your own too!

Duolingo: Of course, this is the Holy Grail of language learning. It’s the reason we all are trying to learn tens of languages at once— this app makes it so easy to pick up your phone and start building a linguistic foundation in almost any language you can think of! This is a free app.

Notebook: As someone who really struggles with organization this app is a lifesaver! I can’t just have a list of links or PDFs filled with resources— I need some sort of rhyme or reason to the mess. Notebook is amazing in the sense that you can create an individual notebook for each section (and make cute little covers for them!) and add virtually whatever you want to them. You can do handwritten notes (which is great if you have an iPad with an Apple Pencil) or typed notes/lists, and even URLs if you don’t have the info immediately typed up (I love adding URLs to helpful posts from Tumblr so that I have them saved for future reference). You can even lock notes for added privacy. There are lots of features to this app so I promise it’s amazing! This is a free app.

Tinycards: This kind of goes hand in hand with Duolingo. The words you encounter in lessons will be readily available on this app for you to study! Love it! This is a free app.

Quizlet: Great app that you can work on memorizing phrases (or literally anything else) that you can make more personalized to your learning style. Also, you can search through tons of premade sets from just about any topic if that’s what you prefer. This is a free app.

Wordreference: Hands down, best dictionary app I’ve used. I utilize this primarily when I am practicing Spanish, French, or Italian but there are TONS of other languages to choose from. It gives context for the words, slang, and even phrases containing that word. It really is a comprehensive dictionary. This is a free app.

Books: If you have an iPhone, this comes built into your phone. I use this to download PDFs and read them in an easy-to-view setting. I primarily use it to download books in my target language, but you can download just about anything you want to read. This is a free app.

Notability: This app not only is amazing for language learning but for regular school as well. It is designed to work with the Apple iPad and Apple Pencil, where you can take handwritten notes on blank, lined, graph, etc paper. You can even download templates (calendars, agendas, etc) or PDFs to markup/write on. I use this a lot for Russian because I download a visual of the Cyrillic alphabet and practice writing the letters right on the PDF. This is also great if you download worksheets for yourself because it’s easy to fill out. You can also type and audio record, along with a million other cool features. I can’t say enough great things about this app. Highly recommend. This app costs $8.99.

Pinterest: Kind of an odd resource I know, but I find lots of cute templates for studying or even language worksheets on here. It has tons of PDFs that could be super helpful. This is a free app.

So that concludes my list of apps that I use to study languages, although I’m sure there are some that I’m forgetting, and in that case I’ll edit them in later. This is a very general list because it’s meant to help people who are studying any language, not just the ones I study. I also am open to suggestions about any apps you would recommend and please feel free to make your own post about this and tag me in it! Hope this was helpful!

-S