fox: linguistics-related IPA (linguistics)
fox ([personal profile] fox) wrote2003-05-08 11:53 am

russian!

yay, i got a summer FLAS, long after the deadline (ssh!), so i'll be here in (blazing-hot) central virginia studying russian for six hours a day all summer (well, eight weeks). twelve undergraduate credits, which i don't need, and two years' worth of russian, 75% of which i've had before, but (a) i've lost most of it and (b) stipend, so why fight it?

still hope to hit Nimbus in july (before the russian is finished) and the stratford festival in august (afterward).

have just tried to write out a sentence in cyrillic script. in english, i print -- i print fast, and things run together a lot, but it's not writing, to people who make the distinction between writing and printing-by-hand. i barely write my signature. when i started taking russian in college, we were by turns discouraged and outright forbidden from printing in cyrillic, so it wasn't long before cyrillic=writing had transposed in my head to writing=cyrillic. if i tried to write an english sentence in cursive, russian letters would come out of my pen. this was fine, since i never needed to write cursive in english; it kept things neatly sorted in my poor right-brained little mind.

but now, dude, i'm trying to write in russian, and nutty things are happening. the letters are looking like the cyrillic alphabet having an identity crisis. if, as was the case in my english school, points are taken off for having too many things crossed out? i'm going down, man.

(the sentence, for those of you who care -- [waves to [livejournal.com profile] sithdragn!] -- was one of [livejournal.com profile] darthrami's favorites: ya ochen' lyublyu govorit' po-russkiy, a ya nikogda nye znayu shto skazat', which looks ridiculous in the roman alphabet; 'i really like to speak russian, but i never know what to say'.)

will dig out old textbook and try to learn case endings ahead of time, so they don't run me off the rails when i hit them in june.

[identity profile] darthrami.livejournal.com 2003-05-08 09:15 am (UTC)(link)
(the sentence, for those of you who care -- [waves to sithdragn!] -- was one of darthrami's favorites: ya ochen' lyublyu govorit' po-russkiy, a ya nikogda nye znayu shto skazat', which looks ridiculous in the roman alphabet; 'i really like to speak russian, but i never know what to say'.)

Hehehe. So silly. Were I at home, I'd be able to type that for you, but I never d/led the cyrillic fonts and drivers on to my work computer. You'll do fine. You'll do better than I will on my final on Monday... and I have to take my orals with the guy who wrote the text book. ::sigh:: Golosa, my ass.

[identity profile] darthrami.livejournal.com 2003-05-08 10:20 am (UTC)(link)
Я люблю говорить по русский, но я никогда не знаю что сказать.

or my favourite, for a short while, during my freshman year -

У меня слон в чимодане.

Although next monday, I'll have to be writing things like

Как приготовить макароны с сыром.

[identity profile] darthfox.livejournal.com 2003-05-08 10:31 am (UTC)(link)
ya ochen' lyublyu, dude. :-)

and for those of you watching from the gallery, rami's other sentences are u menya slon v chimodanye 'i have a (elephant? i forget) in my suitcase' and kak prigotovit' makaroni s suirom, 'how to prepare macaroni with cheese'.
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[identity profile] sithdragn.livejournal.com 2003-05-09 07:19 am (UTC)(link)
Wah! I want Kyrillic on my computer. Stupid Win98. I've spent hours trying to install it. :-P

[identity profile] darthrami.livejournal.com 2003-05-09 08:07 am (UTC)(link)
Wah! I want Kyrillic on my computer. Stupid Win98. I've spent hours trying to install it.

Hrmmm. I've got Windows98 and didn't have any problem installing it... is it coming up with an error or anything? Can I help? I like to help. :-D
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[identity profile] sithdragn.livejournal.com 2003-05-12 05:20 pm (UTC)(link)
I'd love it! I spent several hours one Saturday trying to load it, but I was obviously doing something wrong. :P

I'm working on a huge art project at the moment, but at the end of the month I should have time to tackle this. Can I catch you in email or in chat then?

[identity profile] darthrami.livejournal.com 2003-05-12 06:49 pm (UTC)(link)
I'd love it! I spent several hours one Saturday trying to load it, but I was obviously doing something wrong. :P

Aw, it's no biggy. Actually, I ended up learning how to do it way back when (read: my sophmore year - 1998) from the chair of our department, who wrote our textbook. He would hold little mini-tutorials. And the only reason he knew so much was because, well, he had used all that to write a textbook.

I'm working on a huge art project at the moment, but at the end of the month I should have time to tackle this. Can I catch you in email or in chat then?

No problem. Just drop me a line whenever you're ready boothgal@yahoo.com or OORamiusOo on IM.
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And two months later...

[identity profile] sithdragn.livejournal.com 2003-06-30 08:56 pm (UTC)(link)
I think I did it! Thanks for your offer, but I think I got it. :)

Re: And two months later...

[identity profile] darthrami.livejournal.com 2003-07-01 07:23 am (UTC)(link)
I'm glad you figured it out. :-) There are also different fonts out there available for download, if you don't like your computer's default cyrillic font. I just got a new computer about a month ago, and finally got around to installing the drivers. But it was definitely much simpler with XP than with 98.

[identity profile] mearagrrl.livejournal.com 2003-05-08 10:56 am (UTC)(link)
Yay good things--what's a "summer FLAS"?

[identity profile] darthfox.livejournal.com 2003-05-08 12:59 pm (UTC)(link)
summer FLAS = summer foreign language area scholarship. yay!

[identity profile] darthhellokitty.livejournal.com 2003-05-08 11:22 am (UTC)(link)
Of course, whenever I think of Russian, I think of Krycek from X-Files -- hope you can come up with some fine double-agent sentences! ;-)
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[identity profile] sithdragn.livejournal.com 2003-05-09 07:23 am (UTC)(link)
Russian is such a beautiful, amazing language. Now that I'm working on a campus I've though of taking classes. Will have to see. In the mean time, I'm going to be taking notes on yours and darthrami's phonetics.

And darn, I learned how to say 'fuck off' and 'nice ass!' last night (see the education one gets in MFU fandom? heh), and now I've forgotten already. Asbeti? Abeti? *makes note to look up*