АААААА книги, которые я заказал прибыли сегодня!!!! Они такие красивые, не могу на них наглядеться :0

Hiii I've recently started being active here again but my dash is painfully empty of language learning posts so please interact if you post about:

Daily vocab 🌱

недоверие - distrust

наколка - tattoo

тревога - anxiety

угроза - threat, danger

[Кого/что] воспринимать [кем/чем] - to perceive [someone] as [something]

карать - to punish

намерение - intention

поражаться [чему] - to be amazed by [something]

отчётливо - clearly, visibly

чудаковатость - oddity, strangeness

So my thesis is on Slavic-Romanian-Hungarian etymological connections and so far I have quite a good amount of Romanian sources, the Hungarian ones are pretty promising too, but I can't for the life of me find any Russian books on the topic 😭

If anyone happens to know texts in Russian that work with vocab of Slavic origin in eastern and middle European languages, I'd be so so happy to receive some recommendations! Please and thank you :')

Some vocab from today!!

пещера (сущ. ж.) - cave

чугунный (прил.) - cast iron

нарочно (нареч.) - purposely, deliberately

обрыв (сущ. м.) -cliff, precipice

перебить (гл. св.) - to interrupt

неодобрение (сущ. ср.) - disapproval

крайне (нареч.) - extremely

листва (сущ. ж.) - foliage

завернутый (прич.) - wrapped, covered (in something)

копьё (сущ. ср.) - spear

крюк (сущ. м.) - hook

повод (сущ. м.) - occasion, reason, excuse

схватить (гл. св.) / схватывать (нсв.) - to grab, grasp

Rating/reviewing my Russian lit compulsory readings (Part 1)

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (Евгений Замятин - Мы) 8.5/10

I had a lot of fun with this one!!! I was actually surprised by how much it pulled me in and how much I enjoyed it, I finished it in two days and I usually read really slow. If you like 1984 by Orwell, this was what inspired it so you can expect something very similar in vibe and themes. There's racism in the descriptions of one character and it really irked me so that's what made my rating drop a bit.

Red Cavalry by Isaac Babel (Исаак Бабель - Конармия) 6/10

It was not bad but not to my tastes, it's a short story collection and some of them I liked, some I didn't enjoy as much. It's quite gruesome at parts in the "realities of war" kinda way so if you don't take those topics well, I don't recommend.

The master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (Михаил Булгаков - Мастер и Маргарита) 9.5/10

I loved it!!! I know it's a big classic and I actually read it many years ago and now that it's required for class I only leafed through it again, but still it's among my faves. It's suspenseful, the story and the characters are all great, overall just such a good read. Not giving a 10 only bc I rarely give a perfect rating to anything vsjdgskgdjd

Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov (Владимир Набоков - Приглашение на казнь) 8.5/10

I read this back in high school too but it was really fun to freshen up my memories about it, it's quite a condensed and hard read if you ask me, as it's very surreal and philosophical, but it's very good! If I had to describe it in one expression, it would be fever dream.

Liompa by Yury Olesha (Юрий Олеша - Лиомпа) 7.5/10

It's just one short story but I decided I'd rate anything longer than two pages so here we go. It was fun and I really liked the atmosphere of it, it gave peace of home (other than the obvious theme of dying gdksgskdhjs).

Vocab tip from my Russian teacher

If you wanna turn passive vocab into active, put the words into example sentences and write them on sticky notes. Put them up all around the house where you spend much time and read them when you're there

Make the sentences weird/unusual/interesting like if your word is "bus", the sentence should be smth like "the bus caught fire" and not "the bus arrived"

To this day I don't understand when the Russian plural ending has to be "a". Like 90% of times I get it right on intuition but like what's the rule there

Learning Russian fucked up my perception of vowels in every language I literally just tried to read Korean with and "unstressed 어"

Weekly Russian vocab 1.

visual arts

(For verbs, the imperfective forms will be in normal text, and the perfective in italics)

искусство - (n) art

изобразительное искусство - (n) visual art

художник - (n) artist

живопись - (n) painting (as in, the act of painting)

Живописец - (n) painter

картина - (n) painting (as in, the result)

рисовать, нарисовать - (v) to draw/to paint

рисовать/писать, написать картины - (v) to paint pictures

краска - (n) paint/dye

красить, выкрасить - (v) to dye

бумага - (n) paper

карандаш - (n) pencil

уголь - (n) charcoal/coal

угольный карандаш - (n) charcoal pencil

графит - (n) graphite

ластик - (n) eraser

акварель/акварельные краски - (n) watercolour

кисть - (n, f) paintbrush

палитра - (n) palette

цветовая палитра - (n) colour palette

холст - (n) canvas

мольберт - (n) easel

лепить, вылепить - (v) to sculpt

скульптор - (n) sculptor

скульптура - (n) sculpture

глина - (n) clay

выставка - (n) exhibition

художественная галерея - (n) art gallery

Something that worked for me in Russian so might work in other languages too that have a complicated case system:

Don't learn it like cases, learn it like specific situations in the language

Like, "when I'm expressing possession, I have to use this suffix" instead of "genitive case is used in possessive structures, after certain numbers, and after [so and so] prepositions and verbs" for example

Gonna start choosing a topic and posting russian vocab about it each week! My vocab needs a lot of improvement and this seems like the most fun way to do it rn

Since I'm not native Russian, I'll probably gonna make some mistakes for which I apologise and please correct me if you notice any <3

Appreciation post for the way music in foreign languages sounds!! I'm absolutely in love with how you notice the rhythm and melody of the words so much more easily in languages that you don't understand perfectly yet. They aren't so closely tied to their meanings, so even if you understand them, you can better appreciate the musicality in the lyrics and imo that's beautiful

How to get good at pronunciation

Some of these you might already do, some not, but I hope it helps a bit!!

Listen to lots of music

And not just listen, read the lyrics (you can also use this opportunity to learn new words) and say them! Sing them, read them out, mutter under your breath on public transport, try to mimic the exact way the singer says it, try to get your mouth accustomed to the way the words are shaped.

Listen to podcasts, if possible

This makes you more accustomed to the sound of the language as it is in an everyday context. In music, people often give words a different rhythm than natural, or slur their speech and omit syllables, so podcasts can help provide you with more "usual" speech too.

Study phonetics

Actually take a book on phonetics and study it, with rules and exceptions and preferably audio example.

Every time you learn a new word, check the pronunciation

This goes especially for languages with inconsistent pronunciation or where the stress changes the word a lot! Listen to the Google/Yandex translate audio of it, or check wiktionary, and try to say it out loud too. Sounds frustrating and pointless but does genuinely help

When you encounter a new word, don't type it into the translator, use voice recognition instead

Say the word until it recognises, check the meaning and the correct pronunciation, and if you were wrong at first, say it a few times out loud again. This helps build your intuition about correct pronunciation

If it's possible, ask the opinion of native speakers

They can give you feedback and point out any consistent mistakes, it helped me more than I expected

Talk as much as you can!

Remember, practice makes perfect

Most importantly, remember that it's okay to have an accent and it sounds really pretty :]

Most native speakers find it pretty if you have an accent in their language! The main goal is just to be understood, your accent doesn't make you bad at the language. Keep up the amazing work 💜

Pro tip for people starting to study Russian: instead of Google use Yandex translate, it's like a thousand times better if translating from Russian to English or vice versa

Had a pretty day so decided to end it with some vocab taken from song lyrics <3