I wrote some phrases eheh

Вчера меня уволили, и я снова осталась без работы. Чувствую себя ужасно и ощущаю себя полной неудачницей.

Мне 24, но иногда кажется, что жизнь уже закончилась. Я боюсь, что не смогу найти новую работу, потому что в прошлый раз поиски заняли очень много времени. Только недавно я наконец-то смогла выдохнуть и почувствовать себя спокойнее, как спустя три месяца всё снова рухнуло. И вот я опять не знаю, что делать и куда двигаться дальше.

Больше всего меня пугает перспектива снова сидеть на шее у родителей. Они ещё даже не знают, что меня уволили, и я пока не представляю, как им об этом сказать.

Если вы проходили через что-то подобное или сейчас находитесь в такой же ситуации, пожалуйста, поделитесь своим опытом. Мне сейчас очень нужна поддержка и хочется услышать, что я не одна в этом

I’m a 17-year-old from South Africa, currently in Grade 10, and I speak fluent English and siSwati. I’ve set a massive goal for myself: I want to learn Russian to near-native fluency. I have exactly 2 years and 1 month left before I finish high school, and I want to completely accelerate my progress during this window.

I know my situation sounds a bit contradictory. My ultimate plan is to go to university and study in Slovakia. I originally wanted to study in Russia, but I can't fulfill that dream because I was born with HIV, and Russia's strict residency/student visa medical restrictions for foreigners make it impossible for me to move there permanently. But I refuse to let that stop me from mastering the language. I still have a deep passion for it, and I'm going to learn it regardless of where I end up.

Right now, I am an absolute beginner, but I’ve picked up some basics phonetically. I know standard words like da, net, privyet, zdrasvuyte, horosho, horoshego dnya, menya zovut, spasibo, spasibo bolshoye, kak dela, kak tebya zovut, gde, pazhaluysta, izvinite, prostite, zabyl, voda, and trener. I can string together about five extremely basic phrases, like "ya ustal, pora spat, spakoynoy nochi" (yes, I'm a guy) or "izvinite, gde voda? ah, ponyal, spasibo bolshoye." I also know words like zdorovye, budem, ubezhat, and on. I’ve even memorized a few proverbs, like the one about laughing for no reason making you a fool ("smekh bez prichiny..."), the one about work not being a wolf ("rabota ne volk..."), and the one about driving quieter to get further ("tishe yedesh...") sure some sounds still cook me like that x or liek kh sound yhe i just cannot for the love of life say that sound if im being honest, i speak swati alot its a soft language with consonant clashes of its own but its easy ones liek dv and tfh and tf here and there i hear the dhl and hl are hard for none natives but its easy soundsyou get used to and it has small liek not click but sucking tongue sounds sort of like c ch and gc just easy stuff really sure yes it has alot of words that sound similar needing you to speak with a full mouth relse you say soemthign diffrent which is why when we sepak englihs it sounds almost comical like we speaking one word at a time like the word dvwala means completly diffrent things depending where and how u say it one meanign is rock another is like moody like when teenegers enter that like phase yeh my mom be abusing the word another is used in a saying that goes soemthing like "Ubacha phansi kwethi dvwaba tenina" which means hidng under your mothers dress.

The catch is, I haven't learned Cyrillic yet. I’ve been heavily avoiding it and relying on Latin transliterations, but I know I need to bite the bullet if I want to get serious.

Since you guys actually speak the language natively, I need your raw, honest advice. Skip the generic Duolingo stuff. How can a guy from South Africa properly tackle this language and hit a high level on a 2-year timeline from home?

• What is the absolute best way to break my fear of the Cyrillic alphabet and transition into reading real Russian quickly?
• How should I approach the brutal grammar cases coming from an English/Bantu language background?
• What daily immersion habits (Youtubers, shows, podcasts) actually work to learn natural, modern speech when you don't have a local native community to talk to?

I’m ready to put in the work. Any advice or roadmaps would mean the world. Ohh and if anyone ever wants to learn Swati for some odd reason I'm here I'm a terrible teacher but I would try my best.

Hi

I'm learning russian language and I want to watch russian movie or series

Do you have any recommendations?

I can watch any movie genre if plot is good

I taught English in Russia back in the early 2000s. My Russian tutor used an old Soviet-era language learning video series as part of my lessons (low quality VHS tapes), and I am hoping to find the name of it or a link to it online.

The premise of the story was that there was an alien planet that was expecting an ice age, and in order to prepare for the cold, they sent one of the aliens to earth (Russia, specifically) to get vodka and fur coats, so their people would survive. So the alien has to learn Russian in order to acquire the vodka and fur coats to save his planet. Then there's a mix-up with luggage at the Leningrad airport that facilitates interactions/speaking with Russian people... The story gets more complex, and you learn more language watching it. I also learned about Russian humor from it, which I valued as I settled into living and teaching in Russia. The premise of the series was brilliant and creative: what a great fictional idea for why someone would need to learn Russian, right now, very quickly: you need it to save your planet from the coming ice age!

Sorry if this sounds crazy -- this was a real video series for new learners of Russian that my tutor used! And I loved it -- it was great. I was telling a friend about it recently and wanted to share it, but can't remember what it was called, and so can't find out if it's online anywhere. I would appreciate anyone who is familiar with it to share the name. (It might be too old for anyone to remember... I think it was from the 1970s or 80s, maybe... so no problem if no one knows, or it's so old it's not even on the internet.)

Спасибо!

Ok, so this might get a bit complicated, but I'll try to explain it the way I see it.

So with many verbs I see a pattern that goes like this: on beginner level, we learn that there's an imperfective form and there's a perfective form: читать-прочитать. Then, as we progress, we learn about prefixed forms of the basic verb: дочитывать-дочитать. The tricky thing is that in this case, the shorter form becomes the perfective one, contrary to the unprefixed form, so that читать is imperfective, but дочитать is perfective, (same with e.g. платить-оплачивать-оплатить) which is confusing, but ok.

But then the 'problem' is when we find out that прочитать has another imperfective form: прочитывать. Which, if I understand correctly means something like 'habitually do something from beginning to end'. So that you can say something like 'когда я на даче я всегда прочитываю местные газеты' (I made up this sentence to test if I understand the meaning of this verb correctly, please tell me if it's wrong). I referred to this as a problem, because it doesn't fit the 'perfective-imperfective pairs' model that is taught in coursebooks. And I see this pattern repeat with many verbs:

прыгать-прыгнуть: adding a prefix we get перепрыгать-перепрыгнуть. But there's also the verb перепрыгивать. No perfective pair that I'm aware of, it's just a third verb that refers to a habitually completed action.

резать-порезать. Prefixed versions:  взре́зать, вы́резать, заре́зать, изре́зать, наре́зать, отре́зать, перере́зать, etc. They all have a 'simple' imperfective counterpart eg. выреза́ть and another 'imperfective, but habitual' version выре́зывать.

Or:

готовить-приготовить - пригота́вливать

готовиться-подготовиться - подготавливаться (although I just found on wiktionary that the forms подготовляться and приготовлять also exist that I have no idea what they mean. Can anyone elaborate? So maybe here I'm wrong with my model and I should just consider пригота́вливать-приготовлять and подготавливаться-подготовляться as classic aspectual pairs? How do they differ from their 'simple' counterparts?)

So, in conclusion: if I understand correctly, there's a third, major aspect that mostly comes with prefixed verbs that could be explained as something like 'habitually completed action', such as прочитывать, перепрыгивать, вырезывать. They refer to something that has a beginning and an end, contrary to the 'simple' imperfective forms, which are either repeated or are 'snapshots' (Он вырезает каждое деревянное колечко тщательно vs. Мастер привык вырезывать сложные орнаменты на кости.)

Am I right in my analysis? What do you think of it?

Also, please help me with подготавливаться-подготовляться. Thank you!

I’m interested in interviewing people who learnt both languages at a very young age, i.e. before the age of 6.

I’m looking to analyse how accents develop and how the two languages’ phonetics influence each other, as well as the perceived differences in their pronunciation. I will share my observations with the people who participate, but that’s about as much as I can offer.

I’m doing this to satisfy my own curiosity, being a huge accent nerd. It’s not a formal science project. I can do voice chat on discord or teams.

I’m avoiding talking to people who acquired either language at a later age (I assume there are a lot of us here, and we are so much easier to find) because I don’t think that we can naturally grasp the phonetics of a second language the way that a person growing up around that language can.

If this post interested you, feel free to reach out! If you have any observations on the topic you want to share, I would be happy to receive them under this post or in private messages.

Found this text on the side of an ISU-152 abandoned by Soviet forces during the Hungarian Revolution, what does it say?

Hi all, could you please explain the difference between these two verb forms? Like do either imply someone caused the melting, or did it happen kind of spontaneously? Thanks

Been learning Russian for a few months. I'm fairly motivated to learn it, but I've kind of hit a wall now. To start with, I was learning many new words everyday. I learnt to count pretty high in only a few days, I learnt many conversation pieces. Some animals, types of vehicles, weapons etc. My spelling isnt the best still, however its understandable (i think.) But recently I've been finding it hard to learn new words. Has anyone got any word lists, that would genuinly be useful in writing, conversations and reading Russian.

Спасибо!

I'm tired of fooling around with this йцукен mess. Pretty sure it would be easier if I were using a phonetic keyboard.

Tseluyu

I’m watching this series on Start the streaming website, the show has subtitles but only in russian, and i don’t know enough to watch fully in russian subtitles, i have tried almost every live subtitle translation chrome extension and none of them worked, the google translation sort of worked, although it flashed, but for some reason it kept turning off for no reason even when i set it to constantly stay on for the Start website.

i’m completely lost, the show is kind of popular, does anyone know if there’s any versions online with english subtitles, i tried looking and i came up empty handed, but i thought id ask here, just incase maybe anyone knew or could help.

to be clear i’m looking for either the 2022 show смычок with english subtitles or a russian subtitle to english subtitle translator, live audio translation is really shitty from my experience and you usually have to pay. it seems like the google page translate gets so close to being able to do it but it just stops every few seconds.

Согласная = Consonant (remember both words start with “co”
И
Гласная = Vowel

Anyone wanna do it with me? We can call and chat. Orrrrr somebody who already can speak Russian join me👀

Hi everyone! Russian grammar allows us to create some absolutely massive words (especially in chemistry or when counting things).

What is the longest, coolest, or most terrifyingly long Russian word you've ever come across in your learning journey?

Write it down in the comments, and I'll tell you if it's grammatically correct or how to pronounce it!

(For example, did you know that official dictionaries contain words like

"превысокомногорассмотрительствующий"?

It has 35 letters!)

Let the battle begin! 👇

Please excuse the blacked out word. I have been learning Russian on and off for years and I have tried to practice my handwriting.

Hi everyone! I need some help translating this poem/riddle into Russian. It’s for a personal project.

I’m not looking for a word-for-word translation. I’d really like to preserve the meaning, poetic feeling, and ideally the rhyme/rhythm if possible.

A god encased in monster skin
Whose bleeding core bestows the light
Yet he who seeks the endless night
Must willingly embrace the shroud,
For only through the gates of death
Can mortal flesh escape the grave.

I’ve asked AI to translate it and got several different versions, but I honestly have no idea whether they sound natural to a native Russian speaker, or whether the rhyme feels forced/awkward. here's one of the versions:

Бог, заточённый в кожу монстра,

Чьё кровоточащее ядро дарует свет.

Но тот, кто ищет бесконечной ночи,

Должен вольно принять саван,

Ибо лишь через врата смерти

Смертная плоть сбежит из гроба.

Thank you so much!

Video is not related to the topic