Every few years I tell myself I am going to learn the Russian, Greek and Hebrew alphabets. I print them out and look at them for several minutes. I stick one up on the wall. I lose the other two. Whatever success I have, a year later I've forgotten it all. This year will be different.
This year I am learning Russian on Duolingo. I am trying to use the transliteration into a 'sensible' and recognisable alphabet. But every now and then the system plays a trick on me and asks me to translate this - all in goobledegookic.
I decided the only way to learn it was to try to teach it to somebody else. I would head my blog post, easy way to learn Russian. Then I thought, I must print off the alphabet first. I did that.
That's easy. Just go to Wikipedia.
Oddly enough, I could remember the first five letters from somewhere:
alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon ..... Was that from learning Greek, or Hebrew?
At my bible classes at weekends as a child I learned the letters S and SH were like W with a dot above the left line for S and above the right line for Sh.
When you see them written alphabetically it's easy to recognize
gamma and delta,
to spot that after K comes the funny L;
after M comes N but written as H.
After P is S - written as C.
After T is U written like Y.
But when you come across the letters in the middle of words it is harder.
Then I thought, let's try easy way to learn Russian. Guess what. Ten years ago nobody had done it. Now there are at least three sites. I struck gold, or rather easy cyrillic (same thing) with the first one I tried.
SAME LETTERS
Let's start with the easy letters.
No trouble recognising letters which are the same in English and Russian:
A, K, M, O, T.
B in Russian looks like a small letter , or lower case, b.
C - is C always with as S sound as in city. (Gadling suggests the word cite, perhaps more unusual and memorable, but I am using as my memory aid city, a more usual word.)
GREEK STYLE
Gatling must be American because he uses the terms frat guys and sorority girls. I think that means graduate/undergraduate guys and graduate/undergraduate/college girls. He says they will know four letters, which I presume are used as names for houses or college clubs or university associations.
In England we would be more inclined to say, those of you who have done maths A level will remember the signs for 'pie' and 'phi'.
VISUAL MEMORY AIDS
G
Gamma looks like a capital T with the left side of the horizontal missing.
I made my own visual aid. I drew the right side of the T in heavy ink and very lightly went over it to create the capital G.
R
I took a P and added a faint line to turn in into an R.
P
The squared off arch for the Pi, had the left hand side elongated to make a P.
F
I drew the bold letter F with a circle over the top half.
That's for me or you in a visual mode. If that doesn't work, or needs reinforcing, try a memory aid word.
VERBAL MEMORY AIDS
The Russian P is an R. So I say PR (public relations). PR - P is R.
N
H is N. So I remember HeN. H is N.
U
Y is u/oo. so I remember YoU - y is 'you' or 'u'.
V
B is V so BV Beverley, B is V.
T
Backwards N is T - nit. Backward N is T.
D
Russian D looks like a grand door.
L
I was having trouble with the letter L.
It has a full letter height curve on the left connecting to the Top of a letter I with a tiny link across the top. It looks like a drunk leaning on a lamp post or a dog lifting its leg against a lamp post.
Z
The Russian z looks like a capital 3. Think of three zebras.
I printed off:
http://gadling.com/2009/03/30/gadling -teaches-you-to-read-the-cyrrilic-alphabet-in-5-minutes
I am waiting for the Greek and Hebrew to be finished by DuoLingo before the end of the year, they promise. Then I shall learn the Greek and Hebrew alphabets. (On second thoughts, I don't need to wait. I can learn the alphabets in preparation.
PS
The best way to practise the language is to go to the countries using a foreign alphabet such as Greece, Israel, Russian and many others using the Cyrillic alphabet. I have more posts on Cyrillic. Pick up a bilingual magazine, photograph bilingual items which have to be left on the plane, look for pages with a handy bilingual word list.
To fly to these countries check the national and budget airlines:
http://www.aeroflot.com/ru-en (Russian)
www.budgetair.co.uk
www.bulgaria-air.co.uk/
www.ryanair.com
https://www.cheapflights.co.uk/find-flights/to-Ukraine
If Cyrillic is too hard, try Romania which used the Latin alphabet.
www.tarom (Budget airline to Romania.)
Please follow me and share links to your favourite posts.
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author, speaker, language teacher.
This year I am learning Russian on Duolingo. I am trying to use the transliteration into a 'sensible' and recognisable alphabet. But every now and then the system plays a trick on me and asks me to translate this - all in goobledegookic.
I decided the only way to learn it was to try to teach it to somebody else. I would head my blog post, easy way to learn Russian. Then I thought, I must print off the alphabet first. I did that.
That's easy. Just go to Wikipedia.
Oddly enough, I could remember the first five letters from somewhere:
alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon ..... Was that from learning Greek, or Hebrew?
At my bible classes at weekends as a child I learned the letters S and SH were like W with a dot above the left line for S and above the right line for Sh.
When you see them written alphabetically it's easy to recognize
gamma and delta,
to spot that after K comes the funny L;
after M comes N but written as H.
After P is S - written as C.
After T is U written like Y.
But when you come across the letters in the middle of words it is harder.
Then I thought, let's try easy way to learn Russian. Guess what. Ten years ago nobody had done it. Now there are at least three sites. I struck gold, or rather easy cyrillic (same thing) with the first one I tried.
SAME LETTERS
Let's start with the easy letters.
No trouble recognising letters which are the same in English and Russian:
A, K, M, O, T.
B in Russian looks like a small letter , or lower case, b.
C - is C always with as S sound as in city. (Gadling suggests the word cite, perhaps more unusual and memorable, but I am using as my memory aid city, a more usual word.)
GREEK STYLE
Gatling must be American because he uses the terms frat guys and sorority girls. I think that means graduate/undergraduate guys and graduate/undergraduate/college girls. He says they will know four letters, which I presume are used as names for houses or college clubs or university associations.
In England we would be more inclined to say, those of you who have done maths A level will remember the signs for 'pie' and 'phi'.
VISUAL MEMORY AIDS
G
Gamma looks like a capital T with the left side of the horizontal missing.
I made my own visual aid. I drew the right side of the T in heavy ink and very lightly went over it to create the capital G.
R
I took a P and added a faint line to turn in into an R.
P
The squared off arch for the Pi, had the left hand side elongated to make a P.
F
I drew the bold letter F with a circle over the top half.
That's for me or you in a visual mode. If that doesn't work, or needs reinforcing, try a memory aid word.
VERBAL MEMORY AIDS
The Russian P is an R. So I say PR (public relations). PR - P is R.
N
H is N. So I remember HeN. H is N.
U
Y is u/oo. so I remember YoU - y is 'you' or 'u'.
V
B is V so BV Beverley, B is V.
T
Backwards N is T - nit. Backward N is T.
D
Russian D looks like a grand door.
L
I was having trouble with the letter L.
It has a full letter height curve on the left connecting to the Top of a letter I with a tiny link across the top. It looks like a drunk leaning on a lamp post or a dog lifting its leg against a lamp post.
Z
The Russian z looks like a capital 3. Think of three zebras.
I printed off:
http://gadling.com/2009/03/30/gadling -teaches-you-to-read-the-cyrrilic-alphabet-in-5-minutes
I am waiting for the Greek and Hebrew to be finished by DuoLingo before the end of the year, they promise. Then I shall learn the Greek and Hebrew alphabets. (On second thoughts, I don't need to wait. I can learn the alphabets in preparation.
PS
золото
zoloto - gold.
Let me show you what I found. Please Read my other posts.
FLIGHTS
To fly to these countries check the national and budget airlines:
http://www.aeroflot.com/ru-en (Russian)
www.budgetair.co.uk
www.bulgaria-air.co.uk/
www.ryanair.com
https://www.cheapflights.co.uk/find-flights/to-Ukraine
If Cyrillic is too hard, try Romania which used the Latin alphabet.
www.tarom (Budget airline to Romania.)
Please follow me and share links to your favourite posts.
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author, speaker, language teacher.
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