This is the Message Centre for Gubernatrix

Russian

Post 1

puzzlella (playing word games, solving puzzles)

Do you know there is a very good on-line Russian course? You can access it through the BBC or add it to your favourites once you've found it.smiley - smiley


Russian

Post 2

Gubernatrix

Well, I'm doing one offline but I may check it out. Do you have a link? Or a name?


Russian

Post 3

puzzlella (playing word games, solving puzzles)

http://www.thealegreen.org.uk/langs/russian.htm


Russian

Post 4

Uncle Heavy [sic]

nooooooooooo! dont do it! you have too much to live for! its a hideous language!


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Post 5

Gubernatrix

Too late! I'm doing it already. I have my first little exams this month! Eek - can't remember how to do exams. Oh well.

Niychevo.


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Post 6

Uncle Heavy [sic]

i remember my russian GCSE. i did it after 2 years. i knew about 60 words and couldnt use the dictionary cos i didnt know the alphabet. i have no idea how i scraped an A. its an evil language of no use in this world.


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Post 7

Gubernatrix

That's a funny attitude to have about a language that is spoken across half of Europe and Central Asia. So its true about the parlous state of GCSEs then?


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Post 8

Uncle Heavy [sic]

pah! its spoken by a country way past its prime and usefulness thats descending gently into anarchy. if you ignore it, its not there.

gcses are a waste of life.


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Post 9

Gubernatrix

Lordy lord! Russian is the first or second language in about 20 countries (maybe more - I just did a quick mental count).

Russia has problems but is not descending into anarchy - that's just what people say who know nothing about it. In the early nineties the press was overrun with stories about the Russian mafia and old nuclear silos. Now the stories have dried up and no-one reports on the country any more, so that is the impression most people have been left with, not realising that a) it is ten years old news, and b) it was never the whole story in the first place.

And nobody is ignoring Central Asia and the republics of the former USSR. There are oil fields and pipelines, terrorists, factionalism, and political power struggles going on in the region. America, Russia and China are all fighting for the biggest piece of the pie. If you wanted to be where the action is going to be in the next few years, I'd go there.


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Post 10

Uncle Heavy [sic]

bah. i know several russians and they are not complimentary about their country at all. it just sounds rather grotty, is all. especially in the east.

i have most problems with the language, however, which is archaic and not a little rubbish


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Post 11

Gubernatrix

>>bah. i know several russians and they are not complimentary about their country at all.

Yes, I'm sure. I know a lot of people (myself included) who can be very uncomplimentary about Britain too. In fact, I didn't think I was being particularly complimentary about Russia in my comments. What interests me about Russia is the huge changes being wrought in society and the uncertainty about which way various issues are going to go. That's why I think its an interesting place to be.

>>it just sounds rather grotty, is all.

Yes, well. London is extremely grotty compared to some other cities in Europe (go to Stockholm or Copenhagen and you'll see what I mean). In fact, the latest edition of the Lonely Planet guide to London goes on about how dirty the streets are. It is also interesting that British travellers abroad score very low on the politeness scale - Americans and Australians are deemed to be the most friendly and polite travellers.

I'm sure that there are parts of the largest country in the world that are "grotty", due to industrialisation, effects of Soviet rule, poverty etc. There are also places that are stunningly beautiful. There's generally a lot less rubbish and waste on the streets due to the fact that there's a lot less convenience products, fast food etc, and Russians tend to avoid chucking stuff around.

I was in St Petersburg for new year a couple of years ago, where everyone was out partying in the streets. The next morning, all that could be seen were a few champagne bottles lying around. Compare that to Charing Cross Road on an average Saturday night, which is absolutely foul, with food, packaging, vomit, urine and beer cans strewn all around.

If you don't go somewhere because you think it sounds grotty, you are going to spend your life in a bubble, only holidaying in posh resorts, or in the wealthy centres of cities. That's your prerogative. But you won't find out how people actually live, and you won't realise that there is a difference between the sort of 'grottiness' caused by inadequate buildings or huge industrial complexes and pollution, and the sort of 'grottiness' caused by people just throwing stuff around because they expect someone else to clean it up. Have you been to LA? The pollution there is terrible.

>>i have most problems with the language, however, which is archaic and not a little rubbish

I understand that you obviously didn't have a good experience learning Russian. But its not archaic, I find that a very strange comment.


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Post 12

Bels - an incurable optimist. A1050986

The Russian language is rubbish? Then it must have changed an awful lot since Pushkin, Tolstoi, Yevtushenko, Solzhenitsyn used it to express their finest thoughts in world-class and Nobel-winning literature! Try reading some, even in translation, then marvel at how such a rubbish language could translate into such fine literature.


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Post 13

Uncle Heavy [sic]

its grammatically archaic. a sign of an old fasioned language is how its verbs are used, and how it declines.

it has a lot of cases, and many adjectival agreements.

the big sign are the moving verbs. while we in english 'go' with an adverb, the russians cant do this so easily, and have many separate motion verbs, none of which i can remember...

i wasnt talking about the literature bels, i was talking about the language. hence my use of the word 'language' rather than the word 'literature', which im sure is as beautiful as any literature from that period that any other country has produced. sadly, however, i find the romantic period in the arts (art, music, writing) not to be of my taste, but thats just by the by. smiley - smiley


Russian

Post 14

Bels - an incurable optimist. A1050986

Oh, but the literature is written in the language, so you can't say the literature is fine but the language it's written in is rubbish. That would be like saying, 'that's a great painting but the colours are rubbish'. And Solzhenitsyn and Yevtushenko are not exactly romatic period. smiley - erm


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Post 15

The One And Only Juno Thundercat (The Patron Saint of Ham Sandwiches)

I did Russian GCSE summer 2002 and got an A!

smiley - angelsmiley - spork


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Post 16

Uncle Heavy [sic]

quite true. those two unspellable authors you mention arent. i concede that. however, i would argue that the literature you speak of is good despite, not because of the language.

as you yourself pointed out, reading it in translation shows how great it is...this requires no knowledge of the russian language, and thus the books do not require the language to be good. smiley - winkeye

i got an A in my gcse. that didnt stop it from being a living hell smiley - winkeye


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Post 17

Gubernatrix

>>its grammatically archaic.

Ah, I see what you mean. I though when you said it was just 'archaic' that you were putting it on a linguistic par with languages like Old Prussian, Sudovian, Old Church Slavonic, Old Irish etc.

Russian is certainly a modern language, but you are right in that it preserves certain grammatical elements that other Indo-European languages, particularly English and the Romance languages have dropped, such as the dative, instrumental and locative cases. The Slavic and Baltic languages remain more highly inflected than some other European language types.

I have no idea what having lots of verbs of motion implies, so I'll take it that you're right on this.


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Post 18

Gubernatrix

>>the books do not require the language to be good.

Dearie me, I'm sure there are translators the world over who would be very disappointed if they thought that their art was perceived simply as translating the meaning of a sentence at its most basic level. When Bels says "even in translation" (note the 'even') I am sure he is thinking of translations that make an attempt to render the style of the writing as it pertains to that particular language, not just the basic meaning.


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Post 19

Uncle Heavy [sic]

blah blah blah so im talking out of my arse. it usually works with people, but only ones who dont know so much about *everything*, curse you smiley - nahnah

first rule of bullsh*t: pick your battles


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Post 20

Gubernatrix

>>talking out of my arse

That's ok, basically that's what everyone does on this site (some more often than others!).

In fact, one surefire way to tell roughly how old someone might be, is to notice the way they 'pick their battles'. It's not a case of older being wiser, more a case of older being wilier.


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