7 Russian Words that are Fun to Roll off Your Tongue

As you may know, the national language of Ukraine is actually Ukrainian. Russian was the official language for over a century, many Ukrainians still speak Russian, especially the older generation and the major cities such as Kyiv. Since Ukraine gained its independence in 1992, Ukrainian has been promoted as the national language across the country.

Ukraine's Independence day is on August 24th.

Every Peace Corps Volunteer serving in Ukraine will either be assigned to learn Russian or Ukrainian during Training. If you have prior Russian language experience, it is most likely that you will be assigned to learn Russian. I have no prior Russian language experience, so I picked up a copy of Rosetta Stone in Russian (a Ukrainian version is not available yet). I've been trying to learn some basic conversational Russian from Rosetta Stone, and so far I've just finished Unit 2, lesson 2 of level 1. I've learned a lot of basic household nouns like random foods and a smattering of other random things that might be useful like the numbers 0-12, the colors, and some family words (parents, mother, father, daughter, sister, brother, etc). Once I get to Ukraine next week, there will be an informal language interview that determines whether I am placed in a Russian or Ukrainian language learning group.

In response to Bianca's blog challenge to me earlier this week, I've come up with a list of 7 Russian words that are fun to roll off your tongue. If you are a student of Russian or a native speaker, please pardon my creative transliterations (I was never any good at pingyin). Here they are the 7 words, in no particular order:

• бутерброд (boot-ter-brod): sandwich

Rolling the double r's in this word was like a tongue twister when I first learned it, especially since I'm not great at rolling my r's (3 years of Spanish classes didn't help much with that).

• хлеб (huleb): bread

This word is interesting because I've found that you have to say it really quickly, otherwise Rosetta Stone gives you the voice recognition fail noise. And for some reason, it reminds me of saying the word tulip.

• яблока (ya-bla-ka): apple

Say it three times fast - yablaka, yablaka, yablaka! It just sounds so playful. This word is very similar to the Russian word for dog - собака (sabaka).

• велосипед (vil-lo-sih-pee-ed): bicycle

This word probably has the most syllables of all the Russian words that I've learned so far... and I think it took me a few days before I could say it confidently enough to pass the Rosetta Stone voice recognition thing for this word. 

• рыба (riba): fish

I've found that words that begin with the rolled r sound are easier for me to pronounce if I add a little ah sound before the r, thus this word becomes arriba! And Rosetta Stone's voice recognition seems to find that pronunciation of fish just fine :P

• шляпа (schleppa): a fedora-style hat

I just like saying this word... and don't really have a good reason why. Schleppa!

• их (ni-gh): their

This word is hard to transliterate, it basically sounds like "ni" with a little bit of an h sound added to the end to make it sound more guttural. I like saying this word because it reminds me of the Knights of Neep, from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

With all the random words in my Russian vocabulary, I'm still working on how to put these nouns and things together in complete sentences and still struggling with the pronunciation on some of the words. Good thing I have a few extra days to practice before I'm totally immersed in the language in Ukraine!

Updated Packing List!

Today I met up with Kseniya, another PCV in the Bay area.We went to lunch in downtown Livermore, which was a quaint few blocks of shops and restaurants that reminded me of Athens, GA. Kseniya is super cool, she just graduated from the University of Hawaii with a degree in Psychology. She is actually a native Russian speaker so I got to practice a little Russian outside of Rosetta Stone with her and her mom.

Kseniya and I went to the local Dollar store for some random stuff, the store turned out to be a treasure trove of goodies with an aisle dedicated to teaching supplies, all for just $1! I bought some small picture frames and framed some postcards, like Sasha (my Peer Advisor) recommended... they look super classy!

Sorry about the flash.

I also picked up a nice map of the United States. I'm not sure why it has all the interstate highways on it, but at least it shows the states and capitals. I trimmed the blue border a little so it fits flat in my suitcase perfectly.

Like the purple shag carpet on the floor of my bedroom?

And since I didn't order the Oatmeal's Semicolon Poster (see this previous blog post), I also bought 2 posters with parts of speech and punctuation for my future classroom.

So in a frenzy of excitement, I sorted though all the clothes that I plan on bringing with me to Ukraine this evening and extensively updated my Packing List!  I reduced the number of button up dress shirts that I'm bringing, so I don't have to iron as much, and added some dresses instead (I'll be more comfortable in those anyways). My dresses are solid colors, knee-length and classy enough to wear to go to work (and then maybe out later that night). Here are my piles of clothes all over my bed. 

Thats right, working at American Eagle Outfitters taught me how to fold clothes into organized piles.

It is going to be fun fitting everything into my 2 suitcases! The good news is that I can basically fit all of my clothes into my red duffel bag (I tried), but I also have the black suitcase to spread out my clothes and other items like my yoga mat, sleeping bag, school supplies, toiletries, and my fleece blanket.

I hate how my luggage is UGA colors... I feel like a traitor. To Hell with Georgia! Okay, now I feel better. 

I also measured my luggage, after seeing an online discussion about the PCV's restrictions on the linear dimensions of our luggage. We are permitted to bring two suitcases with a combined linear dimension of 107" (sum of length + width+ height) and a total weight of 100 lbs, 50 lbs per bag. Apparently they will reimburse us for the checked baggage fees for the flight to Staging if we aren't able to convince the airlines to waive those fees. I haven't called United Airlines yet, but I saw on their website that they do waive their checked baggage fees for military personnel, so maybe I can talk them into waiving my fees. And yes, I know I'm not technically military personnel but if Verizon Wireless will suspend my phone under their military personnel exception, its worth a shot with the airlines. The only reason that I'm suspending my phone instead of canceling it for 2 years is that I want to be able to keep the same phone number (I've had the same number for the last 6 years and I love it).

Sasha reminded me to update the virus protection on my computer, just in case my computer gets infected with any files. Viruses are apparently common in Ukraine, she said that she unfortunately got a virus from a file that was on a flash drive (when her computer wasn't even connected to the internet!). I spent $20 and ordered the backup discs from Acer (for my Acer laptop) a few weeks ago and should be okay to reboot everything if needed (all my documents are backed up onto my external hard drive anyways since my old laptop crashed last year). I've got the installation files for Microsoft Office on my external hard drive with the product key too, so that is good to go as well. Hopefully I can avoid having to re-install everything, just because its a huge hassle. But spending $20 to have the backup discs just in case is better than having to run a pirated version of Windows... in Russian.

Russian, ya?

I checked My Toolkit on the Peace Corps website online, and downloaded some huge pdf file dedicated to teaching survival Ukrainian. But since Rosetta Stone doesn't offer Ukrainian, I figure that I might as well learn Russian since most of the country speaks both languages anyways.

So I've been learning Russian from Rosetta Stone, and its been kicking my butt. The sounds and accents in Russian are very different from those in English or the Chinese tones, so I've been struggling with it. So far, I've gone through like lesson 1 and part of lesson 2 of level 1 Russian and I've learned that I am especially terrible at rolling my r's (they roll r's more than spanish) and especially bad at pronouncing девочка (girl). I think I spent like a good 15 or 20 minutes trying to get past that word alone... but the good news is that now I can sort of say it. I've only learned basic words like boy, girl, man, woman, eating, drinking, reading, running and swimming. Hopefully the next few lessons will cover more useful, conversational stuff like greetings and the numbers.

Anyways, just for fun... I updated my blog title to say "the jinger" in Russian... according to Google Translate.