For
those of you who read my previous
entry, I rambled on last time about some aspects of the grammatical structure
of Russian in comparison with English, for the most part.
In this one I’ll disclose my super-secret-hush-hush-mum’s-the-word method for learning and demystifying Russian, which in plain speak means I’ll yack on about myself; What drove me to learn it in the first place, how I began learning, and by what means have I managed to achieve a speaking level, not unlike Fez’s from ‘that 70’s show’ in contradistinction with the rest of the cast.
The “what”
Much like Lermontov's book 'hero of our time', it all
began with a mountain. In my case, it was the Elbrus, which is a tad eastward
from the literary Gud, but also well within the Caucasus. A preposition from
the Israeli association of mountaineering sent me rummaging the internet for
the bare essentials of Russian, just to get by once there, and, like your
run-of-the-mill tourist, I ascended along with my trip-mates to the top of the
Elbrus with a meagre handful of pleasantries, greetings, utility expressions
and questions-words - very useful to inquire some much-needed detail or asking
for guidance, but turn utterly useless in the face of a normal conversation.
Having returned and found the mundane banality of
normal life a tad too monotonous for my blood, I decided to further study it,
as after all, Israel’s already packed full of Russians, and the prospect of
understanding them better, let alone being able to share their humor,
literature and profanity, beckoned me tantalizingly.
The “how”
I started with a single study-book, several friends of
Russian origin, and Google translate (which, to turn a fancy phrase, turned out
to be like eating breakfast cereals with nothing more than a sucking straw;
it’s quick, effective, and gets the job done, but one will inevitably choke on
it eventually - that’s to say it’s inaccurate in long sentences, quite silly
sometimes in its interpretations, and does not understand the Russian soul any
more than a turd understands existential philosophy).
That combination got me through the nuts and bolts of
the language, which entailed masticating rudimentary nouns, verbs and
adjectives, some prepositions, time phrases, colors, numbers, etcetera - all in
all conferring upon me a sketchy speaking level of roughly a 6 or 7-year-old rug
rat.
It was also in this phase that I happened to discover
my most adored idol (up to this very day), in the form of a
coat-and-vest-wearing, accordion playing, hat donning crocodile, by the name of
Genna, which enthralled me with his effervescent and lambent character, his
melodious ditties, and his green shiny skin
The problem was, inspired and excited as I was by
Genna, I ended up with more questions than answers even after finishing the
study-book. Google translate was as treacherous and silent as ever, and my
friends, fluent as they were, only learned the language by hearing, and had no
idea why phrases are formulated like they are, or whether my own wordings were,
understandable as they were, technically, grammatically correct. Upon reaching
this dead-end I sought the help of some more experienced and erudite speakers,
which leads me to this next point:
The “by what
means”
At this point I figured that my main disadvantage was
not using Russian enough. So I went all out with it, I started watching anything
Russian (TV, series, movies, audiobooks, podcasts), took to reading, registered
in a language-exchange penpal site, discovered the much-lauded “HiNative”
“Lang-8”, and “HelloTalk” and coaxed native speakers into Skype chats. This
really made the difference, because when hobnobbing and rubbing shoulders in
every cultural facet, one really grasps for real how little one truly knows,
which really sets the inquisitive mind a-steaming. So, to make a long, dull and dazzlingly boring story short, it’s all just
practice - if you ask me, the more you do something, the better you’ll get at
it, and the better you like it, the easier it will be for you to pursue it.
Period. I don’t claim to talk like a native yet, but I can candidly exclaim
that even though my accent’s a tad funny and my wording tends to send
interlocutors thinking at times, I can now understand the utter majority of
Russian accents with ease, and formulate my own thoughts quite fluently (though
my English-oriented phrasing still rears its ugly, Briton head). As of today, I
made it a certain hobby of mine to meticulously collect and catalogue unique
Russian “word lings” (regional slang), and sometimes invent my own, branding it
as “Israelism” and zealously debating over its legality in terms of standards
and coinage, in comparison with the prevalent ones.
All the pictures belong to their respective owners.
About the author:
Barashek Orendjovich Rijkojopov
Barashek Orendjovich Rijkojopov
Israel, Haifa
Polyglot
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