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| Darn it Russian is hard. |
| Friday, June 23, 2006 |
Oh my gosh (yes, I'm trying to cut down on my profanity in preparation for being a dad).
I almost forgot to mention a funny story about my learning Russian. So as I mentioned I'm teaching a couple of courses this summer at a local community college (been doing this off and on for about 7 years now).
Anyway, before class a group of the kids (of course these are college age students but I'm 42 so to me they're kids) are talking and I mention I'm learning Russian. And that we're going to be adopting a child from Russia. So this very nice young girl who sits in front gets all excited and then says something in Russian to me!!! I'm like, this is way cool, this kid is Russian (actually I think she's Ukrainian) I can see how my Russian is going.
So I say in Russian (basically the only things I've learned so far), "I understand a little Russian but not very well" and ask her how my pronunciation is. Thinking I'm doing pretty well because I think I sound like the examples on the CDs.
And she replies "Not bad, I've heard a lot worse."
Oh, great, thanks.
Her reply got a big laugh in class too. I'm definitely going to keep talking to her, though, and see if I can get my accent better. |
posted by Steveg @ 4:37 PM  |
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| 5 Comments: |
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Our girls used to say that they thought everyone should speak only Russian...so get cracking!!
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Interesting...we took a Russian course that was taught by someone from the Ukraine. When we tried out our language skills on our Russian friends, they could hear the Ukranian accent. Maybe its just that she pronounced the words a bit differently. (I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here ;)
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I have a Russian friend who was trying to teach me Russian. However, after a few tries he was so laughing at me. He said he had never heard anyone speak Russian with such a horrible American accent in his life!
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Hard I can never get it and BTDT three times. Better to learn the cyrillic alpha if nothing else. Oh well just wasnt meant to be. But I will make the kids learn their native tongue
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Steve - good for you for trying. I remember how hard I worked to learn to speak some phrases with correct pronunciation before we went to Russia. I was actually feeling pretty good about myself. But I found, repeatedly, that as soon as I said something Russian to someone in Moscow, they would invariably switch to English immediately. Kind of got me down. Best to keep a sense of humor about it!
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I'm Steve and this is my wife Stefanie. This is our story, mostly seen through my eyes, of the journey to create our family by adopting a child from Russia.
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Our girls used to say that they thought everyone should speak only Russian...so get cracking!!