Project Prochnost: Week 1

It’s been a week since my last post and I promised of weekly updates, so here I am. I spent 45 minutes every single day, right with a timer, trying to get the hang of Cyrillic alphabets. The thing with Russian, at least what I have learned so far, is that it’s written almost exactly how it’s pronounced. So you can indeed bid farewell to words like ‘Psychology’, ‘Mnemonic’ and the rest.

Once you get the hang of sounds that the alphabets create, you will get increasingly comfortable spelling Russian words out. As for me, the first couple of days were probably the hardest. All I could think of is that why do they have N and R inverted like that! Turns out, those are Cyrillic alphabets pronounced ‘ee’ and ‘yah’, written as и and я.

The past week, I decided not to go the traditional way of learning the ABCs of Russian and decided to focus on correlating sounds with symbols. By the end of the week, I was able to write words that I already know, such as names of my friends and family, in Russian, or should I say русский!

I also came to know that the printed form of these alphabets notoriously differs from how they are written in Russian cursive. I am focussing on recognising these symbols and a part of it needs me to momentarily forget my English skills, so that is better said than done. Let’s see what the next week has got in store for me 🙂

P.S. The featured image is from my practice notebook, that says: “Hi, My name is Neha. Nice to Meet you.” See you next week.

Why am I learning Russian?
Week 2 Update