Project Prochnost: Week 11

Posted byNeha SharmaPosted inIdeasTags:, , , ,

When I used to think of Russia earlier, I used to think of cold weather, beautiful architecture and great writers. Today, I think of it in much more vivid terms. Orenburg shawls. Imperial porcelain. Valenki and samovars. Podstakanniks. Ah! The list is too long.

I was facing a roadblock in studying my grammar textbook. The first (and really long!) chapter was all about pronunciation and I was spending mindless hours poring over details I don’t even remember. It was hard. I get that I should know what palatalisation is before beginning with Russian grammar but guess what, I don’t.

Therefore, I went ahead and began with the next chapter it offered. The humble ‘Noun’ that wasn’t quite hospitable but we plan to mend things up next week. For explaining every little rule, there are like fifteen new words and my mind fights a battle with itself whether I should prioritise learning the word or the rule first. I know the right answer but the heart wants what the heart wants or in this case, the head. I mean, here’s an example:

a snippet of my Grammar textbook

As of now, I am learning how to use prefixes and suffixes to modify nouns and/or create new words. My speed of reading Russian script is pretty slow, as I look at words and slowly pronounce them, syllable by syllable. Yet again, ‘Culture Shock! Russia’ came to my rescue in my moments of despair with this amazing quote by Ivan Turgenev:

“In these days of doubt, in these days of painful brooding over the fate of my country, thou alone art my rod and my staff, O great, mighty, true and free Russian language! If it were not for thee, how could one keep from despairing at the sight of what is going on at home? But it is inconceivable that such a language should not belong to a great people.”

Hope I can ever move from loving this quote to actually relating to it soon enough. Till then, saying ‘Bye bye’ to you all in Russian should suffice. пока пока!

Week 9-10 Update
Why am I learning Russian?

 

48 thoughts on “Project Prochnost: Week 11”

  1. Pingback: Project Prochnost: Week 9 & 10 – Literary Lemonades

  3. Awesome! I learned a word in Russian today! Thank you. While in college I made the top 2% in Spanish gaining me a place in the National Honor Society. I still have the pen stored away in my jewelry box. I’ve gone from fluent to barely keeping a conversation with the crew who does our lawn service. Like they say, “You’ll lose it if you don’t use it.” I hope you are smarter than I was and continue to use your new language with pride.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  9. Good on you – a great Australian expression! We have a couple of friends who have dedicated themselves to learning Russian and it seem it’s very hard to learn but very rewarding as your fluency progresses. Keep up the great work.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

          1. Oh yes. I’m absolutely serious. I’ll be able to read all the Russian novels sans translation. I had always wanted to learn a foreign language.

            Liked by 2 people

            Reply

  13. Great determination and progress, much is lost in translation..I couldn’t agree more. But then, once you learn the language and read the Russian originals you would translate them too 😀

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Haha! You know what, you wouldn’t believe just how many times I have read that. In the first couple of weeks, I almost used the picture of a Bulgarian textbook as the cover picture for my ‘Prochnost’ updates, until a Russian friend of mine made it clear it’s Bulgarian 😀

      I hope to learn Russian soon because I have recently come to know that Slavic languages have very similar roots. Hope I do Russian right and who knows! Maybe we can chat in Bulgarian some day 🙂 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

<span>%d</span> bloggers like this: