Category Archives: Huliganov's Russian Course
This contains the whole Huliganov Russian Course, from the beginning at the bottom to the end at the top, in order. This is intended to help people who have difficulty finding the parts they need on YouTube.
But you are advised to “click through” into the Youtube environment to watch, as there are comments on there by viewers, questions and answers, and sometimes errors spotted in these films by viewers, so that the complete experience of the course is actually on YouTube itself, by design. This is simply a simplified way of navigating it. If you wish to join the discussion either here or on there it is equally welcome – here the discussion will thread, there it will not, but what you write will probably be seen by more people.
Someone has had trouble remembering enough words with their Goldlist
Caption below picture: ‘Wallachians distilling “Slievovitz”‘ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Someone (sic) wrote to me recently suggesting that the Goldlist was not for them as they had tried to do a distillation and only remembered 2 of 25 words.
Now I am someone who has just discovered that there is more than one metabolic type, that a good 45% of people are Matebolism B types as opposed to Metabolism A types, and that’s why the traditional diets based just on calories and not concerned with the whole sugar question don’t do the job but actually made me worse. Given that fact, I’m perfectly open to the idea that just as there is more than one type of metabolism, there may be another type of memory and that really not everyone will benefit from the Goldlist method – yes it is perfectly possible. I have an open mind on that question.
However, given that the Goldlist Method has indeed helped the overwhelming majority of people who have tried it, including some who could never learn languages using other methods and now can, as well as some others who were already successful polyglots with their own tried and tested methods who nevertheless saw enough merit in the Method to add it to their armoury of tools, I would be reluctant to give up on it just after not having a great result on the first distillation. Instead I would look at the reasons why a person could find that they distil a headlist and only manage to throw out 2 of the 25 and not something like 6, 8, 10, 12 or even 14 as is the experience of most people using the method. Read the rest of this entry
A conversation with a Russian learner about aspects of verbs.
English: Native language in Ukraine. Legend: Ukrainian language dominates as the native language Russian language dominates as the native language. Bi-lingual, with a slight Ukrainian language lead (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
One of the followers of the video content on YouTube, Dennis, wrote asking about the question of aspects. I answered as I could and also as you will see got his permission to share the conversation so that more language learners would be able to take advantage of the topic.
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Conversation started Thursday
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Dear David,
Thank you so much of the add. I’m honored!
I’m a very big fan of your youtube videos concerning the Russian language. I use them in addition of my Russian language course and I ust say that they give me a headstart of the rest. So they really help!
I was wondering however if you could tell me which video talks about the time aspect ( поличать vs поличить) if you know what I mean with that. We talked about it yesterday in class and most people (including myself) find it very difficult.I hope you can help me out with this one.
Thank you so much in advance!
Dennis Meurders Read the rest of this entry
RL101-7 The Sibilants
| Playout date: | 12 November 2006 |
| Camera: | Logitech Webcam |
| Post Production: | Windows Movie Maker – medium use |
| Location: | Capetown Arabella Sheraton, South Africa |
| Other people featured: | None |
| Genre: | Lesson |
| Music used: | “Vdol’ po ulitse metelitsa metyot” with my wife |
| Languages used: | Russian, English |
| Animals featured: | None |
In this seventh lesson in the 10 lesson course on the Russian alphabet known as RL-101 series, we find ourselves in the Arabella Sheraton in Cape Town South Africa, with table Mountain looming behind my head. This is the perfect setting to place a new set of consonants on the table, namely the sibilants.
The problem with the sibilants as far as Cyril and Methodius and their acolytes were concerned is that that is a group of consonants which you simply would not find in either Latin or Greek. To this day these sounds present difficulties to people transcribing Russian sounds into Western European languages. So whereas the sounds that we have met until now have come from Greek into the Cyrillic alphabet, the missionaries to the Slavs had to look for another source in order to render these sounds in Slavonic.
Hebrew was the next choice, being another biblical language. The letter shin and the letter tzaddi are both sibilants in Hebrew, so they were brought in and also amended, so that from shin we derive three sibilant letters in Russian, and from tzaddi we derive two.
The words introduced in this lesson are as follows:
| that | .., что |
| borshch (beetroot soup) | борщ |
| in (acc/prep) | в |
| Warsaw | Варшава |
| you (formal/plural, acc/gen) | вас |
| Washington | Вашингтон |
| goodbye | до свидания |
| stomach | желудок |
| wife | жена |
| woman | женщина |
| fat | жир |
| arse | жопа |
| hello | здравствуйте |
| how’s it going? | как дела? |
| how? | как? |
| when? | когда? |
| end | конец |
| of course | конечно |
| face | лицо |
| on (acc/prep) | на |
| because | потому, что |
| why? | почему? |
| Friday | пятница |
| Tashkent | Ташкент |
| you (inf sing, acc/gen) | тебя |
| comrade | товарищ |
| what? | что? |
| spy | шпион |
| shi (cabbage soup) | щи |
| egg | яйцо |
Related articles
- Learn the Russian language (russianreport.wordpress.com)
- Learning alphabets (kaetslanguages.wordpress.com)
- BBC World Service iPhone App in Russian (bbc.co.uk)
Goldlist Method Discussion on LingQ Forums – How to learn languages
Image via CrunchBase
This is a link to a discussion on the Goldlist Method again by some pretty hardcore polyglots, most of whom seem to like the method, although unsurprisingly there are dissenting voices. After all, the people who have already learned a number of languages successfully will already in the main have their pet methods, and the fact that any people in that category are willing to add the method to their arsenal is a great boon. My main case for it rests however with the people who have written to me getting success for the first time in language learning by applying the method and understanding the underlying truths about language learning – which of course it doesn’t have any kind of monopoly on – which were the reasons they failed before with conventional classroom learning, and not from their own fault.
I don’t think I will join in the discussion on LingQ, one YT friend indicated that the discussion is there, but on previous occasions when this has been discussed and I’ve chimed in it has put the discussion to death a bit. And believe me it is a great pleasure for me to read intelligent, unfettered discussion about the method.
Please go and have a look. You don’t have to be a registered member of LingQ to review the site, although you might want to look around and see if a sub there is for you. I like Steve Kaufman and have no qualms about plugging his place. Most people spend a lot more on Language Learning than they’d need to spend to get a top-level membership on there, and be engaged in studying and teaching languages all day and every day.
Here are a handful of my favorite quotes from the discussion, by various people:
The method was first invented by an English guy living in Poland (I believe his name is David James.) He seems to be a little strange…
Perhaps he is simply living proof that human genius and human madness are very close together!?
Very possibly. Who knows?
Some of this videos are funny, some aren’t.
I have been using the Goldlist method since last December, and it seems indeed that on average I remember 30% of the words in each list. I have only done the first distillation so far, but it seems to work indeed, and it is faster than an SRS protocol.
I didn’t know about Mr James’ contribution to the polyglot book before Sebastian pointed it out in his post yesterday. I spent several hours last night reading most it, and I agree it makes pretty interesting (and unusual) reading.
I liked the way he describes learning Italian in classes at school, while teaching himself Russian at home using Linguaphone and the older version of “Teach Yourself”. The result: he got a top mark in the ‘O Level‘ Russian Exam, and a lower mark in the ‘O Level’ Italian exam – leaving his Italian teacher entirely perplexed! :-0
His recollections of having a little run-in with the KGB while on a student exchange in the old USSR during the 1980s is also quite funny in the telling (although the actual experience of a KGB-third-degree was doubtless anything other than ‘funny’ for a student 19 or 20 years of age!)
Those CANNOT be his own eyebrows
Related articles
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- Learning language concepts from other languages (kaetslanguages.wordpress.com)
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Title: RL101-6 The next 5 – 2/3 of the way
| Playout date: | 27 October 2006 |
| Camera: | Logitech Webcam |
| Post Production: | Windows Movie Maker – heavy use |
| Location: | Home |
| Other people featured: | None |
| Genre: | Lesson |
| Music used: | I can’t help falling in love, Elvis Presley, karaoke. |
| Languages used: | English and Russian |
| Animals featured: | None |
We look at another five letters, which is enough to take us two thirds of the way through the Russian alphabet. That won’t mean being able to read two thirds of the words, of course, as most words are five or more letters long, and it only takes one of the these letters to be in the third not yet learned for the whole word not be readable. However from this point on, the volume of words that we can indeed understand in full begins to increase out of proportion to the remainder of the journey.
Today’s letters are still letters deriving from Greek and not looking the same as in Latin, however these letters are also not written the same as they were in the original Greek. That’s basically the idea of the course – back at the beginning we took a look at the six letters which are the same in Cyrillics as in the Latin alphabet we are probably familiar with ( hint – you’re reading it now) after which we looked at letters whose form in Cyrillics look like Latin letters but which sound different, and in each case they were also in Greek, and the Greek sound is basically the same as the Russian one. We then went on to look at letters which are pretty much the same in the Cyrillic alphabet as they are in Greek, but which don’t resemble Latin letters and are therefore less likely to cause confusion. The natural progression here is to look at the letters which really derive from Greek, but which also look slightly different to the way they looked in Greek. This will be followed by letters which derived from Hebrew instead, and then the mop up of the few letters left over at the end. That’s basically the approach we’ve taken in this course to the Russian alphabet.
Related articles
- RL101 – 5 Revision of the first 17 letters (huliganov.tv)
- Podlinniki: the Manuals of Icon Painting and How to Read Them (russianicons.wordpress.com)
- Canonical Design Team: History of the Alphabet (Hebrew, Greek, Cyrillic, Latin, Arabic) (design.canonical.com)
- Shape-based transliteration between alphabets? (ask.metafilter.com)
RL101 – 5 Revision of the first 17 letters
With 171 likes to 3 dislikes at the time of posting this up to Huliganov.tv blog, this remains one of my most popular pieces. The revision of the first half of the Russian alphabet contains already a list of words, 31 in total, using the letters learned so far, unlike the previous lessons, which concentrated on letter only.
The joke “I spoil that woman” and the song Katiusha sung by myself and Elena have also elicited flattering comments from the viewership.
The word-list for this lesson is as follows, in alphabetical order of both languages:
| адвокат | lawyer | café | кафе | |
| вот | here is | country | страна | |
| где | where | daddy | папа | |
| город | town, city | garden, orchard | сад | |
| да | yes | glass | стакан | |
| дерево | tree | he | он | |
| дом | house, home | here is | вот | |
| кафе | café | house, home | дом | |
| кот | tomcat | it | оно | |
| кто | who | juice | сок | |
| мама | mother | just, straight on | просто | |
| медсестра | nurse | lawyer | адвокат | |
| метро | underground train | mother | мама | |
| налево | on the left | no | нет | |
| направо | on the right | not | не | |
| не | not | nurse | медсестра | |
| нет | no | on the left | налево | |
| окно | window | on the right | направо | |
| он | he | she | она | |
| она | she | sister | сестра | |
| оно | it | soldier | солдат | |
| папа | daddy | there | там | |
| правда | truth, true | toilet | туалет | |
| просто | just, straight on | tomcat | кот | |
| сад | garden, orchard | town, city | город | |
| сестра | sister | tree | дерево | |
| сок | juice | truth, true | правда | |
| солдат | soldier | underground train | метро | |
| стакан | glass | where | где | |
| страна | country | who | кто | |
| там | there | window | окно | |
| туалет | toilet | yes | да |
Related articles
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The Goldlist Method and Pronunciation of a Learned Language.
The Chinese word for "National Language" in Traditional and Simplified (ugh) Characters, Pinyin and 3 outdated transcription methods.
I haven’t always been as explicit as I could be on the matter of pronunciation of languages, and how the Goldlist method works for that. A great question from Mitch which I saw today puts his finger on what learners could perceive to be a difficulty while using the Goldlist method and how best to approach this question.
First his question, which you can see in the page on the Goldlist Method.
Hello,
1 question. The gold list is activated after 3 days in an immersion environment. This will require correct pronunciation. How do you go about getting this for each word? Do you find audio for each word on your list? I don’t remember doing this as a child. I don’t think I asked someone how to say this for every word I found. I’m missing something.
Thanks Viktor.
Mitch,
This is actually a very good question, so in addition to answering it here I think I’ll also make this answer a fully fledged article on the front page of the blog. I’ll kick it off here and continue on the full article.
The first thing I will take issue with is your statement “this will require correct pronunciation”. I am not sure what “correct pronunciation” is, all I know is that there are people who mimic native pronunciation better than others and they may sound like better linguists when what they probably are is just better voice actors.
What you definitely need to have an awareness of is how that word is supposed to sound so that you would be able to say it understandably – without having a native listener confusing what you were trying to say, and to recognise the word when another person says it.
You don’t need to worry about this mythical holy grail of “correct pronunciation” in the way you’ve formulated it in the question.
Now for most languages in the world, and surprisingly not for the so-called “easy” language of English, one of two things is true. Either the normal way of writing is a lot more phonetic and devoid of exceptions than the English is, or in the cases where this is not the case there are ways to write it more phonetically. Read the rest of this entry
A Question about the Russian Future by Shannon
Н.К.Рерих "Земля Славянская". 1943. (Wikipedia)
One viewer on the youtube channel, a lady called Shannon, wrote to me the following question:
Hello,
Could you please tell me the English equivalent for the Russian simple and compound future tense.
I think I’ve understood both past tenses, but the future tense is something I’m still struggling to get my head around.
Regards,
Shannon
The problem is that they are not really tenses, they are aspects of a single future tense.
Now in English we have aspects, but we don’t always use a verb to show the aspects, sometimes we use other words in the sentence.
Let’s take the example of “yest’/s’yest”. If I say in Russian “Ya s’yem ves’ …” then the expected word afterwards might be “tort” – I will eat the whole cake.
If a Russian says “Ya budu yest’ ves’…” then the rest of the sentence that suggests itself is “den’ ” – I will eat all day.
In this case in English if you can replace “eat” with “eat up” then you know that it’s a perfective aspect. In English it’s not incorrect to say “I will eat the whole cake”, or you can also stress the perfective nature of that action (although it won’t have a very perfecting effect on the figure) by saying “I will eat the cake up”.
Contrast that with the second sentence. “I will eat all day”. You can’t say “I will eat up all day”, it becomes meaningless. You can, of course say something like “All day long tomorrow, I’ll be eating up my fussy children’s left-overs” – in Russian this repetitive future performance of a perfective action would call for bringing in the iterative suffix. “Budu doyedyvat’ “sounds a little clumsy but would give that kind of meaning. The “yv” part of that verb being the iterative suffix.
So in the case of a sentence where in English we could use a simple verb or a phrasal verb, especially a phrasal verb where the sense involves finishing something (eat up, do in, beat up, bring in, etc) we can get a good idea of whether to use a perfective or imperfective future aspect in Russian by asking us where the phrasal verb is just as good if not better than the simple verb, as in the above “eat the cake up”
What about cases where you don’t have a phrasal verb indicating completion to hand? Well, sometimes there are aspectival pairs in English that we don’t even realise are aspectival pairs because this is almost subliminal in our language and not explicit as in Slavonic. So I could give you two sentences:
1. I will fish all day tomorrow
2. I will catch many fish tomorrow.
Which is future imperfective? That’s right, the first. Budu lovit ryby ves’ den’ zavtra. The second is perfective. Tomorrow I will not just fish I will catch many fish. Poymu mnogo ryb, zavtra.
how about this one:
1. He will speak to me about the changes this afternoon.
2. He will tell me about the changes this afternoon.
In which of these am I expressing subliminally that I’m not necessarily expecting complete information? That’s right, the first. In the second, I expect the transmission of complete facts, not just blah-blah. So speak and tell are an aspectival pair.
And sure enough, you find the same in govorit’/skazat’ in Russian. You never hear “on budet skazat” – the closest is if you make it iterative “on budet skazyvat mne raznye veshchi” He will be telling me various things. He will, in other word, repeatedly perform the perfective action of transferring orally various complete pieces of information. He will speak to me about the changes – on budet govorit’ so mnoy o peremenakh means that I’m focussing menatlly on the fact that he is going through the motions of informing me, regardless of whether any actual units of meaningful information, any ‘whole story’ is transferred to me in the process. “On skazhet mne o peremenakh posle obeda” on the other hand means that I’m expecting to hear the whole caboodle from him after lunch.
One of the best ways to understand this is by looking at what we mean in English when we differentiate “until” and “by”. Most languages have a single word for this pair, and in Slavic it’s aspect which gives away which one is needed. Russians and Poles say “do”, German’s have “bis”, but we have two words and we can’t understand why foreigners are always muddling up “until” and “by”.
So you’ll hear Slavs saying “I need you to write the report until Thursday”. At this, you might say “what happens after that, then, does someone else take over?” This sentence in English contains no markers that getting it done before then is required – on the contrary the marker in “until” rather means just keep on going up to a certain time point, and finishing doesn’t enter into it.
So Thursday comes and you are asked for the report, and you hand in a huge 100 page opus and immediately the boss asks “Where’s the Executive Summary?” And so you say “There’s no Executive Summary – how can there be one if the report isn’t finished?” “But I asked you to write the report until Thursday!” “I did! I was writing it all the time, only taking short breaks for food and sleep. That’s why the thing is 100 pages long. but you didn’t tell me it had to be done BY Thursday!”
The boss doesn’t understand this, as to him “until” and “by” are synonyms and not markers of aspect, and promptly sacks the Employee for over-correct use of English.
So you can see from this example that if he had really meant “until”, in Russian he would have used a future imperfective. “Budete pisat’ …” For the meaning “by” he would have used a Russian future perfective “Napishite”.
I hope that helps you get a grip on the idea. If it has, then that is a milestone on your journey towards knowing Russian.
Related Articles
- Using Do and Make in English (socyberty.com)
- Teaching the Future Perfect Tense in Italian (brighthub.com)
- What to make of illiterate “romaji” Russian courses, or audio only courses? (huliganov.tv)
- Eugene Onegin in English (ask.metafilter.com)
- Chinese Negation: The Different Usage of ‘méiyou’ (not, not have) and ‘bù’ (not) (brighthub.com)
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Who is this mystery customer?
The Russian Linguation
The following review can still be read for Derek Offord’s “Using Russian – A Guide to Contemporary Usage” on Amazon.co.uk (not the American Amazon and I really don’t understand why they don’t carry these reviews over, when I want to write for only the UK or only the US I shall forget about the internet altogether!) As it was way back in 2001 I seem to have lost the accreditation for the review along the way. At first it was under my name, but at some stage they must have had a technical blip and the older reviews became “A Customer”. but it’s mine, well enough. I don’t know if my style has changed much in ten years.
36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is essential reading for those doing a Russian degree.
28 Sep 2001
By A CustomerThis review is from: Using Russian: A Guide to Contemporary Usage (Paperback)
I bought Using Russian when I was browsing in a bookshop for another language, as I already speak Russian, but when I looked at a few pages it immediately appealed as an excellent update to the way the language has developed since I did my degree. Sections in the book refer to different problems that face the English speaker in particular, such as faux amis. There are also sections on homonyms and other confusing aspects and they act rather like a checklist of what you need to have got right in your head in order not to make too many ‘howlers’ in translations or in conversation.
One particular plus in this book and as I found out in the whole series of ‘Using’ books that this is part of is the focus on register. If there is one thing that separates the wheat from the chaff among language students. it is the understanding and application of the idea of register, and this applies to Russian perhaps more than most European languages, as this is a language in which not only the vocabulary, but also the syntax, grammar and phonetics are all subject to complex nuances. This book was not available when I needed it. Now that it is I urge you to make use of it. It is the book about Russian that I would have liked to have written myself. If I thought there was demand for it, I’d offer to do a sister volume for Polish.
In any event it made me go out and by the sister volumes already in existence for French, German and Spanish. They are of a similar quality to this volume, the weakest is probably the German one, the Spanish one I would put as second favorite. It can be read cover to cover, or simply dipped into as a work of reference.
It is not material for learning the language from scratch, but would be a very useful second step after completing any of the standard self-instruction books such as the Colloquial series, the Teach yourself series or the Linguaphone course.
Either A-level or degree level students of the Language will profit from it and find it enjoyable because of its good presentation and readable style.
Related Articles
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The Polyglot Project Update
I understand that the download from DocsStocs made by Claude Cartaginese has now reached into over 5,000 downloads, with also many other sources of this document appearing also on the web as people share it freely as intended, so that the full number of downloads may be as high as 10,000 or more.
The Polyglot Project - 42 contributors, 534 pages, including the whole background to the Goldlist Methodology and how I came to invent it.
Set against that, though is the fact that not nearly so many paper copies have been ordered. The only place they can be ordered is Amazon in America, not the UK Amazon as yet, and the link to the product is embedded on the thumbnail.
If you would like a book worth in fact over 50 USD if it had not be gifted by over 40 volunteers each telling how they managed to learn multiple languages for less than 17 dollars, and also support Uncle Claude who had to fork out some of his private lolly on making the first bunch of paper books that are not selling, even though people have been eager to take the free version, then either click on the link here (which gives you the same price and I think I’m on 6% without costing you any more) or if you don’t want to give me 6% but still pay the same, then find the link just by going normally to Amazon.com and searching for it.
If you read the e-version and liked it, why not buy the paper version as a gift for someone else? It will always be possible to get a free version of this booki, but the printed one is very nice too and a good use of seventeen dollars, so please let’s be having a few more purchases of it.
Related Articles
- Buy “The Polyglot Project” on Amazon via my aStore, or download e-book (huliganov.tv)
- Answer to Question comparing Goldlist and Mnemosyne Methods. (huliganov.tv)
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- Just a Few Days Away… (via SYZYGY ON LANGUAGES) (huliganov.tv)
- Docs.com update brings speed, stability, and support for additional languages (downloadsquad.switched.com)
