From Olya to Olly - it's not _dialects_ it's *accents*. So, like, in Moscow they're known to say /a/ in a very pronounced way. "Ха-раааа-шо в Маааа-скве. " Kind of the opposite of the /o/ in NY accent: "A dwog on a wok in New Ywok"... But, otherwise, Russian is Russian when in Russia 😉
@@APlusRussian In "хАрАшо" more acts the "Russian shwa" than the pure /ʌ/ sound. On the other hand, in some vernacular accents (Volga region, the White Sea coast) plays the doughnut-rounded crisp /ɔ/ "хОрОшО".
@@ihori779 True - "оканье" is definitely a thing in some non-Moscow regions (and the country side). But NYC "awking" seemed more illustrative based on the size and stature of the two cities 😉
Sir, since my two favourite writers are American Robert Sheckley and Belgian Jean Ray, I must say, if you want to read their works, especially if you want to do it for free, knowing Russian is necessary - because of all the languages in the world apart from their native ones, these two writers are translated massively only in Russian. Robert Sheckley is simply one of the most respected sci-fictionists in Russia since the Soviet times.
russian lang extremely tolerates speech disorders, so (suffice to say) the're virtually hella lot of dialects/accents :)) one could say молоко/млако/малако/мулоко/... & most of ru-speaking ones understand it.
Cyrillic is honestly the easiest part about Russian, it took me like 2 days to memorize it before giving up on Russian grammar Update: I am now learning finnish, which probably has a harder grammar
Тоже не понимаю этого. Наши дети учат латиницу в 7-8 лет. И не считают это чем-то необычным. В мире достаточно других, отличных от латиницы алфавитов, но почему-то все страхи вокруг кириллицы.
@@IrkinsEselsior Подтверждаю. Я сейчас Японский учу (там система иероглифов почти идентичная), и это кошмар. Чтобы понимать 95% всех иероглифов что встречаются в речи нужно выучить 1000 штук. Даже если учить по 5 иероглифов в день (что уже довольно много), то на изучение всей тысячи уйдёт порядка 7-ми месяцев, при условии того что вы запоминаете их раз и навсегда, никогда не забывая ни одного из них.
@@madzak9847 he's clearly speaking so slowly for foreigners, so they could better understand him. In practice even people from Moscow talk much, much faster; and this man is from Syberia, so he normally talks even faster.
@@tisthecat IKR, but it did sound weird lol I also didn't get why Olly said ppl from Moscow talk slowly: any foreigner who heard us speaking Russian noted how bloody FAST it was (even Italians & Greeks)~ 😕
@@vtyr2127 артикуляция немного другая, темп речи, диалектизмы опять же :) А однажды вообще послушала именно как говором говоят запист - и поняла, что ничего не поняла :)
I am native English speaker and have spoken Russian now for over 30 years. I was fortunate enough to live in Russia when I was 21 and later in my 40s when I was a bank executive. There are three high mountains to climb to become proficient in this wonderful language. The first is the grammar. Russian has a highly inflected system with six cases just like Latin. This is true in all the Slavic languages with the exception of Bulgarian. This is hard to get used to. The second mountain to climb is free stress. Like English there is no firm rule as there is in Czech or Polish. You have to learn the stress for each new word you learn. Unstressed o become like an a as in "water" and unstressed ye becomes more like an i as in "it". The third high mountain to climb is the vocabulary which is grounded in Slavic roots. For an English speaker, this is not like learning German, French or Spanish. While there are some similar words like " general" and "mashina" for car the vast majority of everyday words are of Slavic origin. As Olly has said Verbs of Motion with all their changeable prefixes are a nightmare at first but they are grounded in logic. Thus the Russian alphabet is the easiest part and it can be learned quickly and is no more difficult than learning the Greek alpahabet. Russian is a very expressive language and probably has some of the most bizarre and creative cursing that I have every run into. It can really curl your hair. Most people will need to devote at least 1 000 hours to get to a high level of proficiency. Russian is not for the easily intimidated.
@@pierreabbat6157 Both. And at night, of course. Like anywhere else. Yet, the cold feels in different ways. -25 in Siberia feels ok, but in England it would be a killer due to the constant humidity.
Извините, что влезают с комментарием.) По-моему, быть носителем языка - не значит, что нельзя узнать/научиться чему-то новому. Слушая иностранцев, изучающих русский, можно для себя самого сделать множество открытий. Таких, Как каталанка Нурия. Ты носитель. Возможно, неплохо знаешь и чувствуешь русский язык (если отставить в сторону оценки по-русскому в школе). А потом открываешь для себя целый логический пласт о родном языке. Внутренние связи, правила...
с вашего позволения, Демина, добавлю: я не русский, сразу обозначу, но не в этом соль... Меня расстраивает одна неприятная тенденция: большинство носителей русского языка плохо знают свой язык. Даже в разговорном ключе иногда хромают. И эта тенденция продолжает расти. Причину мы знаем, но смысла озвучивать и рассусоливать нет. То, что говорит сей молодой человек, в принципе, верно, но, увы, в теории и далеко от факта...
@@МартиМакфлури , понятия не имею, как ты это определил, ты, наверное, внук моей учительницы по русскому..)) а я разве уточнял, что знаю русский в идеале?) это не мой родной язык априори, так что, друг, не понимаю, к чему ты это написал.)
@@darkestwind191 Язык в целом структура гибкая, если носители языка говорят не так как зафиксировано в учебниках - значит это учебники устарели, а не носители неграмотные. Часто вы видите граммар-холивары между носителями английского из Вашингтона и носителями английского из Австралии? При том что разные диалекты могут отличаться радикально. Причина граммар-нацизма в России это как раз попытка навязать единый стандарт всей огромной территории СССР. Но это так не работает, язык всё равно будет эволюционировать и меняться вместе с культурой, неравномерно и по-разному.
I think that "не опять, а снова" would be better translated as "not again, but once more" or something similar. This is a really good video! Even as a native speaker, I learned something new!
"не опять, а снова" - это просто шутка-присказка к слову 'опять', грамматического смысла не имеющая. смысл и грамматика использования слов 'опять' и 'снова' эквивалентны.
@@ccapt это скорее не шутка, а поддёвка бескультурного и наглого грубияна. Чаще всего так говорят более слабому человеку, не боясь ответственности. Хотя, конечно, ситуации разные бывают.
@@YaShoom поддевка это когда поддевка. но люди часто повторяют эту фразу, искренне полагая, что в ней есть какой-то грамматический смысл. возможно, путая с парой опять и обратно.
@@ccapt вот и вы мне, в какой-то мере нагрубили. Возможно там лучше подходит термин "передёргивание" (к обсуждаемому случаю), но это ведь не суть, а тонкости. И они это говорят не что бы поправить, а именно что бы передразнить оппонента (на кой фиг поправлять в грамматике, если ты человека опять довёл чем-то - вопрос риторический). - "Мы же договорились, а ты опять начинаешь что ли?" - "Не опять, а снова!" (где тут место грамматике, если человек делает плохо, понимает это и ещё поправляет - всё это что бы с поддёвкой перевести ответ в бессмыслицу) Способ проверки передёргивания/поддёвки прост - подумайте, сказали бы вы так своей маме/папе/уважаемому дедушке? Вот и всё. Это невежливость как минимум, а когда человек в стрессе от поступка нахала, это ещё и в какой-то мере издевательство - низведение сути к обсуждения словарных норм, в то время как всё понятно, что человек и считает что человек повторяет действие причиняющее ему страдания. Это психологическая атака.
@@YaShoom мне не интересны мотивы. я о том, что грамматического и стилистического правила 'не опять, а снова' не существует. просто бессмысленная стереотипная фраза.
@@treehouse238 Нет, говор это субдиалект. Диалект подразумевает более сложные отличия. "Говор" это вполне научный термин. Об этом прочитаешь в вики, ст. "говор" или "лингвистическом энциклопедическом словаре".
@@yasenkrasen1581 сейчас бы википедию считать авторитетным источником))))))) Диалект имеет территориальную, социальную или профессиональную дифференциацию, в то время как говор только территориальную. Соглашусь, говор - это более узкое понятие, чем диалект, но говорить, что диалектов в России нет - это неправильно в корне, обратитесь к той же статье в ЛЭС со ссылкой на статью собственно о диалекте))
@@treehouse238 Википедия это не источник, это компиляция источников(которые помечены циферками). Если тебе не нравится, что в лингвистическом словаре "говор" используется как научный термин, напиши письмо протеста академикам. Ну, теоретически диалекты в России есть, где-то в деревнях их можно даже услышать еще у бабушек. Но на практике от Мурманска до Сахалина почти все говорят примерно на одном и том же диалекте. Когда лингвисты например говорят о вологодском диалекте, то имеют ввиду, что исторически он там зародился, существовал, даже повлиял частично на складывание русского языка. Но 99% людей его давно уже не используют, только "оканье осталось" от него. То ли дело во Франции, Италии или Китае! Во там диалекты так диалектищи.
Im american, but live in Russia. My Russian is b2-c1 now, after several years of study. The grammar is the kicker. Russian grammar is complex and you can only learn it through lots of listening and reading. If you try to hard memorize the rules you will fail. Your reader Olly was the first book I used to study with. It was a great resource and gave me the confidence to continue. As you advance you can find lots of books because Russia has a rich reading culture. You can find something in every genre that will interest you. Great language to study, amazing country, amazing people!
I don't think so, russian is relatively easy language to learn the fonetics, but at the same time has a difficult grammar for sure and to progress your knowledge of the languange you have to forget it and then when you are better you begin to study it.
@@themorrishouseofwizardry3555 Excuse me but I'm not fluent in english. What I'm trying to say is that phonetics in russian is easy as Italian for example, but at the same time their grammar is difficult, and to learn it you should put the grammar off and listen more contents. So, I hope you understand it, and I will try to improve my skills in english, sorry about it.
@@renanvinicius6036 yes, that's what I originally said. Lots of listening and reading. The grammar is just to complex to memorize. So I just focused on comprehensible input. It has worked well for me. I'm not fluent yet, but can carry on normal conversations with natives, watch videos and communicate basic ideas. Hope to study many more years. It's such a rich culture and language
@@thecandlemaker1329 idk, i gave up on the pronunciation part. Like reay, how can you make an entire sentence of slightly differing "shi" sounds and call it am easy language?
@@ДимаВеселов-в8и It's actually really simple, Russian has homophones too. It's just that there's a lot less of them because Russian is not restricted by the same, extremely limited, set of syllables.
Howdy everyone, native Russian here. Got a couple of comments for you: 1) Dialects. As a rule of thumb, any Russian can easily understand (almost) any other Russian. However, there’re 2 possible exceptions: --> Regional-talk. But it’s more akin to accents and pronunciation of certain vowels (think Texas-English vs New-Yorker’s) --> There’s still somewhat of a “simpleton-speech” (просторечье/простанародье). It’s a variation of Russian spoken by older people or in some remote villages. With some particularly “thick”-variations it sometimes can get cumbersome to understand. And it’s also worth noting, that whereas “city-dweller” can usually understand a local "babushka", is it’s not always a case the other way around. (“Милок, прикорни на завалинке, что супротив сараю”) So go figure :) 2) As for several words allegedly translating into just one in English. Russian words have some sort of a “deeper-layer” which is reminiscent of older times (Old Church Slavonic language in particular) and are oftentimes can be “decoded” with knowledge of those roots. For instance, the example Olly used for “again”, and the saying “не опять, а снова”. The “second again - снова” can be decoded to “С” + “нов”, meaning “from-the-beginning”, or “from-scratch”. Thus more informative translation would sound like: “Not again, but anew”, implying the inherit expectancy of a different outcome this time around. So, basically, if you wish to become the Pro in Russian, -- apart from the actual language you might also need to learn older versions of the language, to get “a feel” of it. 3) Generally speaking, Russian is simultaneously the language of emotions and logic. On the one hand, you can construct almost any word you need like Legos; on the other, there’re hundreds of shades and overlaps for almost any emotion or feeling. I’ll also leave you with a couplet translation of a famous Russian poet of 19th century A. Pushkin, it does sound rather different from English poetry: > I loved you, and quite possibly this passion Has not extinguished fully from my soul; But you should not take gravely my confession; My wish is not to sadden, but console. I loved you hopelessly and in silent anguish, Distressed by jealousy and timid plight I loved you with such candor, such affection, God bless you find love as true as mine. < P.S. Olly, awesome content, keep at it! :)
"is it’s not always a case the other way around" - do you mean modern slangs? I believe they are much more worth to mention, as they're rich, quite diverse and fast-evolving. And they may be even harder than regional dialects as it comes to vocabulary. It's not just babushka may struggle with this, but even a midage person may have hard times trying to understand kids' smalltalk. Not to mention some quite sophisticated professional slangs and many others.
Я китаец и начнал изучать русский яызк 20 лет назад. Я работал и живал в России почти всего 10 лет. Я бы сказать что, могу сообщать по русском языку по человеческому))) Но до сих под, грамматика русского языка все равно мой самый больший кошмар.😅😅 Если сложность грамматики китайского языка - 1, тогда русского языка - 10. Боже, меня так сильно мучала грамматика когда я изучал русский язык в университете. Я вообще не понял, как русские могут говорить, когда все слова почти постоянно меняются. После университа я поехал в Москву и там изчучал и работал, и все стало много проще. Если ты там живёшь, изучение языка стало много проще и интереснее. Просто не изучать все из книги, а побольше из жизни))) Удачи всем, кто старается изучать русский язык!)))😉
я изучала китайский! это перевернуло мне мозги и я по-новому посмотрела на вашу культуру. Один момент, что вы пишите и читатете слева на право - одно большое делает дело с головой. Другое - ваш алфавит - знаковый. Я когда на первых неделях погрузилась в эти тонкости - у меня мирровозрение поменялось. Я так и не смогла запомнить больше ни хао, но с большим уважением отношусь к вашей культуре. Ваш язык постичь для меня нечто невероятное
@@МарияКрасуля-э8ъ Арабский, хибру и некоторые другие читаются справа налево. Русский с китайски, как вы и ошиблись, читаются слева направо (но или сверху вниз)
😀 очень вы смешно это описали, хотя я всегда думала, что китайский сложнее русского. Но с другой стороны я выросла говоря по русски, так что может поэтому? 🤷
@@Alexander-sl8bp Речь, наверное, о Вашей шутке "от известного комика". Лично я не пользуюсь Т9. Мешает. Править потом приходится, так как наши намерения о том, что набрать, не всегда совпадают.
I’m from the UK. Sitting in my apartment in Moscow feeling unmotivated to practice my Russian. This video has reminded me language isn’t just a list of words and grammar rules. It’s a beautiful, historic, in depth web of culture that exists to be explored and enjoyed. One of the best videos I’ve seen on the subject. Thanks!
Mike, you have such a great opportunity there! Use it! I am Russian and I will go to Mexico next week for 6 weeks also to practice and learn Spanish, and you already there, in the center of Russian language - I bet any hours you will spend by learning our language you definitely will appreciate for yourself in the future!
Hello I'm a native Russian speaker from Kazakhstan🇰🇿 I would describe the 'dialects' or accents you mentioned more as a difference in manner of speech. In Kazakhstan we speak fluent Russian that any Russian speaker would understand absolutely, but you could tell a Russian from Kazakhstan and a Russian from Russia apart very subtly from the way they speak! Very interesting to see an outside perspective on the language. I always say that I am greatful for my Russian and that it's a great language to know because other than it being beautiful language with a rich history, culture, and great literature, I also love that it connects so many different people from such diverse cultures, and I have a common language and understanding with people from all over the world because of it. Thank you for the video!
Qozoq qozoqcha, o'zbek o'zbekchani birinchi o'ringa qo'yishi kerak. so'ngra boshqa tillarni. O'zbekistondan salom! Қазақге қазақша, өзбекке өзбекша бірінші орында тұруы керек. содан кейін басқа тілдер.
"Do you need to study Cyrillic?" Absolutely yes, no doubt about it! Even if you don't learn Russian - learn Cyrillic, and you'll look so cool in the eyes of your friends.
Yes, we have little з and mirrored Я. I've recently watched the series "A Young Doctor's Notebook" and those "cyrillic-style" credits was awful, it's absolute evil, please don't do that again)) Oh, and this brackets in the end of sentences - typical sign of Russian speaker. It's smiles.
@@thecandlemaker1329 No. 2 hours maybe and 1 week later you forget it. It's because after learning the alphabet you read so you practice, so you keep the knowledge.Also a weird flex to tell how long it took you
@@Comprends-ton-Dim It didn't take me a second, I'm Russian. I'm taking from the experience of learning the Latin alphabet at school, which takes precisely 1 lesson.
На каком-то канале, где иностранцы учат русский два товарища общались. Читают фразы из книги и объясняют поочередно кто как понял. Шикарный диалог, один читает задание: -у неё иссяк запал. -у неё что запало? -иссяк! 😂🤣
@@dmitriylatukhin7356 на самом деле нет. Там граматика проще. Сильно проще чем в русском. Она просто другая. И во многих случаях как раз таки при переводе нужно банально упрощать и выбрасывать большое количество всяких оборотов граматических изьебов и прочих союзов и междометий. Главная сложность китайского это именно иероглифы
Russian grammar is really hard. Even Russians themselves make mistakes in written and spoken language very often. And we learn it in school for 11 years!
Well, I just completed my 856 days of Russian Study, and yeah I make mistakes. How else are you going to learn? I know that I will not ever speak it like if I lived in Russia for 67 years. My birthday is coming up. The language does have its charms. Its a foolish notion that well you are not going to make mistakes or get it out and out wrong. Gee my first language is English of the American kind and well I make mistakes and my spelling is poor. Then again I can make myself understood. My goal is to travel to Russia see the sights I am interested in and at least be not so lost and to be able to ask for a cup of tea.
I don't think Russians making mistakes is any good indicator. You'll see a ton of people on the internet making many silly grammatical mistakes in their native languages too.
Hey, a Russian here, we believe we have no dialects as everyone understands everyone across all Russia, although linguists do say we have the three you mentioned. The Russian alphabet is technically called the "modern Russian alphabet" not Cyrillic. Another important thing to know about pronunciation is remembering the stress in words. Also, I strongly recommend Olly's books. I've tried them for German and they are amazing. Cheers from Moscow!
Being a pretty fluent Russian speaker I can agree that there are no "visible" dialects. Pretty every part of the country speaks the same language, at least that's how it sounds to me. Although I know that in the South people tend to use "h" instead of "g" sound, probably an influence of the Ukrainian language. Also, people in the Volga region tend to use "o" sound far more often than in other regions (where "a" sound dominates). But these are tiny differences, essentially unnoticeable to a foreigner learning the language.
From my own experiences as a German who speaks A2-B1 level of Russian I fully agree that pronunciation and word stress is crucial... :/ people have a hard time understanding you if you do mess up word stress. Also, I got the impression that strong accents like the German robot one is confusing people. I always receive a couple of Что?s While speaking to strangers... fortunately my Russian friends did help me a lot to point out fine sound differences of vowels my German ear just does not catch easily... 🙉
@@kolli7150 Every Russian learner has to bounce into these words which have a totally different meaning depending on the syllable stressed: пис'ать (to write) / п'исать (to pee); з'амок (a castle) / зам'ок (a lock), больш'ая (bigger - ref. to female gender)/ б'ольшая (bigger - when ref. to a part of smth). There are many more words like these
You actually got me with тоска because it was the very first word I thought of when you said about paragraph-long translations 😆 And, well, it's pretty widely considered to be a part of our cultural code and mentality. Russian people excelled at being sad, they refined the very meaning and process of sadness and made it into entirely new concept. So you can't translate it for the full meaning, you can only feel it if you dove deep enough into our culture.
There is one huge advantage of knowing Russian. Once you learn it, you can watch movies dubbed or subtitled in Russian of all around the world, from some exotic Indonesian to English-speaking ones that you can not get on the Internet in English even if you would pay for it! Also, sometimes books in other languages translated in Russian are either not available in English, for example, the Italian children's stories of Gianni Rodari, or poorly translated in English for example, philosophical texts of Julius Evola. Also, some languages are easier to translate in Russian than in English, for example, German, as it has a similar idea of grammar and connected complexity of structure, or pronunciation, for example, Italian opera, which is sung in Russian just fine.
Not horrible, but yes, there are pretty much Russians who can do some mistakes despite they are natives :( It's all about amount of their effort into it through their childhood and the most important part is their parrents. (Russian from South)
@@tarasr that's because in colloquial speech you don't need that much of a grammar: a good deal of particles, proper tone and sometimes a fair dose of obscene words (work almost like particles) let you make your point quite clear. Joking a bit, but spoken language (not only Russian) is much simplier, with shorter phrases and rich use of all kinds of small semantic stuff you barely find in your books. And sure the correlation between being literate and reading books is strong. It starts being obvious at the elementary school age, and you're right, family attitude is a great factor here.
I'm learning Russian for 1 month. I can read Cyrillic Alphabet. Mainly I can read & speak a little bit Russian. Hablo español también y estudio japonés. Soy de India 🇮🇳❤️
I was sitting on the fence, deciding whether or not to learn Russian. After this video you gave me that final push. I like your contagious passion. Thanks
Ходить is not walking back or anywhere specific, it's just walking in general, it's the act of walking itself. Now идти - that means there's a destination
@@v96n это была придирка? Похоже на то. А что мне ещё делать? Я не могу уехать из своей страны (поправка: это не россия) в англоговорящую, так что извините. Да и что плохого в том, что бы смотреть видео в Ютубе на английском? Вы же посмотрели его, ведь вы в комментариях оного, так что не понимаю в чём доёб.
@@stephenlitten1789 Most Russians read books, written before 1917 without any difficulties. Difficulties began when you try to read books, written before Peter I. There wasn't a strict system of rules, and the "official written language" was actually the church language, so modern people just don't know such terms today.
@@stephenlitten1789 The good thing to learn is glagolitic script. There are some fun advantages: 1) If you know someone, who learned glagolitic script aswell, you can message him in Russian language, but change the letters to glagolitic. In Russia 99% of people don't give a sh*t what glagolitic script is, so nobody can read it. 2) For the same reason, no one can read your secret diary if you have one 3)You need only 2-3 days to learn glagolitic script if you know cyrilics 4) You can read labels and letters in The Witcher game xD Disadvantages: 1) Glagolitic script is well supported by Windows and Mac, there are a lot of fonts and keyboard layouts, but you cant buy a keyboard, labeled for that. So you have to use virtual keyboard or place stickers on your own. 2) Glagolitic not evolved much after XII century, so its not adapted for fast handwriting. Actually you drawing each symbol like Chinese hieroglyph. But after all I managed to record some lectures at the university - its hard but possible
I never thought about learning Russian but lately I've been binge watching "bald and bankrupt" and Russian started to sound more and more appealing. I just started learning Cyrillic on Duolingo. Such a fascinating script.
I love Bald! Big fan. I did a bit of Russian on Duolingo a couple years ago, too. I ought to get back into it. The script isn't as hard as it looks, eh? If you know some nerdy math formulas, that gets you a bunch of Russian letters, via the connection to the Greek alphabet.
Just a suggestion of a show here: I was looking thru the only few Russian language things on Netflix and came across "Better than us" and got hooked on it. I'm Russian, so I understand it no problem.. It's a bit cheesy in spots, but I actually like this show! Might be a fun one for you to watch while learning with English subtitles or something? :)
I have almost finished reading Crime and Punishment in Russian, which was one of the reasons I started learning Russian 6 years ago - stories can be great motivation to learn, not just a great method! Learning Russian has been a great journey, and I loved jumping headfirst into the complexity. Also by the way, Mongolia is also changing from Cyrillic alphabet to the traditional top-to-bottom script!
That’s so cool Ewan! I started learning a few years ago for similar reasons, but I put it down about a year ago because it was too difficult to find material that I enjoyed that was at my level. I’m trying to pick it up again now and hopefully reach your level someday. Do you have any recommendations or advice?
@@ben1147 I can highly recommend the channel Russian Progress on RUclips, I learned a lot from watching his videos with Russian subtitles. I'm sure there are other good comprehensible input channels for Russian too. I also read through Olly's Short Stories in Russian when it came out and they were good - I was a bit above the level of the books but they were still enjoyable to read. If you want to start getting into Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground is a good read and not quite as long as his other novels. Chock full of psychological musings and all that.
Crime and punishment is a great book, it is read by 16 year olds in school and for big part of them language of this book is dificult. I havent read it being native in russian. What you've done is great!
I think the way to "get" "Тоска" is to imagine and feel poetic "mourning" for something...You practically mourn for the end of summer, for example. That's the depth of feeling.
What surprised me while learning Russian was how heavily influenced it is by the Old Slavonic Church language. Many forms which I originally thought of as archaic turned out to be words originating from the Southern Slavs (Macedonia, Bulgaria) that entered Russian via the Orthodox Church. Also, there are numerous words from the Tatar and Turkic languages; and from the Dutch as well (thanks to Peter the Great). All these make Russian quite distinct from other Slavic languages.
Russian language has a lot of loanwords from german and french as well. These two languages used to be languages of russian aristocracy during tsarist era.
There's plenty of words that exist in Russian language that are inherently perceived as archaic and obsolete, such as: око (óko) - an eye, the actual modern commonly used word for it is глаз (gláz); лекарь (lékar') - a doctor, the modern commonly used word for it is доктор (dóktor). And what's'really interesting about it is that in other Slavic languages, such as Czech, Bulgarian, etc. these archaic (from a Russian speaker's viewpoint) words are actually not old and archaic, but the ones that people use today!
As a beginner I can say the most difficult part is how every day things are said in Russian typically in strange ways, not "just" putting the words thatwe would use in a different language, translated and with correct grammar- no, the way of expressing is different, too. It makes the language interesting, though
For me as a Russian it's so weird that someone try to learn Russian xD But if you're studying Rus, don't be afraid about pronouncing rus words. Every Russian will understand you and will respect you)
The vast landmass where one can use Russian is truly mind blowing and most Russian speakers don't speak English so it's a very useful language and interesting to learn
Young women and most kids have some knowledge of English. You definitely need Russian to get around though. Knowing Russian makes the experience there something special. You miss out when you don't know it there.
@@brostoevsky22 as a native Russian speaker that lives in Russia, I'd say no, they don't. The only people who do, on a somwhat decent level, are the ones who went to learn is specifically for specific purposes. En mass, though, our schools do not teach it well enough (these books, they're a mess). Most likely, 90% of people can tell their name and say they don't speak English (with lost of mistakes, too).
@@brostoevsky22 as another native Russian speaker from a city with some of the best universities in my country, "some knowledge of English" doesn't give them an ability to communicate using English. "London is the capital of Great Britain" is considered a joke here, since that's all the English vocabulary most people have after graduating school.
@@527398 True. I learned more by reading tech documentation and writing comments on the Internet than learning English in school. I feel like it was just a waste of my time.
Слово "блин", кстати, стало уже универсальным мягким ругательством даже в Европе. Иностранцы, кто был в России очень хорошо используют в дальнейшем это слово и у себя на Родине, причем не задумываясь о переводе 😂😅
@@boburzod блин - это блин 😁. Представьте вы уронили себе что-то тяжёлое на ногу... Начали говорить по этому поводу неприличное слово "бл...", а рядом с Вами находятся дети... Вы изящно выходите из трудного положения заменяя нецензурное "бл..." на "блин". Вы с самого начала именно слово "блин" и хотели сказать😉. Аналогичная замена - "ёлки зелёные" вместо ругательства "ё-моё". Не удержалось на языке ругательство - вовремя произведена замена. Мой дед, жуткий матерщинник, чтобы мы с братом не научились плохим словам, при нас с братом ругался вообще: "раз, два, три, четыре, пять" 😀.
@@Бородатый-к2н так по русски тоже оладка, только через "о"... Белорусам везёт - как говорят так и пишут. А в русском грамматика русская (вологодский диалект), а произношение белорусское (московский диалект стал литературным языком, а к московскому диалекту белорусы язык приложили - в средние века в Москву на стройки приезжало много выходцев из Белорусии 😁)
nah, i'm just a person who speaks the language from their very childhood, and i wanna know what you've got to say about it) cheers to everybody learning it!
Regarding the "Dialect - Accent" question. I wouldn't say we have any dialects. There are different accents and some different words pronunciations, but every Russian will understand 99.99% of what another Russian has to say. That tiny 0.01% would be some local words or dishes' names that are not popular in other parts of Russia. For example in Perm, they have these small potato pies they call "shan'ga" (шаньга), which are not so common in other parts of Russia.
@@theboysenjoyer3283 but you're probably know some jokes about Saint-Petersburg's "поребрик, булка, бадлон, греча". There are some unique words in each region
@@junior3d902 ну лично я, как человек живущий в Тюмени, знаю значения слов "шаньга, поребрик, булка, греча", единственное, использую я их редко. А вот о слове "падлон" впервые слышу (пойду загуглю, что это значит). Ещё один интересный факт о СПБ: только в Санкт-Петербурге "шаурма" (салат в лаваше с соусом(обожаю его)) называется "шаверма".
Coincidentally I’m learning russian because I am visiting on december. I am a Spanish/Romanian native speaker and I am loving this language plus I feel so dope writing and reading in Cyrillic.
"Да" здесь ни разу не "yes", это вводное слово вроде "well" или "you know". Да будет вам известно, что "да" во фразах типа "да будет вам известно", "да ладно!", "пироги да слойки", "да здравствует..." и "да нет" ни разу не то "да", которым соглашаются, и ни в коем случае не будет переводиться как "yes". Это вы еще сербского не знаете, где "да" в каждой второй грамматической конструкции, например, "желим да пливам" - "хочу плавать", и тоже ни разу не пресловутое это ваше "yes", как бы вам того ни хотелось. Хватит вводить людей в заблуждение.
Hi, I’m Russian, and I’m sorry for following mistakes Just wanted to say that it was amazing First of all, I adore when Americans or European aren’t scared of Russian. This fact itself is very satisfying. Secondly, you’re actually a pretty good teacher, ‘cause you’re mixing the information about language with both geography and history. Also, you use some linguistic terms like verb pair, which even I (and I’m pretty sure most of the the Russians except linguists) haven’t known. It may be hilarious, but this video actually made me wanting to learn my own native language. In conclusion, thank you very much! I really hope other nations will stop seeing us as heathens and get interested in our language/history!
I’m not sure how difficult this was for you to write, however, there are very few mistakes in your English here so well done. Hopefully my Russian will be just as good some day.
Learning Cyrillic wasn’t hard. However, I’m still much slower reading Russian than Spanish (another language I am learning). This is despite the fact that I am a native Polish speaker so I am familiar with a slavic language. My brain just swallows up the Latin script whereas I do have to do some mental gymnastics with the Cyrillic and thus read it a lot more slowly. Hopefully this will improve with time. I’m eager to try Olly’s Russian book when I can read more effortlessly.
Polecam "ночной экспресс" taka książeczka do nauki rosyjskiego, bardzo przystępny język i ciekawa historia. Na początku czytałem bardzo wolno i czułem jak mózg mi paruje, ale progres przyszedł bardzo szybko i teraz czytam "Zbrodnie i karę" w oryginale ;)
However, it happens and vice versa - one day, just for fun, I've retyped a Slovak text cyrillic. And the miracle occured - I've understood at once about 80% text that seemed quite alien until then . :-)
I'm from Moscow, but I have friends from different parts of the country. We have some differences in speech, the most noticeable one is of course the sound "g", we all pronounce it differently, some as "h" some and "gh" and so on. Also, an interesting difference that I've recently noticed is that we conjugate verbs differently sometimes, it occurs very rarely but still. All in all, our differences are to small and insignificant to call them "dialects", and I don't think we have accents either.
I am friends with a Russian couple. She is from Moscow, he is from a small town in Ural mountain region. Sometimes he uses words she never heard of. It's so funny because she keeps joking around that he just invents Russian words that does not really exist. Of course he disagrees. For me as a German it's pretty normal to be introduced to a whole new vocabulary while spending time in other regions of the German speaking world. 🤣 we usually use our regional dialect and accents at home and use standard German to communicate to people from other parts of the country.
I lived with a russian family for a while, I noticed that they all sai ездию/ездиют instead of езжу/ездят and лазию instead of лезу and I think some more words which sounded wrong
@@michaelmichaelson8861 они существуют поскольку поскольку. В реальности, максимум что можно стретить это штук двадцать региональных слов, акцент на г/х/а/о/и, да чередование ч-ш/щ. Вот и все "диалекты". На самом деле то, что можно считать диалектом реально существует, оно используется в повседневной жизни, но носителей у этих диалектов на всю страну в рамках статистической погрешности, и, в основном, это старики.
I absolutely got to adore Russian since I started learning it a while back. Since then I don't see it as a rough language anymore, quite the contrary, it's super soft and smooth to pronunce and to listen to. The grammar is very challenging, but that also means things can be said in a super precise way. Grammatical simplicity bears great potential too, e.g. ambigiuous literature or memes. But often enough I find english and also german sentences (which is my native langauge) which can be understood in two forms or directions without further context. So today I wonder why german holds first place for being precise. как говорил лермонтов: пламенно и нежно
@@ЕленаАлександрова-ь5к с большим удовольствием) сейчас у меня мало времени дла русски потому что должен учить математику но я рад об помощь и русские друзья
Nah, this one is easy. If you just get the sarcasm it's easily translated as "It has never happened before yet here it is again." Or maybe even better "We have never seen it before yet here it is again" - it's less literal but conveys the feeling better.
If anyone is thinking of learning Russian, it's plain silly not to learn the Cyrillic alphabet, seeing as you can actually do that in about a day. I've taught it in a couple of hours even, just by thinking of words and getting my friend to figure it out. True, we were in Moscow, so he was using it already on the Metro and on the street the next day, so was unlikely to forget it. I have a file somewhere; you just read it, you can figure out the words, (мама, лама, лампа, план, планета ...) and you've learned the alphabet by the time you finish it. Just reading the names of places in an atlas is one simple way (Америка, Антарктика, Африка,..., Лондон, Берлин, Мадрид,...).
I'm Russian and while learning English the easiest way was through songs. While listening to them over and over again not only you memorize the meaning of words but you also get more comfortable with grammar
Thank you Olly for this video. I am not a polyglot, but speak Spanish and Russian in addition to English and I deeply love them both. It was fun seeing you brag on some of the uniquenesses of the Russian language. I also have used your Russian for beginners book. Highly recommend it to anyone trying to learn this beautiful language! Keep the videos like these coming! I love learning the uniquenesses of other languages.
12:11 the correct translation for - Не опять, а снова: - Again? - Not again, but once more 13:14 - "Надрыв" also means when you overwork or overdo something for no reason. Чего ты надрываешься? 13:36 - I would say that "Тоска" more like melancholy
I am Russian from the South West (the g-region) and in my humble opinion there are no dialects, just some differences in pronunciation. In that respect Russian is one of the easiest languages to learn! :)
I dunno mate I'm from the north and i was in a villiage in the g-region, and i had difficulties with understanding people's speech. But yes, in the cities it's just about pronunciation
@@TheSpadaLunga это проблема именно северных народов Если взять именно русские земли отличий не будет много У северных же народов русский не так давно стал родным языком, а потому очень многое они перенесли из языков своих предков
@@terminatos я русский, в роду не было малых народов Севера, по крайней мере, если доходить до прабабушек/прадедушек. Просто в деревнях есть диалектные слова и грамматические особенности, которые мне непривычны
@@eugenem.762 Диалекты есть, просто не в городах, а в деревнях, особенно на юге, поэтому мы с ними не так часто встечаемся. А акценты и в городах есть, даже в крупных, по типу Ростова-на-Дону или Перми
quite some comments here, being a Russian I really enjoyed the material. It's always very interresting to see the 'otsider's' feeling of your language. Though there was a small factual mistake in the vid. ь and ъ are used not exactly in a way that Olly described. In both Russian words "family" and "seed" the last м' is softened. in first case by Ь, the second time by the soft vowel Я. But in the word Семья (family) the Soft sign marks, that the last vowel is not the part of the syllable, but forms a syngle sign diphtong (ya). Same works for the Hard sign. It affects the vowels' behaviour much stronger than that of a consonant.
I studied in Minsk, Moscow and Leningrad (St.Petersburg) and never felt any difference in dialects, however I could tell immediately that someone came from the "stans" as they had strong accent. Russian like other languages has registers and the terms and grammar used in official, scientific, legal etc. is very different from the everyday Russian.
I just watched it and realized that I need to think more about my own language) or, perhaps, try to rethink ordinary things I do everyday. Video is great! I am so happy if you enjoy your journey in the world of expressive words and emotional visualization of the language.
I'm a Russian native speaker, Moscow region :-) Ninilchik Russian was pretty hard for me. I understood the main meaning of what he said in third repeat. As for the dialects - yes, Russian language have dialects depending on the regions. Some of them appears from merging several languages like Ukrainian and Russian languages in the southern regions. They are mostly easy to understand, but sometimes you get stuck on words that you can't find any matches in you vocabulary 🙂 About "Не опять, а снова", you can add meaning to the English translation something like "No again, but once again" - I guess, it's a bit different meaning. BTW there is one thing that you didn't mention - using punctuation in sentences. Russian sentences can be heavily loaded with comas, colons, dashes and so on. Take this sentence: "Если вас интересует мое мнение - я выскажусь: настоящая дружба (именно дружба, а не шапочное знакомство или приятельские отношения) проверяется в радости; умение разделить радость другого человека - этим сегодня могут похвастаться немногие…очень немногие «друзья»!". All those punctuation marks adds pauses, definitions and additional meanings to what you say. For example word "Друзья" in quotes changes meaning of the work from positive to negative - figurative sense. I can come up with the sentence where every word will be devided by coma and it will make sence ))) "Кажется, можно, наверное, предположить, что, конечно, запятых, бесспорно, слишком много, но, разумеется, по всем, полагаю, правилам."
In my opinion, the question "Do I have to learn the Cyrillic alphabet in order to learn Russian", despite being quite common, doesn't have any sense. I mean, many people, even my colleagues from the US, speculate that Russian is difficult because they use different alphabet. But that's an enormous fallacy! You can master Cyrillc for a couple of hours, even in a plane of your way to Russia - but it may take years or even decades for mastering the language. So, if you want to learn Russian (or my Ukrainian), the Cyrillic alphabet should be the last thing to worry about.
I would highly doubt that you can easily learn the c. a. in a couple of hours. From my experience it takes most people more about 3-5 weeks - depending of course where you're from and if you've got experience in language-learning at all. Most people also just never learn to write russian by hand which I would highly recommend - it is more or less a separate alphabet of course but really worth the effort.
@@michaelkores6860 Well, it's only 33 letters, some of them are the same as in Latin or close to them. I learnt some other alphabets, like Greek, or Hebrew, or Georgian, and it didn't take a lot of time. I learnt the Georgian alphabet in the plane while flying to Tbilisi, and could read there - of course, slowly, like a 5 year old kid, but I could recognise some international words.
@@alexandertumarkin5343 There is still the written alphabet and I do recommend learning to write by hand and some letters change. It is also rather difficult and needs time to learn to write by hand fluently as you have to learn how to connect the different letters when writing. You did sys "master the cyrillic alphabet" and I would say that includes both reading and writing very fluently and it took me a couple of weeks and a lot of practise - of course I won't say someone with more talent can do it much faster.
@@michaelkores6860 Well, I can agree that the handwriting is more complicated, yet the question is whether it is really essential on the early stages. First, it is not used as much in the 21 century. We mostly type now. Really, a lot of people don't touch a pen for ages, since they have smartphones :) Second, the real handwriting is often different from the school books, and there are a lot of pattern how people write in real world. I personally tend not to conjugate letters, usually I write them separately in most of cases, and that's not what I was taught in the school. Third, in many cases there is no point to learn handwriting separately from the language. You probably know, or can easily google the memes "Russian handwriting drives me crazy". The only reason why I can read it quickly is that my language knowledge allows me to recognize easily what word is supposed to be. Otherwise, I couldn't read that either. So, to sum up, handwriting knowledge is beneficial, but not absolutely necessary for beginners.
An important thing to know about Russian is that almost every noun has a «ласково» version, which is basically a slightly modified version of the word. For example; книга/книжка. Both mean the same so just be careful.
"уменьшительно-ласкательная форма" would be the correct term, kind of starting to feel lucky that Russian is my mother tongue and I know it by default 🍀
@@sayachika6817 : Sorry, yeah didn’t know the term but yeah, I speak a lot now in Russian and I find it fascinating how you have these forms of words. Your language is the love of my life. Greeting from England 🏴
@@louisronan5903 fascinating how it works out with foreign languages sometimes, being Belarusian and speaking Russian as my first language, I teach Japanese and consider it the love of my life as well 😁
@@sayachika6817 : Yeah it’s weird, I couldn’t imagine my life without Russian. I’ve spoke with a few Belarusian and I can’t even tell the difference between them and Russians.
@@olekscap4620 This statement is true for all young generations in different countries. Young people stopped reading books with the advent of the Internet.
@@olekscap4620 eh, reading books as a child teaches you the logic of the language and guarantees some vocabulary (don't mind me, 10 years down the line and I still mess up my stresses because I learnt too many words through books), but doesn't teach you the rules. I was the kid who didn't know the rules and yet "felt" how the sentences "should be" - and did so correctly. in other words, i'm a native speaker and learning grammar of your mother tongue is a weird experience.
There's a good story about the last word you talked about "тоска" when Vladimir Nabokov was translating Yevgeniy Onegin written by Alexander Pushkin he encountered a big problem, he couldn't translate that word literarily therefore he had to add a paragraph to explicitly explain what that word mean.
“Снова” comes from the word “новый” - new. That’s why it has a positive conotation, it’s “not (to repeat the same) again, but again (as a new experience)”. “Я опять приеду в Москву в следующем году” (I'll go to Moscow again next year) - neutral, repeating the visit. “Я снова приеду в Москву в следующем году” - positive, I wait to do it.
Mistake, must be I am going to Moscow next year or I will go to Moscow next year…Come in your sentence not correct. It means “ I will arrive in Moscow next year”.
I'd add that OPYAT' has quite a negative connotation to it. If someone says "Dima has asked you for help" you can reply simply with "Opyat'?" which means "Again?!" with a quite heavy annoyance in the tone :) You cannot use Snova in this context because Snova is actually neutral.
@@valeral92 To tell the truth, you can always use "опять" as "again" and nobody would think that as a mistake. It's something like "will" and "shall" in English. There is a difference but nowadays nobody would really care if you use "will" everywhere. You can be wrong with "снова", though.
wow, Olly, such top quality content! I am Russian and I learnt couple things watching this video! Thank you for uploading it, I found it very interesting. As far as the dialects vs accents, I'd incline to the latter.
@@carlosmarcelovellosowendt4598 yes, its pretty close but more "suicidal" and "dark" than "saudade". also "toska" means just "boring" sometimes, which is much slighter meaning
To those interested in learning Russian, I'd suggest read writers & poets like Alexandr Pushkin, Sergey Esenin, Lermontov; satire writers like Anton Chekhov, who's famous for his short satirical stories; Leo Tolstoy (novels), Mikhail Bulgakov (I recommend one of his greatest novels "Master & Margarita"). One of my favourite plays in poetry form is "Woe from Wit" by Alexandr Griboedov, who was also a diplomat. This is such a terrific satirical creation, making fun of the Russian high society at the time. A lot of Russian idioms, favourite one-liners came from this poem. It's absolutely terrific.
A Baltic speaker here. Russian, or any Slavonic language for that matter, to me is like French to an English speaker. Morphologies of these language are vastly different, almost nothing in common, but the syntax (the way how sentences are structured) is mostly the same.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing, Olly. I was very interested to hear your perspective on Russian. I have been studying the language for about seven months and it is enough to make you tear your hair out at times, but a worthwhile journey nonetheless!! Я очень люблю изучать русски язык. )))
Профессор лингвистики читает лекцию: "если к утвердительному слову добавить отрицательное или наоборот, сумма будет отрицательной, две отрицательные частицы усиливают отрицание, но ни в одном языке два утвердительных слова не означают отрицание". Саркастичный голос с задней парты: "ага, конечно!"
Love it. I mean the way how you present material, historical parallels, etc. I have an opposite problem - Russian living in an English speaking country :) Every language has its features that may be difficult to learn for foreigners. English is confusing me - verb + preposition may change meaning of the original verb a lot. You understood 90% of the words in sentence - but it does not make sense because of missing keyword which screws everything up :) If you are asking about dialects in Russian - I would say they are more like accents. Soviets made a huge work to get rid of them. I was born in Krasnodar region (South West of Russia), , my parents moved to Ural right after I was born ~3000km north-east and than I moved ~2000km to the West to Moscow (University education). I used to work as a service tech for lab equipment, so travelled a lot across Russia. No problem with speaking/understanding. Usually a small bunch of local words understandable from context + several unusual ways of pronunciation - mostly o-a + speed of speech differences + emotional pressure. The more to the South-West - the more expression in speech in general :))) Siberia - people speak slow. If they promise something - they will do it, so they need time before they agree. They are always thinking how to survive in harsh environment, if they say something - they really mean it :) St Petersburg... literate... Bum can quote 2-3 Silver Age poets and ask a permission to take your empty beer bottle... Stereotypes are partially true :) In general military service far from home, guaranteed work after you finish University in USSR (most likely in the middle of the nowhere), guaranteed realty after certain years of military service/work at a certain factory - and most Russians have relatives/friends/colleagues all over former USSR territory. Plus "incorrect" accent/pronunciation has been denounced in Schools/Universities/Institutes and not very good for career (there were exceptions, especially in provinces) but general line was about standard Russian dialect). Finally Russian accents all over former USSR territory are pretty mild, compared to, let's say, to British accents or US accents over country/different states. Ninilchik dialect mentioned in a video sounds archaic. Understandable with subtitles, but probably making many difficulties at first occasion. I would say close to Polish, because of ж - ш way of pronunciation.
Hey Olly! I really love your books. I was really able to tremendously improve my reading comprehension in French thanks to you. But I wanted to know if you would ever release short stories in Chinese?
I'm from a big Russian city and when I first time heard my bf's mother speak I really could barely understand her. I felt like a word-tornado came across, so fast was her speech. Nowadays I can understand her, but it is still hard sometimes. And another "dialecting" part in Russia, that I myself found was about white and black bread naming in different cities
Russian is a very deep language. You can learn it for many years but if you want to reach such a level that even Russian didn't get that you are not native speaker you should spend on it whole your life.
Do you seriously think Brits can’t tell who is foreign and who is not? They need 2 sec to see that. What you say about Russian is true for every language
rich nah, just a very broken bastardized version of old church slavonic and a language which hasnt had its reading and writing to be reformed into the better read as you write and write as you read, one letter one sound. instead of this wired combo of french inspired design where a group of letters makes a inconceivable sound..
Russian native speaker here. Russian used to have dialects, but they are long time gone and nowadays only present in rural communities, mostly remote and incredibly small villages. People all over the country speak practically the same (at most sometimes changing the length of vowels), the only difference you might notice is a tiny amount of different words being used to describe the same things in some regions. Something like “soda/pop” in the US, but much less common thanks to the Soviet education.
Olly, Great video. I have some subscribers and patreon people I have been teaching. Its definitely a hard language to pick up. Thank you for the video and tips
А где тут дифирамбы? Рассказал человек иностранной аудитории о русском языке. Ещё недостаточно много русских, к сожалению, владеют настолько английским, чтобы нормально выразить мнение, но намерения похвальны.
I'm really happy with my progress in learning Russian over the past year. With that said, I still have an insane amount to learn. I'm super determined, which can sometimes be very overwhelming. I just want to know everything NOW. This is one of the languages of my ancestors. I have no living relatives who speak it. :(
That's so cool to see someone trying to learn a difficult language, and probably not immediately profitable one at that! Keep it up. I wish I was that motivated. It's only (infrequent) RUclips videos in my target language about stuff I'm interested in that keep me going.
Being fluent in russian is as impressive as in Japanese or Chinese for Western countries ( I mean if it's not your native language obviously) I was lucky enough to had these "ambitions" at my early ages and grinded bunch of books after having extremely good knowledge in it, and now I'm pretty much op in russian. Learn it if you love it ! Russian is awesome, and a good way to hang out with russian girls 😌
Thanks for a great video! It's very nice to see a deep detailed story about Russian language, its history and main traits. And this one is not even the first I have seen on your channel, it seems that you have dived deep in it. I think learning Russian is not very popular around the world, I hope your great story will make it a little more attractive for those who finds it interesting and mysterious. I used to work some time in language exchange summer camps for kids. Those were quite popular before the situation with foreign politics of current regime started to go really sad. We had kids from different countries and even US that arrived to Russia for a month. It was fun, good times and a great overall experience. I met and I had an opportunity to talk to a lot of interesting people from different parts of the world, it was very exciting, and that helped me to learn more about different cultures, languages, countries and improved my English too. I have seen quite a lot of people learning Russian, and I see that it can be really tough to get a decent level of it if you are out of natural language environment. So in theory, Russian should be really hard to learn, however, I have seen a lot of cases when once a person has immersed into a Russian speaking environment, he or she progressed incredibly fast in it, I couldn't even believe it myself. Russian is expressive language, it becomes much easier to learn when you can see emotions of those who speak it and can use some nonverbal part of language yourself. So if you doubt - please don't, it's not as hard as it seems and I hope it will be a really fun adventure for you.
It's really prettier than you might think it would be too. A lot of the sounds are very soft. I spent a year learning Russian 8 hours a day. Not much has stuck with me, unlike Spanish that I have studied since 7th grade. Having lived or worked in Spain, Mexico, and Puerto Rico was a big help too :o)
I'm 7 months into learning Russian and to me the part I struggle with the most is reading and pronouncing it's pretty much the same issue with my Mandarin (which I studied for 13 years in school mostly memorizing things any dialogue is confined to classroom situations between teacher and student) so now I just translate stuff I want to say and repeat it daily.
Never knew you had a RUclips channel. I've read the beginner version of your book so many times. So excited to see there is a new one. I'll buy any book you write for Russian. It's such a nice change of pace from Дорога в Россию and other textbooks. Thanks for your work.
Is Russian hard to learn? 👉🏼 ruclips.net/video/fgi8-LTvZ4s/видео.html
From Olya to Olly - it's not _dialects_ it's *accents*. So, like, in Moscow they're known to say /a/ in a very pronounced way. "Ха-раааа-шо в Маааа-скве. " Kind of the opposite of the /o/ in NY accent: "A dwog on a wok in New Ywok"... But, otherwise, Russian is Russian when in Russia 😉
@@APlusRussian In "хАрАшо" more acts the "Russian shwa" than the pure /ʌ/ sound. On the other hand, in some vernacular accents (Volga region, the White Sea coast) plays the doughnut-rounded crisp /ɔ/ "хОрОшО".
@@ihori779 True - "оканье" is definitely a thing in some non-Moscow regions (and the country side). But NYC "awking" seemed more illustrative based on the size and stature of the two cities 😉
Sir, since my two favourite writers are American Robert Sheckley and Belgian Jean Ray, I must say, if you want to read their works, especially if you want to do it for free, knowing Russian is necessary - because of all the languages in the world apart from their native ones, these two writers are translated massively only in Russian. Robert Sheckley is simply one of the most respected sci-fictionists in Russia since the Soviet times.
russian lang extremely tolerates speech disorders, so (suffice to say) the're virtually hella lot of dialects/accents :)) one could say молоко/млако/малако/мулоко/... & most of ru-speaking ones understand it.
- опять ты смотришь видео иностранца, который втирает про русский язык?
- не опять, а снова!
Сначала Джастин, потом Рома НФКЗ(не совсем иностранец про русский, скорее русский про Россию на иностранном) теперь это)
Втирает
@@sofzo
Да таких блогеров уже десятка два точно набралось, причем все в один момент появились, я щас всех и не вспомню.
и не говори =)
вдругорядь )
Cyrillic is honestly the easiest part about Russian, it took me like 2 days to memorize it before giving up on Russian grammar
Update: I am now learning finnish, which probably has a harder grammar
Haha same but I'm a german so the grammar is less difficult for me lol
6 damn cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, and prepositional. Slavic grammar is insane. I can see how Poles cracked Enigma.
Lmao
@@mynamename5172 Finnish has got 15 cases
@@alonzoperez2470 Amazing. Now I sort of want to learn it, just to see if its possible.
I don't know why people is so scared of Cyrillic. I'd say it's the easiest part of learning Russian.
Эти люди просто не брались за изучение китайских иероглифов.... Вот где страх и ужас!))
Тоже не понимаю этого. Наши дети учат латиницу в 7-8 лет. И не считают это чем-то необычным. В мире достаточно других, отличных от латиницы алфавитов, но почему-то все страхи вокруг кириллицы.
@@IrkinsEselsior Подтверждаю. Я сейчас Японский учу (там система иероглифов почти идентичная), и это кошмар. Чтобы понимать 95% всех иероглифов что встречаются в речи нужно выучить 1000 штук. Даже если учить по 5 иероглифов в день (что уже довольно много), то на изучение всей тысячи уйдёт порядка 7-ми месяцев, при условии того что вы запоминаете их раз и навсегда, никогда не забывая ни одного из них.
@@aeolian951 Какие иероглифы? Кану бы запомнить...
@@IrkinsEselsior Best English speaker in Russia
Andrei: casually talking about good weather and how is everything is snowy like it should be in the winter.
Olly: *russian is a sexy language*
Its sexy in an intimidating kind of way
А можно таймкод?
He talks like he’s high on shrooms or some other acid ..I don’t know is it seems like that for English speakers also ))
@@madzak9847 he's clearly speaking so slowly for foreigners, so they could better understand him. In practice even people from Moscow talk much, much faster; and this man is from Syberia, so he normally talks even faster.
@@tisthecat IKR, but it did sound weird lol
I also didn't get why Olly said ppl from Moscow talk slowly: any foreigner who heard us speaking Russian noted how bloody FAST it was (even Italians & Greeks)~ 😕
As a Russian native speaker and a linguist I confirm: The modern Russian has no dialects, so you can unterstand everyone speaking Russian wordwide.
Да нифига, я вот архангельских не шибко понимаю, и балачку южную тоже :)
@@Theuronia а что с архангельскими? Я с Архангельской области :)
@@vtyr2127 артикуляция немного другая, темп речи, диалектизмы опять же :) А однажды вообще послушала именно как говором говоят запист - и поняла, что ничего не поняла :)
@Evil Robot Santa Claus 🎁 💣 💥 у якутов есть свой легкий акцент, но его непросто услышать. А говорила в записи девушка молодая, кстати:)
@@Theuronia южная балачка только в некоторых словах может показаться странной, но объяснить всё можно за пару секунд
I am native English speaker and have spoken Russian now for over 30 years. I was fortunate enough to live in Russia when I was 21 and later in my 40s when I was a bank executive. There are three high mountains to climb to become proficient in this wonderful language. The first is the grammar. Russian has a highly inflected system with six cases just like Latin. This is true in all the Slavic languages with the exception of Bulgarian. This is hard to get used to. The second mountain to climb is free stress. Like English there is no firm rule as there is in Czech or Polish. You have to learn the stress for each new word you learn. Unstressed o become like an a as in "water" and unstressed ye becomes more like an i as in "it". The third high mountain to climb is the vocabulary which is grounded in Slavic roots. For an English speaker, this is not like learning German, French or Spanish. While there are some similar words like " general" and "mashina" for car the vast majority of everyday words are of Slavic origin. As Olly has said Verbs of Motion with all their changeable prefixes are a nightmare at first but they are grounded in logic. Thus the Russian alphabet is the easiest part and it can be learned quickly and is no more difficult than learning the Greek alpahabet. Russian is a very expressive language and probably has some of the most bizarre and creative cursing that I have every run into. It can really curl your hair. Most people will need to devote at least 1 000 hours to get to a high level of proficiency. Russian is not for the easily intimidated.
Thanks for the interesting comment!
Latin has no Prepositional or Instrumental....
@@christopherellis2663 it has ablative and vocative
@@ihavenoname6724 Serbian language has both vocative and instrumental. That's why we have actually 7 cases .
@@majasrbia well, good for you, I guess.
"Everything is covered with the snow. AS IT SHOULD BE IN THE WINTER." My mood lol 😂
Is it colder in Siberia or in the winter?
At night.
Thanx for supporting my lil cameo right there!!))
@@pierreabbat6157 по ночам заметно холоднее, чем в дневное время. Не только в Сибири.
@@pierreabbat6157 Both. And at night, of course. Like anywhere else. Yet, the cold feels in different ways. -25 in Siberia feels ok, but in England it would be a killer due to the constant humidity.
The mood should not depend on snow or rain. It is inside and cannot be taken from you.
Так круто описано, что даже мне захотелось учить русский, хотя я и являюсь носителем) Спасибо за такие слова!
Извините, что влезают с комментарием.) По-моему, быть носителем языка - не значит, что нельзя узнать/научиться чему-то новому. Слушая иностранцев, изучающих русский, можно для себя самого сделать множество открытий. Таких, Как каталанка Нурия.
Ты носитель. Возможно, неплохо знаешь и чувствуешь русский язык (если отставить в сторону оценки по-русскому в школе). А потом открываешь для себя целый логический пласт о родном языке. Внутренние связи, правила...
с вашего позволения, Демина, добавлю: я не русский, сразу обозначу, но не в этом соль... Меня расстраивает одна неприятная тенденция: большинство носителей русского языка плохо знают свой язык. Даже в разговорном ключе иногда хромают. И эта тенденция продолжает расти. Причину мы знаем, но смысла озвучивать и рассусоливать нет. То, что говорит сей молодой человек, в принципе, верно, но, увы, в теории и далеко от факта...
@@darkestwind191 так ты сам плохо владеешь русским, в плане, ты знаешь лишь разговорный
@@МартиМакфлури , понятия не имею, как ты это определил, ты, наверное, внук моей учительницы по русскому..)) а я разве уточнял, что знаю русский в идеале?) это не мой родной язык априори, так что, друг, не понимаю, к чему ты это написал.)
@@darkestwind191 Язык в целом структура гибкая, если носители языка говорят не так как зафиксировано в учебниках - значит это учебники устарели, а не носители неграмотные.
Часто вы видите граммар-холивары между носителями английского из Вашингтона и носителями английского из Австралии? При том что разные диалекты могут отличаться радикально.
Причина граммар-нацизма в России это как раз попытка навязать единый стандарт всей огромной территории СССР. Но это так не работает, язык всё равно будет эволюционировать и меняться вместе с культурой, неравномерно и по-разному.
I think that "не опять, а снова" would be better translated as "not again, but once more" or something similar.
This is a really good video! Even as a native speaker, I learned something new!
"не опять, а снова" - это просто шутка-присказка к слову 'опять', грамматического смысла не имеющая. смысл и грамматика использования слов 'опять' и 'снова' эквивалентны.
@@ccapt это скорее не шутка, а поддёвка бескультурного и наглого грубияна.
Чаще всего так говорят более слабому человеку, не боясь ответственности.
Хотя, конечно, ситуации разные бывают.
@@YaShoom поддевка это когда поддевка. но люди часто повторяют эту фразу, искренне полагая, что в ней есть какой-то грамматический смысл. возможно, путая с парой опять и обратно.
@@ccapt вот и вы мне, в какой-то мере нагрубили. Возможно там лучше подходит термин "передёргивание" (к обсуждаемому случаю), но это ведь не суть, а тонкости.
И они это говорят не что бы поправить, а именно что бы передразнить оппонента (на кой фиг поправлять в грамматике, если ты человека опять довёл чем-то - вопрос риторический).
- "Мы же договорились, а ты опять начинаешь что ли?"
- "Не опять, а снова!"
(где тут место грамматике, если человек делает плохо, понимает это и ещё поправляет - всё это что бы с поддёвкой перевести ответ в бессмыслицу)
Способ проверки передёргивания/поддёвки прост - подумайте, сказали бы вы так своей маме/папе/уважаемому дедушке? Вот и всё.
Это невежливость как минимум, а когда человек в стрессе от поступка нахала, это ещё и в какой-то мере издевательство - низведение сути к обсуждения словарных норм, в то время как всё понятно, что человек и считает что человек повторяет действие причиняющее ему страдания.
Это психологическая атака.
@@YaShoom мне не интересны мотивы. я о том, что грамматического и стилистического правила 'не опять, а снова' не существует. просто бессмысленная стереотипная фраза.
These are not dialects. Russian linguists call this "govor", or subdialect. These are minor differences in pronunciation and intonation in general.
Говор - это всего лишь разговорное название диалекта))
@@treehouse238 в русском нет диалектов, говор это другое.
@@treehouse238 Нет, говор это субдиалект. Диалект подразумевает более сложные отличия. "Говор" это вполне научный термин. Об этом прочитаешь в вики, ст. "говор" или "лингвистическом энциклопедическом словаре".
@@yasenkrasen1581 сейчас бы википедию считать авторитетным источником)))))))
Диалект имеет территориальную, социальную или профессиональную дифференциацию, в то время как говор только территориальную. Соглашусь, говор - это более узкое понятие, чем диалект, но говорить, что диалектов в России нет - это неправильно в корне, обратитесь к той же статье в ЛЭС со ссылкой на статью собственно о диалекте))
@@treehouse238 Википедия это не источник, это компиляция источников(которые помечены циферками). Если тебе не нравится, что в лингвистическом словаре "говор" используется как научный термин, напиши письмо протеста академикам. Ну, теоретически диалекты в России есть, где-то в деревнях их можно даже услышать еще у бабушек. Но на практике от Мурманска до Сахалина почти все говорят примерно на одном и том же диалекте. Когда лингвисты например говорят о вологодском диалекте, то имеют ввиду, что исторически он там зародился, существовал, даже повлиял частично на складывание русского языка. Но 99% людей его давно уже не используют, только "оканье осталось" от него. То ли дело во Франции, Италии или Китае! Во там диалекты так диалектищи.
Im american, but live in Russia. My Russian is b2-c1 now, after several years of study. The grammar is the kicker. Russian grammar is complex and you can only learn it through lots of listening and reading. If you try to hard memorize the rules you will fail. Your reader Olly was the first book I used to study with. It was a great resource and gave me the confidence to continue. As you advance you can find lots of books because Russia has a rich reading culture. You can find something in every genre that will interest you. Great language to study, amazing country, amazing people!
Russian is one of the languages I will learn in the next 5 years :)
I don't think so, russian is relatively easy language to learn the fonetics, but at the same time has a difficult grammar for sure and to progress your knowledge of the languange you have to forget it and then when you are better you begin to study it.
@@renanvinicius6036 write it in Russian, I can't understand your English. напиши на русском, я не понимаю твой английский.
@@themorrishouseofwizardry3555 Excuse me but I'm not fluent in english. What I'm trying to say is that phonetics in russian is easy as Italian for example, but at the same time their grammar is difficult, and to learn it you should put the grammar off and listen more contents. So, I hope you understand it, and I will try to improve my skills in english, sorry about it.
@@renanvinicius6036 yes, that's what I originally said. Lots of listening and reading. The grammar is just to complex to memorize. So I just focused on comprehensible input. It has worked well for me. I'm not fluent yet, but can carry on normal conversations with natives, watch videos and communicate basic ideas. Hope to study many more years. It's such a rich culture and language
If Russian is a sexy language, then learning Russian is hardcore BDSM.
Try to learn Chinese and I promise, you will change your mind! Удачи, друг мой!
@@Galliano1989 It's very simple compared to Russian, the only hard part is writing.
😁
@@thecandlemaker1329 idk, i gave up on the pronunciation part. Like reay, how can you make an entire sentence of slightly differing "shi" sounds and call it am easy language?
@@ДимаВеселов-в8и It's actually really simple, Russian has homophones too. It's just that there's a lot less of them because Russian is not restricted by the same, extremely limited, set of syllables.
Howdy everyone, native Russian here. Got a couple of comments for you:
1) Dialects. As a rule of thumb, any Russian can easily understand (almost) any other Russian. However, there’re 2 possible exceptions:
--> Regional-talk. But it’s more akin to accents and pronunciation of certain vowels (think Texas-English vs New-Yorker’s)
--> There’s still somewhat of a “simpleton-speech” (просторечье/простанародье). It’s a variation of Russian spoken by older people or in some remote villages. With some particularly “thick”-variations it sometimes can get cumbersome to understand. And it’s also worth noting, that whereas “city-dweller” can usually understand a local "babushka", is it’s not always a case the other way around. (“Милок, прикорни на завалинке, что супротив сараю”) So go figure :)
2) As for several words allegedly translating into just one in English. Russian words have some sort of a “deeper-layer” which is reminiscent of older times (Old Church Slavonic language in particular) and are oftentimes can be “decoded” with knowledge of those roots.
For instance, the example Olly used for “again”, and the saying “не опять, а снова”. The “second again - снова” can be decoded to “С” + “нов”, meaning “from-the-beginning”, or “from-scratch”.
Thus more informative translation would sound like: “Not again, but anew”, implying the inherit expectancy of a different outcome this time around.
So, basically, if you wish to become the Pro in Russian, -- apart from the actual language you might also need to learn older versions of the language, to get “a feel” of it.
3) Generally speaking, Russian is simultaneously the language of emotions and logic. On the one hand, you can construct almost any word you need like Legos; on the other, there’re hundreds of shades and overlaps for almost any emotion or feeling.
I’ll also leave you with a couplet translation of a famous Russian poet of 19th century A. Pushkin, it does sound rather different from English poetry:
>
I loved you, and quite possibly this passion
Has not extinguished fully from my soul;
But you should not take gravely my confession;
My wish is not to sadden, but console.
I loved you hopelessly and in silent anguish,
Distressed by jealousy and timid plight
I loved you with such candor, such affection,
God bless you find love as true as mine.
<
P.S. Olly, awesome content, keep at it! :)
Well done. 10 out 10.
Еьать ты красавчик!You've said everything to the point!
"is it’s not always a case the other way around"
- do you mean modern slangs? I believe they are much more worth to mention, as they're rich, quite diverse and fast-evolving. And they may be even harder than regional dialects as it comes to vocabulary.
It's not just babushka may struggle with this, but even a midage person may have hard times trying to understand kids' smalltalk. Not to mention some quite sophisticated professional slangs and many others.
Как вы все достали со своим хиром
хитровыебанно!
Я китаец и начнал изучать русский яызк 20 лет назад. Я работал и живал в России почти всего 10 лет. Я бы сказать что, могу сообщать по русском языку по человеческому))) Но до сих под, грамматика русского языка все равно мой самый больший кошмар.😅😅
Если сложность грамматики китайского языка - 1, тогда русского языка - 10. Боже, меня так сильно мучала грамматика когда я изучал русский язык в университете. Я вообще не понял, как русские могут говорить, когда все слова почти постоянно меняются. После университа я поехал в Москву и там изчучал и работал, и все стало много проще. Если ты там живёшь, изучение языка стало много проще и интереснее. Просто не изучать все из книги, а побольше из жизни))) Удачи всем, кто старается изучать русский язык!)))😉
я изучала китайский! это перевернуло мне мозги и я по-новому посмотрела на вашу культуру. Один момент, что вы пишите и читатете слева на право - одно большое делает дело с головой. Другое - ваш алфавит - знаковый. Я когда на первых неделях погрузилась в эти тонкости - у меня мирровозрение поменялось. Я так и не смогла запомнить больше ни хао, но с большим уважением отношусь к вашей культуре. Ваш язык постичь для меня нечто невероятное
@@МарияКрасуля-э8ъ Арабский, хибру и некоторые другие читаются справа налево. Русский с китайски, как вы и ошиблись, читаются слева направо (но или сверху вниз)
@@mattr4375 да, и в китайском нет алфавита. возможно автор спутала его с другим языком, но ни хао это все еще китайский... крч странно
😀
очень вы смешно это описали, хотя я всегда думала, что китайский сложнее русского. Но с другой стороны я выросла говоря по русски, так что может поэтому? 🤷
@@мемнаяслойка технически есть. Пиньин - технически алфавитная система написания китайского языка
Удачи всем, кто пытается выучить русский.
Как сказал один комик: если бы не т9, то я бы не выдержал, даже с учётом, что это мой родной язык
Т9 - костыль для тех, кто плохо видит или плохо знает. Или обладает слишком толстыми пальцами.
@@pdanokia2524 спасибо за информацию, не совсем понял к чему это, ведь и так все об этом знают, разве что ещё т9 повышает скорость письма
@@Alexander-sl8bp уууууу какой ты душный - открой окно, а то прикол задохнётся )))
@@HyiPizdaSkovoroda ясно, я слишком мелкий, чтобы понять этот прикол
@@Alexander-sl8bp Речь, наверное, о Вашей шутке "от известного комика". Лично я не пользуюсь Т9. Мешает. Править потом приходится, так как наши намерения о том, что набрать, не всегда совпадают.
I’m from the UK. Sitting in my apartment in Moscow feeling unmotivated to practice my Russian. This video has reminded me language isn’t just a list of words and grammar rules. It’s a beautiful, historic, in depth web of culture that exists to be explored and enjoyed. One of the best videos I’ve seen on the subject. Thanks!
Mike, you have such a great opportunity there! Use it! I am Russian and I will go to Mexico next week for 6 weeks also to practice and learn Spanish, and you already there, in the center of Russian language - I bet any hours you will spend by learning our language you definitely will appreciate for yourself in the future!
Great comment Mike… it’s so easy to get lost in study and forget WHY we’re learning in the first place. Keep it up!
Agree. I am Russian and started learning Japanese. This video gave me motivation.
Well, I'm Russian and I didn't ever realize, how beautiful it can be :""")
Меняю практику в русском, на практику в английском, я тоже в Москве.)
Hello I'm a native Russian speaker from Kazakhstan🇰🇿 I would describe the 'dialects' or accents you mentioned more as a difference in manner of speech. In Kazakhstan we speak fluent Russian that any Russian speaker would understand absolutely, but you could tell a Russian from Kazakhstan and a Russian from Russia apart very subtly from the way they speak! Very interesting to see an outside perspective on the language. I always say that I am greatful for my Russian and that it's a great language to know because other than it being beautiful language with a rich history, culture, and great literature, I also love that it connects so many different people from such diverse cultures, and I have a common language and understanding with people from all over the world because of it. Thank you for the video!
Носитель великого и могучего из Латвии, на связи!🤚
Полностью согласна с Вами)
На самом деле в Русском есть точное слово - гОвор.
Qozoq qozoqcha, o'zbek o'zbekchani birinchi o'ringa qo'yishi kerak. so'ngra boshqa tillarni.
O'zbekistondan salom!
Қазақге қазақша, өзбекке өзбекша бірінші орында тұруы керек. содан кейін басқа тілдер.
@@boburzod кто сказал, что так должно быть? Может каждый сам для себя это решает?
Қайырлы күн ! Комментарийлерде қазақты көруге қуаныштымын.
"Do you need to study Cyrillic?"
Absolutely yes, no doubt about it! Even if you don't learn Russian - learn Cyrillic, and you'll look so cool in the eyes of your friends.
Yes, we have little з and mirrored Я.
I've recently watched the series "A Young Doctor's Notebook" and those "cyrillic-style" credits was awful, it's absolute evil, please don't do that again))
Oh, and this brackets in the end of sentences - typical sign of Russian speaker. It's smiles.
The question is not why but why not. The dude was far too generous with giving people 2 whole days to learn Cyrillic. 2 hours are enough.
@@Zuzyandr yeah like doing that "яobot or яussian" lmao
@@thecandlemaker1329 No. 2 hours maybe and 1 week later you forget it. It's because after learning the alphabet you read so you practice, so you keep the knowledge.Also a weird flex to tell how long it took you
@@Comprends-ton-Dim It didn't take me a second, I'm Russian. I'm taking from the experience of learning the Latin alphabet at school, which takes precisely 1 lesson.
На каком-то канале, где иностранцы учат русский два товарища общались. Читают фразы из книги и объясняют поочередно кто как понял. Шикарный диалог, один читает задание:
-у неё иссяк запал.
-у неё что запало?
-иссяк!
😂🤣
есть ссылка?
@@Ekaterinamailу этого анекдота борода до пола, поэтому никаких ссылок он не даст
It is heart-warming to watch Olly speak about a language with such great respect and admiration. His enthusiasm is infectious.
One of the benefits of being a Russian and trying to become a polyglot is that you already know one of the hardest languages out there.
As a native russian I'd say:
U're definately true!👍 I can speak English, Español and 中文. It is really easy))))😀
@@werehuman2999 не жалуйся😁
@@ИвановИван-я9е мне не на что жаловаться)
Chinese language: hold my beer, Russian language...
@@dmitriylatukhin7356 на самом деле нет. Там граматика проще. Сильно проще чем в русском. Она просто другая. И во многих случаях как раз таки при переводе нужно банально упрощать и выбрасывать большое количество всяких оборотов граматических изьебов и прочих союзов и междометий.
Главная сложность китайского это именно иероглифы
Russian grammar is really hard. Even Russians themselves make mistakes in written and spoken language very often. And we learn it in school for 11 years!
you had to add: good luck fellas! :D
Well, I just completed my 856 days of Russian Study, and yeah I make mistakes. How else are you going to learn? I know that I will not ever speak it like if I lived in Russia for 67 years. My birthday is coming up. The language does have its charms. Its a foolish notion that well you are not going to make mistakes or get it out and out wrong. Gee my first language is English of the American kind and well I make mistakes and my spelling is poor. Then again I can make myself understood. My goal is to travel to Russia see the sights I am interested in and at least be not so lost and to be able to ask for a cup of tea.
I think to a some degree it’s true for any language
Russian isn't that special. You can find same description that applies to maybe any other language. German, English and French and Kazakh at least.
I don't think Russians making mistakes is any good indicator. You'll see a ton of people on the internet making many silly grammatical mistakes in their native languages too.
Hey, a Russian here, we believe we have no dialects as everyone understands everyone across all Russia, although linguists do say we have the three you mentioned. The Russian alphabet is technically called the "modern Russian alphabet" not Cyrillic. Another important thing to know about pronunciation is remembering the stress in words. Also, I strongly recommend Olly's books. I've tried them for German and they are amazing. Cheers from Moscow!
Being a pretty fluent Russian speaker I can agree that there are no "visible" dialects. Pretty every part of the country speaks the same language, at least that's how it sounds to me. Although I know that in the South people tend to use "h" instead of "g" sound, probably an influence of the Ukrainian language. Also, people in the Volga region tend to use "o" sound far more often than in other regions (where "a" sound dominates). But these are tiny differences, essentially unnoticeable to a foreigner learning the language.
From my own experiences as a German who speaks A2-B1 level of Russian I fully agree that pronunciation and word stress is crucial... :/ people have a hard time understanding you if you do mess up word stress. Also, I got the impression that strong accents like the German robot one is confusing people. I always receive a couple of Что?s While speaking to strangers... fortunately my Russian friends did help me a lot to point out fine sound differences of vowels my German ear just does not catch easily... 🙉
@@kolli7150 Every Russian learner has to bounce into these words which have a totally different meaning depending on the syllable stressed: пис'ать (to write) / п'исать (to pee); з'амок (a castle) / зам'ок (a lock), больш'ая (bigger - ref. to female gender)/ б'ольшая (bigger - when ref. to a part of smth). There are many more words like these
@@rczabaj southern Russian g/h has nothing with Ukrainian language
Thanks for the compliment!
You actually got me with тоска because it was the very first word I thought of when you said about paragraph-long translations 😆 And, well, it's pretty widely considered to be a part of our cultural code and mentality. Russian people excelled at being sad, they refined the very meaning and process of sadness and made it into entirely new concept. So you can't translate it for the full meaning, you can only feel it if you dove deep enough into our culture.
I think this profound cultural sadness of Russian and Russian culture is what attracts so many westerners (like me!)
Nastrovya!
Portuguese people are much the same! We even have a genre of music, Fado, that's all about themes of sadness, loss and longing!
Oh yes, the endless ТОСКА.
I can’t really feel proud about that cultural feature but this is so definitely true.
Toska and Nadriv, these are the words are the best to describe Russian soul :) lol
That tocka hit me especially hard this morning
There is one huge advantage of knowing Russian. Once you learn it, you can watch movies dubbed or subtitled in Russian of all around the world, from some exotic Indonesian to English-speaking ones that you can not get on the Internet in English even if you would pay for it!
Also, sometimes books in other languages translated in Russian are either not available in English, for example, the Italian children's stories of Gianni Rodari, or poorly translated in English for example, philosophical texts of Julius Evola. Also, some languages are easier to translate in Russian than in English, for example, German, as it has a similar idea of grammar and connected complexity of structure, or pronunciation, for example, Italian opera, which is sung in Russian just fine.
yeah, russian is pretty useful in these terms. i read that it is the 2nd most spoken language in the internet, after english
From the top of my heart: grammar rules in Russian are horrible even for native speakers, so reading books helps a lot believe me.
Not horrible, but yes, there are pretty much Russians who can do some mistakes despite they are natives :( It's all about amount of their effort into it through their childhood and the most important part is their parrents. (Russian from South)
top or bottom?
@@tarasr that's because in colloquial speech you don't need that much of a grammar: a good deal of particles, proper tone and sometimes a fair dose of obscene words (work almost like particles) let you make your point quite clear. Joking a bit, but spoken language (not only Russian) is much simplier, with shorter phrases and rich use of all kinds of small semantic stuff you barely find in your books.
And sure the correlation between being literate and reading books is strong. It starts being obvious at the elementary school age, and you're right, family attitude is a great factor here.
@@markbr5898 Middle. :-)
I'm learning Russian for 1 month. I can read Cyrillic Alphabet. Mainly I can read & speak a little bit Russian.
Hablo español también y estudio japonés. Soy de India 🇮🇳❤️
Ого молодец. А есть цель? Привет из Беларуси
🤝 удачи!)
Удачи тебе
welldone!
Do you want to practise conversational Russia?
I was sitting on the fence, deciding whether or not to learn Russian. After this video you gave me that final push. I like your contagious passion. Thanks
Удачи, чувак!
Удачи. Учить сложные иностранные языки это один из лучших способов ебать свои мозги. :D
Wish you good luck!
Ходить is not walking back or anywhere specific, it's just walking in general, it's the act of walking itself. Now идти - that means there's a destination
Банально, но всё же напишу, что это забавно смотреть видео про русский язык на английском, при этом зная этот язык как родной
Well, hello there 😊
И не зная английский
@@takasugishinsuke7029 ну я знаю, так что хотя бы поняла о чём он говорил
@@ascende_superius верно, зачем ещё учить английский живя в России кроме как смотреть видосы на Ютубе. )
@@v96n это была придирка? Похоже на то. А что мне ещё делать? Я не могу уехать из своей страны (поправка: это не россия) в англоговорящую, так что извините. Да и что плохого в том, что бы смотреть видео в Ютубе на английском? Вы же посмотрели его, ведь вы в комментариях оного, так что не понимаю в чём доёб.
The author voice is so "selling", so he "sold" me the idea to learn cyrillic... but then I remember I'm a native Russian xD
You could learn pre-Revolutionary Cyrillic...
@@stephenlitten1789 Most Russians read books, written before 1917 without any difficulties. Difficulties began when you try to read books, written before Peter I. There wasn't a strict system of rules, and the "official written language" was actually the church language, so modern people just don't know such terms today.
@@stephenlitten1789 The good thing to learn is glagolitic script. There are some fun advantages:
1) If you know someone, who learned glagolitic script aswell, you can message him in Russian language, but change the letters to glagolitic. In Russia 99% of people don't give a sh*t what glagolitic script is, so nobody can read it.
2) For the same reason, no one can read your secret diary if you have one
3)You need only 2-3 days to learn glagolitic script if you know cyrilics
4) You can read labels and letters in The Witcher game xD
Disadvantages:
1) Glagolitic script is well supported by Windows and Mac, there are a lot of fonts and keyboard layouts, but you cant buy a keyboard, labeled for that. So you have to use virtual keyboard or place stickers on your own.
2) Glagolitic not evolved much after XII century, so its not adapted for fast handwriting. Actually you drawing each symbol like Chinese hieroglyph. But after all I managed to record some lectures at the university - its hard but possible
I never thought about learning Russian but lately I've been binge watching "bald and bankrupt" and Russian started to sound more and more appealing. I just started learning Cyrillic on Duolingo. Such a fascinating script.
I love Bald! Big fan. I did a bit of Russian on Duolingo a couple years ago, too. I ought to get back into it. The script isn't as hard as it looks, eh? If you know some nerdy math formulas, that gets you a bunch of Russian letters, via the connection to the Greek alphabet.
@@frigginjerk you're right. Is it easier than it looks at first glance😁
Maybe it is the right time to give Russian another chance, isn't it?
@@sasharama5485 It's high on the list. Maybe when I want to take a break from French.
@@frigginjerk so many beautiful languages... Not so much time to learn them all😁
Just a suggestion of a show here:
I was looking thru the only few Russian language things on Netflix and came across "Better than us" and got hooked on it. I'm Russian, so I understand it no problem.. It's a bit cheesy in spots, but I actually like this show! Might be a fun one for you to watch while learning with English subtitles or something? :)
I have almost finished reading Crime and Punishment in Russian, which was one of the reasons I started learning Russian 6 years ago - stories can be great motivation to learn, not just a great method! Learning Russian has been a great journey, and I loved jumping headfirst into the complexity.
Also by the way, Mongolia is also changing from Cyrillic alphabet to the traditional top-to-bottom script!
I admire that. For my money, Russian lit is the best national literature.
That's the good book. I don't know about interesting situation with alphabet in Mongolia. Thanks for news!
That’s so cool Ewan! I started learning a few years ago for similar reasons, but I put it down about a year ago because it was too difficult to find material that I enjoyed that was at my level. I’m trying to pick it up again now and hopefully reach your level someday. Do you have any recommendations or advice?
@@ben1147 I can highly recommend the channel Russian Progress on RUclips, I learned a lot from watching his videos with Russian subtitles. I'm sure there are other good comprehensible input channels for Russian too.
I also read through Olly's Short Stories in Russian when it came out and they were good - I was a bit above the level of the books but they were still enjoyable to read.
If you want to start getting into Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground is a good read and not quite as long as his other novels. Chock full of psychological musings and all that.
Crime and punishment is a great book, it is read by 16 year olds in school and for big part of them language of this book is dificult. I havent read it being native in russian. What you've done is great!
Тот случай, когда у создателя этого ролика любви к богоспасаемому русскому языку больше, чем у нас самих. Thanks a lot!
Богоспасаемый язык у Б-гм избранного народа, вы таки всё перепутали)
помолимся!
Обычное дело. Для нас это должное и бытовое, а полиглотством страна не обременена. С чего бы взяться любви?
I think the way to "get" "Тоска" is to imagine and feel poetic "mourning" for something...You practically mourn for the end of summer, for example. That's the depth of feeling.
What surprised me while learning Russian was how heavily influenced it is by the Old Slavonic Church language. Many forms which I originally thought of as archaic turned out to be words originating from the Southern Slavs (Macedonia, Bulgaria) that entered Russian via the Orthodox Church. Also, there are numerous words from the Tatar and Turkic languages; and from the Dutch as well (thanks to Peter the Great). All these make Russian quite distinct from other Slavic languages.
Russian language has a lot of loanwords from german and french as well. These two languages used to be languages of russian aristocracy during tsarist era.
Also serbian has a lot church slavonic, turkic, and some german and hungarian words, but it's closer to macedonian and bulgarian than to russian.
There's plenty of words that exist in Russian language that are inherently perceived as archaic and obsolete, such as: око (óko) - an eye, the actual modern commonly used word for it is глаз (gláz); лекарь (lékar') - a doctor, the modern commonly used word for it is доктор (dóktor). And what's'really interesting about it is that in other Slavic languages, such as Czech, Bulgarian, etc. these archaic (from a Russian speaker's viewpoint) words are actually not old and archaic, but the ones that people use today!
As a beginner I can say the most difficult part is how every day things are said in Russian typically in strange ways, not "just" putting the words thatwe would use in a different language, translated and with correct grammar- no, the way of expressing is different, too. It makes the language interesting, though
Many things in the languages I've learned are said differently and Indeed it's way different SPECIALLY in Russian. Good luck and happy learning.
The further we get from English, the more this tends to happen! Try japanese one day, for a laugh 😅
For me as a Russian it's so weird that someone try to learn Russian xD But if you're studying Rus, don't be afraid about pronouncing rus words. Every Russian will understand you and will respect you)
we have the same feeling when studying English :D, so don't worry: road is made by walking
@@getrag1029 Some of us are perfectionist so we'd like to get the pronunciation as close as possible
The vast landmass where one can use Russian is truly mind blowing and most Russian speakers don't speak English so it's a very useful language and interesting to learn
Cheers felix!
Young women and most kids have some knowledge of English. You definitely need Russian to get around though. Knowing Russian makes the experience there something special. You miss out when you don't know it there.
@@brostoevsky22 as a native Russian speaker that lives in Russia, I'd say no, they don't. The only people who do, on a somwhat decent level, are the ones who went to learn is specifically for specific purposes. En mass, though, our schools do not teach it well enough (these books, they're a mess). Most likely, 90% of people can tell their name and say they don't speak English (with lost of mistakes, too).
@@brostoevsky22 as another native Russian speaker from a city with some of the best universities in my country, "some knowledge of English" doesn't give them an ability to communicate using English. "London is the capital of Great Britain" is considered a joke here, since that's all the English vocabulary most people have after graduating school.
@@527398 True. I learned more by reading tech documentation and writing comments on the Internet than learning English in school. I feel like it was just a waste of my time.
Слово "блин", кстати, стало уже универсальным мягким ругательством даже в Европе. Иностранцы, кто был в России очень хорошо используют в дальнейшем это слово и у себя на Родине, причем не задумываясь о переводе 😂😅
мне интересно что это на самом деле обозначает? блин как блинчик? или в каком смысле? я сам не русский, так что изменяюсь за ошибки, и спасибо!
@@Бородатый-к2н Я так до сих пор прикапываюсь к людям, когда слишком много ругаются :)
@@boburzod блин - это блин 😁. Представьте вы уронили себе что-то тяжёлое на ногу... Начали говорить по этому поводу неприличное слово "бл...", а рядом с Вами находятся дети... Вы изящно выходите из трудного положения заменяя нецензурное "бл..." на "блин". Вы с самого начала именно слово "блин" и хотели сказать😉.
Аналогичная замена - "ёлки зелёные" вместо ругательства "ё-моё". Не удержалось на языке ругательство - вовремя произведена замена.
Мой дед, жуткий матерщинник, чтобы мы с братом не научились плохим словам, при нас с братом ругался вообще: "раз, два, три, четыре, пять" 😀.
@@Бородатый-к2н так по русски тоже оладка, только через "о"... Белорусам везёт - как говорят так и пишут. А в русском грамматика русская (вологодский диалект), а произношение белорусское (московский диалект стал литературным языком, а к московскому диалекту белорусы язык приложили - в средние века в Москву на стройки приезжало много выходцев из Белорусии 😁)
@@Бородатый-к2н аладик маленький и толстый, блин большой и тонкий!
😍😍😍 omg omg learning russian , this video motivates me a lot ! thankyou !!! спасибо ☺️
nah, i'm just a person who speaks the language from their very childhood, and i wanna know what you've got to say about it) cheers to everybody learning it!
Regarding the "Dialect - Accent" question. I wouldn't say we have any dialects. There are different accents and some different words pronunciations, but every Russian will understand 99.99% of what another Russian has to say. That tiny 0.01% would be some local words or dishes' names that are not popular in other parts of Russia. For example in Perm, they have these small potato pies they call "shan'ga" (шаньга), which are not so common in other parts of Russia.
сам живу в Перми и только благодаря тебе узнал об этом факте
@@theboysenjoyer3283 but you're probably know some jokes about Saint-Petersburg's "поребрик, булка, бадлон, греча". There are some unique words in each region
@@junior3d902 ну лично я, как человек живущий в Тюмени, знаю значения слов "шаньга, поребрик, булка, греча", единственное, использую я их редко. А вот о слове "падлон" впервые слышу (пойду загуглю, что это значит).
Ещё один интересный факт о СПБ: только в Санкт-Петербурге "шаурма" (салат в лаваше с соусом(обожаю его)) называется "шаверма".
Поэтому, моя фамилия, Шаныгин - довольно редкая :)
Coincidentally I’m learning russian because I am visiting on december. I am a Spanish/Romanian native speaker and I am loving this language plus I feel so dope writing and reading in Cyrillic.
Thank you
The best russian expression is "Да нет наверное":) Which literaturely can be translated as "Yes no maybe" but means more "no" than "yes". Amazing!
А как насчёт "Пить, есть есть? Пить есть, есть нет"
"Да" здесь ни разу не "yes", это вводное слово вроде "well" или "you know". Да будет вам известно, что "да" во фразах типа "да будет вам известно", "да ладно!", "пироги да слойки", "да здравствует..." и "да нет" ни разу не то "да", которым соглашаются, и ни в коем случае не будет переводиться как "yes". Это вы еще сербского не знаете, где "да" в каждой второй грамматической конструкции, например, "желим да пливам" - "хочу плавать", и тоже ни разу не пресловутое это ваше "yes", как бы вам того ни хотелось. Хватит вводить людей в заблуждение.
Как насчет выражений "да нет" или "нет да"?
@@undefeated_romantic1692Ну, наконец-то хоть кто-то об этом написал!
Hi, I’m Russian, and I’m sorry for following mistakes
Just wanted to say that it was amazing
First of all, I adore when Americans or European aren’t scared of Russian. This fact itself is very satisfying. Secondly, you’re actually a pretty good teacher, ‘cause you’re mixing the information about language with both geography and history. Also, you use some linguistic terms like verb pair, which even I (and I’m pretty sure most of the the Russians except linguists) haven’t known. It may be hilarious, but this video actually made me wanting to learn my own native language.
In conclusion, thank you very much! I really hope other nations will stop seeing us as heathens and get interested in our language/history!
I’m not sure how difficult this was for you to write, however, there are very few mistakes in your English here so well done. Hopefully my Russian will be just as good some day.
Learning Cyrillic wasn’t hard. However, I’m still much slower reading Russian than Spanish (another language I am learning). This is despite the fact that I am a native Polish speaker so I am familiar with a slavic language. My brain just swallows up the Latin script whereas I do have to do some mental gymnastics with the Cyrillic and thus read it a lot more slowly. Hopefully this will improve with time. I’m eager to try Olly’s Russian book when I can read more effortlessly.
You've been reading the latin script your whole life, give it time and practice and eventually cyrillic will become second nature
Polecam "ночной экспресс" taka książeczka do nauki rosyjskiego, bardzo przystępny język i ciekawa historia. Na początku czytałem bardzo wolno i czułem jak mózg mi paruje, ale progres przyszedł bardzo szybko i teraz czytam "Zbrodnie i karę" w oryginale ;)
However, it happens and vice versa - one day, just for fun, I've retyped a Slovak text cyrillic. And the miracle occured - I've understood at once about 80% text that seemed quite alien until then . :-)
Привет! Почему поляки не любят русских? Мы считаем вас братьями)
Good luck and keep it up!
I learned cyrilic and now I can read many languages even if I don't understand what I read
Me too😆. Although I speak one slavic language and it makes it easier to understand the others, at least in written form.
I'm from Moscow, but I have friends from different parts of the country. We have some differences in speech, the most noticeable one is of course the sound "g", we all pronounce it differently, some as "h" some and "gh" and so on. Also, an interesting difference that I've recently noticed is that we conjugate verbs differently sometimes, it occurs very rarely but still. All in all, our differences are to small and insignificant to call them "dialects", and I don't think we have accents either.
I am friends with a Russian couple. She is from Moscow, he is from a small town in Ural mountain region. Sometimes he uses words she never heard of. It's so funny because she keeps joking around that he just invents Russian words that does not really exist. Of course he disagrees. For me as a German it's pretty normal to be introduced to a whole new vocabulary while spending time in other regions of the German speaking world. 🤣 we usually use our regional dialect and accents at home and use standard German to communicate to people from other parts of the country.
I lived with a russian family for a while, I noticed that they all sai ездию/ездиют instead of езжу/ездят and лазию instead of лезу and I think some more words which sounded wrong
@@louiserocks1 , лезть/лазить это такая же пара, как идти/ходить, но без супплетивизма корня, всего лишь с чередованием гласной фонемы.
лѣз-ти: лѣз-ѫ -> лез-у
лази-ти: лази-ѫ -> 1) стяжение и-ѫ -> ѭ, палатализация лазѭ -> лажѫ -> лажу, 2) эпентеза и-ѫ -> иѭ, лази-ѫ -> лазиѭ -> лазию.
диалекты в русском языке существуют, акценты тоже есть
@@michaelmichaelson8861 они существуют поскольку поскольку. В реальности, максимум что можно стретить это штук двадцать региональных слов, акцент на г/х/а/о/и, да чередование ч-ш/щ. Вот и все "диалекты".
На самом деле то, что можно считать диалектом реально существует, оно используется в повседневной жизни, но носителей у этих диалектов на всю страну в рамках статистической погрешности, и, в основном, это старики.
I absolutely got to adore Russian since I started learning it a while back.
Since then I don't see it as a rough language anymore, quite the contrary, it's super soft and smooth to pronunce and to listen to.
The grammar is very challenging, but that also means things can be said in a super precise way. Grammatical simplicity bears great potential too, e.g. ambigiuous literature or memes. But often enough I find english and also german sentences (which is my native langauge) which can be understood in two forms or directions without further context. So today I wonder why german holds first place for being precise.
как говорил лермонтов: пламенно и нежно
Good luck with it! And if you ever need any help from a native speaker, would be happy to support you in your way 🤗
@@ЕленаАлександрова-ь5к с большим удовольствием) сейчас у меня мало времени дла русски потому что должен учить математику но я рад об помощь и русские друзья
Right.. listening to this beautiful language makes me my heart so happy.
Brake the Western mind with mr.Chernomyrdin phrase: "Никогда такого не было и вот опять"
Aha, also him: "Do not put both eggs to one basket." 🤣
also mr. Chernomyrdin: "One has to think about what to understand" and: "We wanted the best, but it turned out the same as always"
Victor Stepanovich's paradoxical sayings always remind me of Zen koans. Just brilliant!
Начинаем начинать
Nah, this one is easy. If you just get the sarcasm it's easily translated as "It has never happened before yet here it is again." Or maybe even better "We have never seen it before yet here it is again" - it's less literal but conveys the feeling better.
oh, "Love and Pigeons", such a beautiful film 😁 thanks for this little piece of classics
I'm native and I'm so happy that there's someone who tells others about Russian in such an interesting way!
If anyone is thinking of learning Russian, it's plain silly not to learn the Cyrillic alphabet, seeing as you can actually do that in about a day. I've taught it in a couple of hours even, just by thinking of words and getting my friend to figure it out. True, we were in Moscow, so he was using it already on the Metro and on the street the next day, so was unlikely to forget it. I have a file somewhere; you just read it, you can figure out the words, (мама, лама, лампа, план, планета ...) and you've learned the alphabet by the time you finish it. Just reading the names of places in an atlas is one simple way (Америка, Антарктика, Африка,..., Лондон, Берлин, Мадрид,...).
Brilliant!
Where is this file?
I'm Russian and while learning English the easiest way was through songs. While listening to them over and over again not only you memorize the meaning of words but you also get more comfortable with grammar
Your fascination with our language brings me a lot of joy. Thank you, good sir!
Thank you Olly for this video. I am not a polyglot, but speak Spanish and Russian in addition to English and I deeply love them both. It was fun seeing you brag on some of the uniquenesses of the Russian language. I also have used your Russian for beginners book. Highly recommend it to anyone trying to learn this beautiful language! Keep the videos like these coming! I love learning the uniquenesses of other languages.
12:11 the correct translation for - Не опять, а снова:
- Again?
- Not again, but once more
13:14 - "Надрыв" also means when you overwork or overdo something for no reason. Чего ты надрываешься?
13:36 - I would say that "Тоска" more like melancholy
melancholy is neutral and toska is more negative
@@mEDIUMGap seems my toska and people I know felt it neutral
I am Russian from the South West (the g-region) and in my humble opinion there are no dialects, just some differences in pronunciation. In that respect Russian is one of the easiest languages to learn! :)
I dunno mate I'm from the north and i was in a villiage in the g-region, and i had difficulties with understanding people's speech. But yes, in the cities it's just about pronunciation
@@TheSpadaLunga это проблема именно северных народов
Если взять именно русские земли отличий не будет много
У северных же народов русский не так давно стал родным языком, а потому очень многое они перенесли из языков своих предков
@@terminatos я русский, в роду не было малых народов Севера, по крайней мере, если доходить до прабабушек/прадедушек. Просто в деревнях есть диалектные слова и грамматические особенности, которые мне непривычны
Да не осталось ни диалектов ни акцентов. Согласен. До революции было гораздо больше отличий, я думаю. Большевики потрудились на славу.
@@eugenem.762 Диалекты есть, просто не в городах, а в деревнях, особенно на юге, поэтому мы с ними не так часто встечаемся. А акценты и в городах есть, даже в крупных, по типу Ростова-на-Дону или Перми
Recently started learning Russian. So I'd say this helped some
Isn't тоска just longing? Also, another Russian here, heaving a great time watching video about his own language
@@Cocacola1904 If you do not specify what тоска is for or about, I'd say it's close to 'ennui'.
@@Cocacola1904, подобна английскому сплину простоя русская тоска.
I'd just translate it as "feeling blue"
how about melancholia?
@@covellin_ I think that works too
As a Russian I can say that this video is awesome and it's hard to find something this good
quite some comments here, being a Russian I really enjoyed the material. It's always very interresting to see the 'otsider's' feeling of your language. Though there was a small factual mistake in the vid. ь and ъ are used not exactly in a way that Olly described. In both Russian words "family" and "seed" the last м' is softened. in first case by Ь, the second time by the soft vowel Я. But in the word Семья (family) the Soft sign marks, that the last vowel is not the part of the syllable, but forms a syngle sign diphtong (ya). Same works for the Hard sign. It affects the vowels' behaviour much stronger than that of a consonant.
Это разделительный мягкий знак).
@@ЕленаШиловская-ф2б именно. просто, что в школе российским детям, что иностранцам на курсах и в вузах, это все очень коряво объясняют.
@@miro302 в школе норм объясняют!)
@@ЕленаШиловская-ф2б повезло со школой? Я был в 5 школах 4 разных регионов РФ. Только в последней было норм.
@@miro302 ды это программа 3 класса. В учебниках же есть все.
I studied in Minsk, Moscow and Leningrad (St.Petersburg) and never felt any difference in dialects, however I could tell immediately that someone came from the "stans" as they had strong accent. Russian like other languages has registers and the terms and grammar used in official, scientific, legal etc. is very different from the everyday Russian.
I am from Kazakhstan, no one can tell the difference between my pronunciation and central Russian :)
@@yuliya1026 You are right, practically everyone with education speak with no accent.
I just watched it and realized that I need to think more about my own language) or, perhaps, try to rethink ordinary things I do everyday. Video is great! I am so happy if you enjoy your journey in the world of expressive words and emotional visualization of the language.
I'm a Russian native speaker, Moscow region :-) Ninilchik Russian was pretty hard for me. I understood the main meaning of what he said in third repeat.
As for the dialects - yes, Russian language have dialects depending on the regions. Some of them appears from merging several languages like Ukrainian and Russian languages in the southern regions. They are mostly easy to understand, but sometimes you get stuck on words that you can't find any matches in you vocabulary 🙂
About "Не опять, а снова", you can add meaning to the English translation something like "No again, but once again" - I guess, it's a bit different meaning.
BTW there is one thing that you didn't mention - using punctuation in sentences.
Russian sentences can be heavily loaded with comas, colons, dashes and so on. Take this sentence: "Если вас интересует мое мнение - я выскажусь: настоящая дружба (именно дружба, а не шапочное знакомство или приятельские отношения) проверяется в радости; умение разделить радость другого человека - этим сегодня могут похвастаться немногие…очень немногие «друзья»!".
All those punctuation marks adds pauses, definitions and additional meanings to what you say. For example word "Друзья" in quotes changes meaning of the work from positive to negative - figurative sense.
I can come up with the sentence where every word will be devided by coma and it will make sence ))) "Кажется, можно, наверное, предположить, что, конечно, запятых, бесспорно, слишком много, но, разумеется, по всем, полагаю, правилам."
In my opinion, the question "Do I have to learn the Cyrillic alphabet in order to learn Russian", despite being quite common, doesn't have any sense. I mean, many people, even my colleagues from the US, speculate that Russian is difficult because they use different alphabet. But that's an enormous fallacy! You can master Cyrillc for a couple of hours, even in a plane of your way to Russia - but it may take years or even decades for mastering the language. So, if you want to learn Russian (or my Ukrainian), the Cyrillic alphabet should be the last thing to worry about.
Exactly what Olly pointed out. But people new to Cyrillic won't know that it's easy to learn, so it's a fair question to ask.
I would highly doubt that you can easily learn the c. a. in a couple of hours. From my experience it takes most people more about 3-5 weeks - depending of course where you're from and if you've got experience in language-learning at all. Most people also just never learn to write russian by hand which I would highly recommend - it is more or less a separate alphabet of course but really worth the effort.
@@michaelkores6860 Well, it's only 33 letters, some of them are the same as in Latin or close to them. I learnt some other alphabets, like Greek, or Hebrew, or Georgian, and it didn't take a lot of time. I learnt the Georgian alphabet in the plane while flying to Tbilisi, and could read there - of course, slowly, like a 5 year old kid, but I could recognise some international words.
@@alexandertumarkin5343 There is still the written alphabet and I do recommend learning to write by hand and some letters change. It is also rather difficult and needs time to learn to write by hand fluently as you have to learn how to connect the different letters when writing. You did sys "master the cyrillic alphabet" and I would say that includes both reading and writing very fluently and it took me a couple of weeks and a lot of practise - of course I won't say someone with more talent can do it much faster.
@@michaelkores6860 Well, I can agree that the handwriting is more complicated, yet the question is whether it is really essential on the early stages.
First, it is not used as much in the 21 century. We mostly type now. Really, a lot of people don't touch a pen for ages, since they have smartphones :)
Second, the real handwriting is often different from the school books, and there are a lot of pattern how people write in real world. I personally tend not to conjugate letters, usually I write them separately in most of cases, and that's not what I was taught in the school.
Third, in many cases there is no point to learn handwriting separately from the language. You probably know, or can easily google the memes "Russian handwriting drives me crazy". The only reason why I can read it quickly is that my language knowledge allows me to recognize easily what word is supposed to be. Otherwise, I couldn't read that either.
So, to sum up, handwriting knowledge is beneficial, but not absolutely necessary for beginners.
An important thing to know about Russian is that almost every noun has a «ласково» version, which is basically a slightly modified version of the word. For example; книга/книжка. Both mean the same so just be careful.
"уменьшительно-ласкательная форма" would be the correct term, kind of starting to feel lucky that Russian is my mother tongue and I know it by default 🍀
@@sayachika6817 : Sorry, yeah didn’t know the term but yeah, I speak a lot now in Russian and I find it fascinating how you have these forms of words. Your language is the love of my life. Greeting from England 🏴
книга, книжка, книжечка - it's called diminutive form
@@louisronan5903 fascinating how it works out with foreign languages sometimes, being Belarusian and speaking Russian as my first language, I teach Japanese and consider it the love of my life as well 😁
@@sayachika6817 : Yeah it’s weird, I couldn’t imagine my life without Russian. I’ve spoke with a few Belarusian and I can’t even tell the difference between them and Russians.
As a russian speaker I can say that learning grammar is a great pain in the ass even for natives.
just because they're too lazy to read the books
@@olekscap4620 This statement is true for all young generations in different countries. Young people stopped reading books with the advent of the Internet.
@@olekscap4620 eh, reading books as a child teaches you the logic of the language and guarantees some vocabulary (don't mind me, 10 years down the line and I still mess up my stresses because I learnt too many words through books), but doesn't teach you the rules. I was the kid who didn't know the rules and yet "felt" how the sentences "should be" - and did so correctly. in other words, i'm a native speaker and learning grammar of your mother tongue is a weird experience.
There's a good story about the last word you talked about "тоска" when Vladimir Nabokov was translating Yevgeniy Onegin written by Alexander Pushkin he encountered a big problem, he couldn't translate that word literarily therefore he had to add a paragraph to explicitly explain what that word mean.
Homesick
It's so interesting to hear perspective of perception of your native language from people from other countries :)
“Снова” comes from the word “новый” - new. That’s why it has a positive conotation, it’s “not (to repeat the same) again, but again (as a new experience)”. “Я опять приеду в Москву в следующем году” (I'll go to Moscow again next year) - neutral, repeating the visit. “Я снова приеду в Москву в следующем году” - positive, I wait to do it.
Mistake, must be I am going to Moscow next year or I will go to Moscow next year…Come in your sentence not correct. It means “ I will arrive in Moscow next year”.
I'd add that OPYAT' has quite a negative connotation to it. If someone says "Dima has asked you for help" you can reply simply with "Opyat'?" which means "Again?!" with a quite heavy annoyance in the tone :) You cannot use Snova in this context because Snova is actually neutral.
@@Nemunasable Fixed
@@valeral92 To tell the truth, you can always use "опять" as "again" and nobody would think that as a mistake. It's something like "will" and "shall" in English. There is a difference but nowadays nobody would really care if you use "will" everywhere. You can be wrong with "снова", though.
Браузер забыл мой пароль, придётся ввести его снова.
wow, Olly, such top quality content! I am Russian and I learnt couple things watching this video! Thank you for uploading it, I found it very interesting. As far as the dialects vs accents, I'd incline to the latter.
Тоска - can be translated as longing, homesickness and yes,spiritual anguish. The verb «тосковать» means to long for, to miss somebody, etc
So, it seems to be close to the portuguese "saudade", a noun for the feeling of missing someone or something.
@@carlosmarcelovellosowendt4598 yes, its pretty close but more "suicidal" and "dark" than "saudade". also "toska" means just "boring" sometimes, which is much slighter meaning
, Nabokov should has known that
how about the word 'spleen'?
I think the closest translation would be "blue". You know, like a music genre
To those interested in learning Russian, I'd suggest read writers & poets like Alexandr Pushkin, Sergey Esenin, Lermontov; satire writers like Anton Chekhov, who's famous for his short satirical stories; Leo Tolstoy (novels), Mikhail Bulgakov (I recommend one of his greatest novels "Master & Margarita").
One of my favourite plays in poetry form is "Woe from Wit" by Alexandr Griboedov, who was also a diplomat. This is such a terrific satirical creation, making fun of the Russian high society at the time. A lot of Russian idioms, favourite one-liners came from this poem. It's absolutely terrific.
As a Russian learner It’s nice to get some Russian based content from you! Cool video 👍🏾 спасибо большое за видео
A Baltic speaker here. Russian, or any Slavonic language for that matter, to me is like French to an English speaker. Morphologies of these language are vastly different, almost nothing in common, but the syntax (the way how sentences are structured) is mostly the same.
"Не опять, а снова" - "Not again, but one more time"
Very interesting, thanks for sharing, Olly. I was very interested to hear your perspective on Russian. I have been studying the language for about seven months and it is enough to make you tear your hair out at times, but a worthwhile journey nonetheless!! Я очень люблю изучать русски язык. )))
Практикуй с носителем русского языка, каждый второй русский готов помочь иностранцу в изучении русского языка.
@@Rodious Хорошая идея. Спасибо.
Cyrillic is a great new alphabet to learn and a lot easier than it looks in a day or two you will easily master it.
Профессор лингвистики читает лекцию: "если к утвердительному слову добавить отрицательное или наоборот, сумма будет отрицательной, две отрицательные частицы усиливают отрицание, но ни в одном языке два утвердительных слова не означают отрицание". Саркастичный голос с задней парты: "ага, конечно!"
Love it. I mean the way how you present material, historical parallels, etc.
I have an opposite problem - Russian living in an English speaking country :)
Every language has its features that may be difficult to learn for foreigners. English is confusing me - verb + preposition may change meaning of the original verb a lot. You understood 90% of the words in sentence - but it does not make sense because of missing keyword which screws everything up :)
If you are asking about dialects in Russian - I would say they are more like accents. Soviets made a huge work to get rid of them. I was born in Krasnodar region (South West of Russia), , my parents moved to Ural right after I was born ~3000km north-east and than I moved ~2000km to the West to Moscow (University education). I used to work as a service tech for lab equipment, so travelled a lot across Russia. No problem with speaking/understanding. Usually a small bunch of local words understandable from context + several unusual ways of pronunciation - mostly o-a + speed of speech differences + emotional pressure. The more to the South-West - the more expression in speech in general :)))
Siberia - people speak slow. If they promise something - they will do it, so they need time before they agree. They are always thinking how to survive in harsh environment, if they say something - they really mean it :) St Petersburg... literate... Bum can quote 2-3 Silver Age poets and ask a permission to take your empty beer bottle... Stereotypes are partially true :)
In general military service far from home, guaranteed work after you finish University in USSR (most likely in the middle of the nowhere), guaranteed realty after certain years of military service/work at a certain factory - and most Russians have relatives/friends/colleagues all over former USSR territory. Plus "incorrect" accent/pronunciation has been denounced in Schools/Universities/Institutes and not very good for career (there were exceptions, especially in provinces) but general line was about standard Russian dialect). Finally Russian accents all over former USSR territory are pretty mild, compared to, let's say, to British accents or US accents over country/different states.
Ninilchik dialect mentioned in a video sounds archaic. Understandable with subtitles, but probably making many difficulties at first occasion. I would say close to Polish, because of ж - ш way of pronunciation.
I became fluent in Russian during my childhood, and I can tell that some of our words have +20 inflections!
Hey Olly! I really love your books. I was really able to tremendously improve my reading comprehension in French thanks to you. But I wanted to know if you would ever release short stories in Chinese?
Столько восхищения русским языком я давно не встречала даже у носителей языка!
если зайти в комментарии к подобным видео от иностранцев, то тут обычно можно найти великое множество таких носителей языка 😂
I'm from a big Russian city and when I first time heard my bf's mother speak I really could barely understand her. I felt like a word-tornado came across, so fast was her speech. Nowadays I can understand her, but it is still hard sometimes. And another "dialecting" part in Russia, that I myself found was about white and black bread naming in different cities
Russian is a very deep language. You can learn it for many years but if you want to reach such a level that even Russian didn't get that you are not native speaker you should spend on it whole your life.
Do you seriously think Brits can’t tell who is foreign and who is not? They need 2 sec to see that. What you say about Russian is true for every language
rich nah, just a very broken bastardized version of old church slavonic and a language which hasnt had its reading and writing to be reformed into the better read as you write and write as you read, one letter one sound. instead of this wired combo of french inspired design where a group of letters makes a inconceivable sound..
Russian native speaker here. Russian used to have dialects, but they are long time gone and nowadays only present in rural communities, mostly remote and incredibly small villages. People all over the country speak practically the same (at most sometimes changing the length of vowels), the only difference you might notice is a tiny amount of different words being used to describe the same things in some regions. Something like “soda/pop” in the US, but much less common thanks to the Soviet education.
In the movie “Love and Doves”, the way she talked was more village style.
Russian is the most beautiful language I think. And I speak french.
I learn French, and I can say it is one of the best languages
Olly, Great video. I have some subscribers and patreon people I have been teaching. Its definitely a hard language to pick up. Thank you for the video and tips
Иностранцы просекли тему как повысить просмотры) зайди на русский рынок и пой дифирамбы с тематическим контентом
А где тут дифирамбы? Рассказал человек иностранной аудитории о русском языке. Ещё недостаточно много русских, к сожалению, владеют настолько английским, чтобы нормально выразить мнение, но намерения похвальны.
Похоже на то..
I'm really happy with my progress in learning Russian over the past year. With that said, I still have an insane amount to learn. I'm super determined, which can sometimes be very overwhelming. I just want to know everything NOW. This is one of the languages of my ancestors. I have no living relatives who speak it. :(
That's so cool to see someone trying to learn a difficult language, and probably not immediately profitable one at that! Keep it up. I wish I was that motivated. It's only (infrequent) RUclips videos in my target language about stuff I'm interested in that keep me going.
Being fluent in russian is as impressive as in Japanese or Chinese for Western countries ( I mean if it's not your native language obviously) I was lucky enough to had these "ambitions" at my early ages and grinded bunch of books after having extremely good knowledge in it, and now I'm pretty much op in russian.
Learn it if you love it ! Russian is awesome, and a good way to hang out with russian girls 😌
Thanks for a great video! It's very nice to see a deep detailed story about Russian language, its history and main traits. And this one is not even the first I have seen on your channel, it seems that you have dived deep in it. I think learning Russian is not very popular around the world, I hope your great story will make it a little more attractive for those who finds it interesting and mysterious.
I used to work some time in language exchange summer camps for kids. Those were quite popular before the situation with foreign politics of current regime started to go really sad. We had kids from different countries and even US that arrived to Russia for a month. It was fun, good times and a great overall experience. I met and I had an opportunity to talk to a lot of interesting people from different parts of the world, it was very exciting, and that helped me to learn more about different cultures, languages, countries and improved my English too.
I have seen quite a lot of people learning Russian, and I see that it can be really tough to get a decent level of it if you are out of natural language environment. So in theory, Russian should be really hard to learn, however, I have seen a lot of cases when once a person has immersed into a Russian speaking environment, he or she progressed incredibly fast in it, I couldn't even believe it myself. Russian is expressive language, it becomes much easier to learn when you can see emotions of those who speak it and can use some nonverbal part of language yourself. So if you doubt - please don't, it's not as hard as it seems and I hope it will be a really fun adventure for you.
I love your charisma!) Thank you for this video)
It's really prettier than you might think it would be too. A lot of the sounds are very soft. I spent a year learning Russian 8 hours a day. Not much has stuck with me, unlike Spanish that I have studied since 7th grade. Having lived or worked in Spain, Mexico, and Puerto Rico was a big help too :o)
..at one moment, I imagined I had to learn it.
A second later I remembered I'm a native speaker, what a relief 😄
I'm 7 months into learning Russian and to me the part I struggle with the most is reading and pronouncing it's pretty much the same issue with my Mandarin (which I studied for 13 years in school mostly memorizing things any dialogue is confined to classroom situations between teacher and student) so now I just translate stuff I want to say and repeat it daily.
Основная часть произношения идёт на 2й слог. По большей части, как видишь - так и произносишь, как с немецким +\-.
Never knew you had a RUclips channel. I've read the beginner version of your book so many times. So excited to see there is a new one. I'll buy any book you write for Russian. It's such a nice change of pace from Дорога в Россию and other textbooks. Thanks for your work.