Study

Before I arrived in Russia, I thought my Russian was adequate. A couple of days in Kaliningrad knocked that idea out of me. I knew I had been lazy before I left, not revising, but my hearing seemed to be completely shot. Words were only sounds, and I could only understand 10% of what was said, unless they spoke really slowly. It was the same the first few days in Kazan.
I ended up in group with one Finn, one Swede, one Swiss, one Korean, and me, the token Southern Hemisphere representative in Kazan. For some reason, I am in a group that is junior to my progress at UoA. Or rather, it was. We have now moved past where I left some of the subject in Auckland and I’m making far fewer basic mistakes. I’ve made progress, or I’m less basic. But in some areas we are behind where I was at UoA: verbs of motion and forming participles have yet to be touched.
Even from here I can some people going, “verbs of motion?!?” Yes, Russian differentiates between arriving by transport, foot, boat, etc., and whether this is a one off event or something regular. Mind you, what do you expect from a language where introducing yourself is an advanced philological discussion? Hello, my name is Stephen – zdrastuyte, menya zovut Stefan (Здрастуйте, меня зовут Стефан). The tongue-breaker is just greetings, or be greeted (formal version, or addressing a group), and then “me they call” followed by one’s name. The “me” is in genitive even though it is the direct subject and should be accusative; it’s just one of those rules to do with pronouns and grammar. And the “they” attached to “call” is discarded because it’s so obvious (and the verb is in the "they" form anyway) that Russians don’t bother saying it. Confused? I chose to learn this language, so I won’t complain. Much. Today. Need vodka now.
Official, university study takes three hours a day, Monday to Friday. I heard about a singing class and joined that, so have an extra one and a half hours on Thursdays, and they show films on a Saturday for us foreigners, and sometimes I go to them. To begin with, classes focused on grammar, with one noun case at a time being presented, followed by phonetics. The latter is important in a language where the nominative plural, e.g. houses, is spelt the same way as the genitive singular, house’s. Okay, this example doesn’t work in English, but Russian has six noun cases, and some of the endings are repeated between singular and plural. So they differentiate by changing the stressed syllable within the word – words only have one stressed syllable. And stress, as in English, falls on the vowel. This affects how unstressed vowels are pronounced, as only stressed vowels get their full “book value”, and the unstressed ones are pronounced differently. Stressed “o” is similar to “o” in “coat”, and unstressed “o” is similar to “a” or even weaker. Understood? Want some vodka?
All this is very important and correct pronunciation helps with being understood; the same as with English. And it all takes a while to master, especially as Slavonic languages have black belts in consonant clusters. Not too bad if these lurk in the middle of the word, but at the beginning of a sentence is a challenge. The eyes read, the brain says can do, and the tongue says need vodka now! Any fluency I have goes right out the window the moment I trip over a consonant cluster. They either come out right first time or not at all.
But study ain’t only at the university. When you’re learning another language, study is anything that helps you acquire it. Standing around, listening to people, watching telly, listening to the announcements at the local GUM (Gorodski Univeralniy Magazin – Town universal shop). Yep, telly watching is study, ma. I’ve found a couple of programmes that I like, aside from the News channel. One is Intuition, where contestants try and guess the occupation or special behaviour of each of 12 people from a list, with the possibility of winning up 1 000 000RR. The other is Наша Russia (Nasha Russia – it rhymes), a comedy show that takes the mickey out of several Russian stereotypes mercilessly. If my Russian was better, I might be rolling on the floor wetting myself, as opposed to just laughing out loud.
And study is talking to people, chatting with the locals, not being scared to make a mistake with one of the harder Indo-European languages. If you thought French was hard, with only two genders and some silent letters, suck it up and keep shovelling the manure. In the classroom, I have time to compose short conversations – there are five of us and so I’m only going to be called on 20% of the time. On the street, in the train, wherever, suddenly I’m Johnny on the spot and have to remember the correct endings, stress, pronunciation. And for some strange reason I like it.
Next: Moscow – The Big M