Alphabet Progress

I found a youtube video that I'm practicing with. It's not a fun singalong, quite the opposite - it's a bland, monotone repetition, but I suppose it'll get the job done. It shows the letter on the screen, pronounces it out loud, then repeats it and moves to the next one. Basic. I've been sitting in my room repeating after it out loud, and I'm sure the people outside my door are thinking "Why does she keep saying 'ee kratkoyeh' in there?" No matter, I'm already jazzed at how much I've learned! I've got the first three letters memorized, which I consider pretty good for 10 minutes into the language process.

Here's my video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZceOLBFR0_Y. I'm finding that I pick it up more quickly with the help of this site, http://www.geocities.com/colosseum/track/7635/alphabet.html, because it gives a visual pronunciation guide to complement the auditory focus of the video.

In a few moments I'm going to start copying the letters into a notebook to get the written feel. As I'm quickly finding out in my initial research, most Russians abstain from block letters and use exclusively cursive. It'll no doubt be tricky to learn the alphabet both in cursive and in standardized block form, but it's already tricky because some of the letters are not even remotely close to English ones! I'm up for the challenge, I think.

Still inordinately excited about this entire undertaking.

Typical Explanatory First Post

I've tentatively started this blog as a way to jump-start my recent decision to learn the Russian language. I drag my feet a lot when it comes to learning languages, even though I've always wanted to be at least bilingual, so I'm hoping that having this concrete measure of my step-by-step progress will spur me to continue learning even when it gets tough or embarassing - which it always does, when you're learning a foreign tongue! My wish for this blog is also for it to be a way for me to reflect on the language-learning process itself, allowing me to cull those methods that don't work and find those that do.

The title of the blog of course refers to Churchill's famous quote on Russia: "It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." The moment I heard this quote, I completely agreed. Russia is a total contradiction and wildly complex. France, England and Russia are my three love-affair countries. I never cease to be enthralled when I'm learning about them. In fact the reasoning behind my desire to learn Russian is, admittedly, history-based; I want to be able to read Russian literature in its original state, and talk to Russians about their country's past in their native language.

To begin with, I'll be learning the Russian alphabet. I'm not really sure how to go about this, honestly. I learned the French alphabet through a singalong. I'll never forget the French alphabet for as long as I live because of that song. I suppose a search on youtube for Russian alphabet songs is in order? I'll report back on how it goes. I think a song really is necessary for me to get all the pronunciation down comfortably and swiftly.

I'm also going to try writing out the letters by hand, when I find a suitable alphabet to copy from. Hopefully that will give me a feel for the handwriting. I'm nervous about this part. It's not like French where the letters are all the same and it's just the pronunciation that's different, this time there are totally new letters!