Learning to Read Russian

Hi -- Mike here.

As I've mentioned before, I've been trying to learn to speak and read a little bit of Russian. My goal at the beginning of this trip was to be able to speak Russian as well as Bacha does. I don't think I'll achieve this, based on how well she understands the people who speak to her in Russian. Plan B was to learn Russian at least as well as Bacha knows English. This, I might be able to achieve. Though, again, I believe her comprehension of English already far surpasses my comprehension of Russian.

I would mention that I speak fairly good conversational German, and as it turns out many Russian words are very similar in Russian to what they are in German. So once I can sound them out by reading them, the meaning of what I'm reading often becomes clear to me, where it wouldn't have otherwise. I would suspect then, that knowing any other language can help in the same way.

But I'd like to write a little bit about my adventures in learning to read Russian (as opposed to speaking it). There's an entire alphabet to learn, of course -- the cyrillic alphabet. Fortunately, it's perfectly phonetic. That is, Russian is written exactly as it sounds, and sounds exactly as it's written.

There are a few hitches in learning to read Russian in Cyrillic, however. What follows is a (hopefully) humorous romp through some of the few pitfalls that the average English-speaker might encounter.

Many of the Cyrillic letters have English equivalents, but they don't make the same sound. This can be frustrating. For example, there are many confusing, seemingly purposely contrived switcheroos. The Russian letter that looks like an E is one, for instance. It doesn't really make an English "E" sound -- it makes a "ye" sound, as in the word "yes". I expect this is one of the common pronunciation slip-ups for English speakers, as you can probably get away with it and still be understood. You'll just sound like a foreigner. Our translator's name is a good example of this -- we write it "Sveta", but it's properly pronounced "Svyeta" (short for Svyetlanova). As an aside, if you stick two dots over the "E", it's a "yo", not a "ye".

What looks like an upper-case "B" in Russian actually makes an English "V" sound. Fine. Except if it looks something like a lower-case "b", it's more complicated. Then, it's actually either the "V" sound, or there are several options (depends on the type of script -- more on that later). The first option is that it's the now-missing "ee" sound (which we lost above, by making the "E" a "ye"). If it's not that sound, the other option is that it's not a sound at all, but either a "hard" or "soft" modifier on the previous sound. This depends whether there's little tail at the top of the letter or not. The good news about the modifiers is that your American accent is likely to be so thick that you can pretty much ignore these because the difference will get lost in the "noise" anyway. That said, I'm sure I'll soon be asking someone "how many ovaries have you?" instead of "how much are your eggs?"

There are several letters that look like an upper-case "A", and they're all very different sounds. One, surprisingly enough, sounds like an English "A", though it's the sound as in the name of the supergroup "ABBA" (which I heard at the green market recently). Another is like the A without the cross-bar -- or an upside-down V. This actually makes an "L" sound, which is easy to remember if you know your Greek letters -- it's a lambda. I love the Russian "L" sound, incidentally. It's very thick -- as if you're drunk. Finally, the last one looks more like a squared-off A with little feet -- when printed, that is. It's different if written, or printed in a script-like font. This letter makes a "D" sound, which, again, is easy to remember if you know your Greek letters because it really derives from the Greek letter delta. See? Not so hard, right?

So "is there an 'ee' sound in Russian?" you ask. Why, of course! That's the letter that looks like a backwards N! Actually, in print, it often looks a LOT like a captial H, which is confusing, because the "H" makes an "N" sound. Read that again -- I'm not making this up.

Let's get back to the upside-down V for a minute. This is an "L" sound, remember. In print, however, this often looks a lot like the Greek letter "pi", which I'm sure most of you have seen at some point. It's important to know the difference, because the other letter that looks like "pi" -- this time almost precisely so -- is the letter that makes a "P" sound. "P" for "pi" -- easy.

Oh -- there's another backward letter. It looks like a backwards English upper-case R. As you might suspect by now, this doesn't make an "R" sound of any kind. It makes a "ya" sound, as in "gotcha" (and it will getcha).

In case you're wondering, the "R" sound is made by a letter that looks like a "P" (remember, we use "pi" for "P"). Greek letters to the rescue again -- it's a "Rho". Also, of course, the Russian "R" sound is a rolled R, not the slurred one we use in American English.

There's a special letter that looks like a Greek "Phi". It makes an "F" sound. I like this because my last name starts with it. The letter looks like an "O" with a vertical line through it -- makes me feel exotic.

The thing that looks like a "3" makes a "Z" sound. No problem -- tuck that one away.

Upside-down lower-case "h" makes a "ch" sound. This happens a lot in Russian, especially when you're talking to a 3-year-old, because a lot of words take an ending that means "little one". An Englishified example of this would be turning the words "little snitch" into "snitchka".

Upside-down upper-case L forms the Greek letter "gamma", and it makes (you guessed it) a "G" sound. Always a "hard" G, as in, well, gamma -- never a soft G as in "age".

Speaking of the word "age"... A thing that looks like a big asterisk makes the "zh" sound that's so prominent in Russian. "Pazhalusta" means "please", for instance.

Here's a breath of fresh air: the letter K actually makes a "K" sound! Woo hoo! I mention this because it means that the letter C gets to always make an "S" sound, as it does only sometimes in English.

The letter "X" in Russian makes that heavily aspirated "H" sound that's so sexy in the movies when some bombshell with a thick Russian accent says something like "I Xave to Xave you".

OK. Now pay attention. There are what seem to me to be a series of letters that make successively more complicated sounds. In print, they (usually) look like a lower-case "u", then a "w", then a kind of "w with a tail". Respectively, they make a "ts" sound (as in "bits"), a "sh" sound (as in "shoot"), and a compound "shch" sound that has no real English equivalent (as in "fresh cheese" and "Shchuchinsk"!).

There is one other sound that I still deal with, especially because it's in the proper pronunciation of Bacha's original full name. It's not even possible to spell it in English, but the closest I could come is something like "Bachuet". First of all, there's the CH sound, which is that sexy "X" I just mentioned. But then there's the sound of the letter that looks like a capital I and O, joined at the hip like siamese twins. This has a sound that's somewhere inbetween an "ee" sound and an "oo" sound. Make an "oo sound, and then, without moving your lips, make the "ee" sound with the rest of your mouth, and you're in the ballpark -- except that when Sveta says it, she looks like she's grinning, not pursing her lips. It's a little like a German "U Umlaut". You may find it difficult to say with a straight face, and you'll get some smiles when you try.

OK, now something I just discovered yesterday after buying some books. It seems that in some fonts, the letter for the "P" sound (a "pi") looks like a lower case "n". Hmph. OK, I can see that. But worse yet, in those fonts, the letter that makes the "T" sound (err... actually usually looks like a "T") can look like a lower case "m". I can explain this to myself, too, but you'll think I've completely lost it.

That's about it. So you see, Russian spelling is really pretty simple. It's a lot like English, with a few exceptions.

:-)

And just when you think you're getting it, you'll find yourself wondering why the word that you know means "store" (and sounds/spells like "magazine") is suddenly coming out more like "doo-ken". That's because you're reading it in Kazakh. Most things here are spelled in both, and it's often difficult to tell the two apart because the alphabets are similar.

So don't be afraid to address the person behind the counter and ask "Greetings, small child. Please to show me your little buns to the left. I am good to heat them, yes?"

Or just point and smile. Personally, I'm finding it safer to just make friends trying to learn the numbers.