you happen to be in Russia in summer, late spring, or early autumn, don’t miss the experience of going to a country house on a weekend. You’ll never forget it.
See Chapter 13 for more about hobbies and the great outdoors.
Getting a Handle on Travel Topics
After you’ve had time to practice Russian at home, you might consider traveling to Russia. Be sure to acquaint yourself with the following tasks in Russian:
Preparing for a trip: Planning a trip is an enjoyable part of the travel process, and we let you enjoy it to the fullest with phrases and words you need to decide where you want to go, book your trip, and pack. All this info and more is in Chapter 14.
Making sense of money: Financial matters can be very confusing when you travel to a different country because you deal with foreign currency while performing such everyday transactions as getting money out of an ATM, using your credit card, and paying with cash. Chapter 15 provides plenty of guidance on how to manage your money and perform financial transactions.
Getting around with local transportation: Clearly, expertise in using various types of public transportation is an important skill for a traveler. Dealing with public transportation isn’t as easy as it may seem if you’re speaking a new language! Don’t panic, though; just turn to Chapter 16 for help.
Securing a place to stay: Hotels, as you know, can be good, bad, or ugly. To avoid the latter, we provide you essential questions to ask before buying into a deal. Chapter 17 provides Russian vocabulary that helps you make hotel reservations, check in, resolve issues, and pay your bill.
Taking action during emergencies: We hope that you won’t need any of the expressions we provide in Chapter 18 during your trip. But it’s always a good idea to plan for emergencies. Here’s one word that lets others know you need help: Пoмoгитe! (pah-mah-gee-tee!) (Help!) Don’t forget it!
Chapter 2
Checking Out the Russian Alphabet
IN THIS CHAPTER
Suppose that you’re walking in the Russian district of an American city and are suddenly in the mood for food. You’ll be glad you can read Russian when you see a building with the sign PECTOPAH (ree-stah-rahn) on it, because you’ll know that the building is exactly what you’re looking for: a restaurant!
You need to know that the connotations of English “restaurant” and Russian Pecтopaн are very different. In the United States, for example, any place where food is served is a considered a restaurant. This includes McDonald’s and Wendy’s. The Russian word pecтopaн indicates places where people would go for a nice weekend dinner or even special occasion, such as for example one’s birthday or anniversary. Places where you can have a quick breakfast or lunch are more often referred to as кaфe (cafe).
Knowing how to read Russian is a great stepping-stone to speaking Russian properly. As you read this chapter, trust your eyes, ears, and intuition, and you’ll quickly discover that reading Russian isn’t that hard after all. In this chapter, you discover how to recognize all the letters of the Russian alphabet, and we introduce you to the basic rules of Russian pronunciation.
Recognizing Russian Letters (It’s Easier Than You Think)
When people talk about studying a foreign language, they often mention the alphabet to measure their success (or lack thereof) in mastering the language. You may often hear comments like “I just know the alphabet” or “I don’t even know the alphabet!” In other words, the alphabet is seen as the first, unavoidable step in learning a language.
Knowing the alphabet — or, rather, the sounds that the letters of the new language correspond to — is indeed very important. This is especially true of languages like Russian, in which nearly every letter corresponds to only one sound. What a relief from English, in which one letter often represents several sounds, depending on the word it’s used in. In fact, for those poor souls who are studying English, knowing the English alphabet isn’t so much a help as an obstacle.
Not so in Russian! When you study Russian, the Russian alphabet (also known as the Cyrillic alphabet) is your ticket to reading Russian, and knowing how to read Russian is very important in mastering spoken Russian.
If you’re like most English speakers, you probably think that the Russian alphabet is the most challenging aspect of picking up the language. But not to worry. The Russian alphabet isn’t as hard as you think. In fact, the alphabet is a piece of cake. In the following sections, we show you how to recognize all the letters of the Russian alphabet.
Introducing the entire alphabet
The Russian alphabet is based on the Cyrillic alphabet, which was named after the ninth-century Byzantine monk Cyril (see the sidebar “Who was this Cyril guy, anyway?” later in this chapter). Over a period of centuries, many attempts were made to shorten Cyril’s original alphabet from its original 43 letters. Today, the alphabet is still pretty lengthy — 33 letters in all, compared with 26 letters in the English alphabet. But don’t panic. Throughout this book, every Russian word or phrase is accompanied by its phonetic transcription so you can see how to pronounce it. (We convert the Russian letters to familiar Latin symbols, which are the same symbols that the English alphabet uses.)
This isn’t to say, however, that English and Russian sounds are completely the same; they absolutely aren’t. (See the later section “Sounding Like a Real Russian with Proper Pronunciation” for details.) But because your chances of learning to sound like a real Russian just by reading this book are rather slim, we use what phoneticians call approximation and consider most English sounds and their Russian counterparts to be the same, as long as native speakers of Russian have no difficulty recognizing them. Yes, Russians will discern your accent as not being authentic, but at the very least, they’ll be able to understand you!
Table 2-1 has the details on Cyrillic letters. In the first column, you see the uppercase and lowercase versions of the letter, respectively. The second column shows how the Russian letters are pronounced, using familiar English letters and example words. The third column of the table indicates whether the letter is a vowel or a consonant:
You may remember from your English
