¿Alfabeto de Cyrillic?

Originally Posted by Rusty (Post 36177)

While I can't recommend a particular book, you'll be able to find good books that teach the Cyrillic alphabet in a number of places. You can also learn a great deal about the alphabet from the internet.

Alphabet, with pronunciation. great link I have yet to find a site with sounds for the letters this helps, on a side note its strange how the handwritten is quite different from the typed :)
Ask me what you will about Russian.
Я немного говорю на русском языке. :)

Originally Posted by bobjenkins (Post 36178)

Rusty gracias. Did you take some classes about Russian or self learner? I took two years of Russian in college (a LONG time ago).
I am asking because I might try a russian class at my local college there are only 2 classes availible :( While theres about 60 spanish one :), I wonder how the language compares to spanish/english, in terms of pronounciation, grammar, ect:)

Is the new alphebet easier to get a grip on then in spanish? It is appealing to me simply because its so different:) I read that all Russian words are spelled like they sound, and also two letters don't come together to make one sound like in english/spanish "sh/ch/ll/ect" Not sure of the word for this, phonetic maybe? The different alphabet intrigued me, as well. After learning Spanish, I wanted to learn other languages. Russian was my first pick. The alphabet is certainly harder to learn than the Spanish alphabet, because in Spanish they use most of Roman letters we use. The Cyrillic alphabet was devised by a Greek, so some of its letters resemble Greek. And, just like Greek, the type-written uppercase letters don't look like the lowercase letters. The cursive form is even more radical in the lowercase arena.

What about grammar, lots of strange rules that are hard to remember?
The most difficult part about the grammar is the noun cases. There are six cases. In other words, the word book has six different endings, depending on how it is used in the sentence. The endings must be used correctly in order to be understood.
Russian has no articles (the, a(n)), which takes a little getting used to.
There are six different verb endings, just like in Spanish, but not for exactly the same persons. There are only three tenses (present, past, future). There are three moods (indicative, imperative and conditional). The aspects (imperfective and perfective) are probably the hardest thing to get around. It means there are two verb forms to choose from in the past and future tenses, and sometimes they look nothing like each other.

And what I am wondering about the most is the pronounciation, if you speak it well, and I assume your a native english speaker, how do you think the sounds compare? Is it more focused on the tone than in spanish, like chinese is. I read somewhere that you can speak chinese but emphasize/accent the wrong parts of the words and you can mean something completely different,is russian anything like that? Russian pronunciation will be easier for you than for a native Spanish speaker because there are A LOT of contiguous consonants. The accent, or stress, in a word is about the only difference you'll note, as far as tone. In Russian, the tone drops on the accented syllable. Most of the vowels change in pronunciation based on whether they are stressed or not. This practice is much like English, where we tend to hurry over the unstressed vowels in words like polite. The Russian o is pronounced like the Spanish o when it is stressed, but like the English schaw sound (like the o in polite) when it is not stressed.

sorryfor all the questions, im just not sure where to start, with spanish I went and bought some books and few months later I am happy with how its going, I think that is the way to go for me, or take a class to supplement the books. Im gunna bu the idiots guide/complete morons book today (or what ever they call it:lol:)

Спасибо

Originally Posted by Rusty (Post 36221)

You're welcome. (I don't know why you underscored the и. There are no accents in Russian. That is the correct syllable to stress, by the way. And, as I mentioned earlier, that is the syllable which will receive the drop in tone.)

For both your Spanish and your Russian studies, I recommend listening and speaking (not just reading). You must hear correct pronunciations in order to speak the language. Make sure your Russian college class is taught by someone who SPEAKS the language. My first-year Russian teacher had a terrible time with pronunciation. :eek: