What the funniest way to remember the Russian words?

Right, Singing!

Music plays an important role in language.

There is the strong connection between language and music. Language and music are both associated with emotions.  Similar areas of the brain are activated when listening to or playing music and speaking language.

Each language and each culture or part of the world where that language is spoken has its own rhythm. You can improve understanding and perhaps an appreciation of the culture behind the language which comes through very richly through music. So the association between language and music has continued to be an important element in children and even in adults.

Even in our native language, music is a great help in learning the words. It’s the principle behind the Children songs, for instance - some small children in Russia remembered the Russian alphabet or the Russian words without some effort.

Many people find that their singing diction is better than their spoken diction. I can sing things in a foreign language even if I have difficulty with pronunciation in spoken language. I have no idea why?

I’ve found that singing has improved my spoken English diction as well. I can tell you that my listening comprehension in English took a major jump upwards as soon as I started listening to some music, trying to pick out words, and using a dictionary to translate the song.

While learning a new language, I found a very helpful study technique that works very simply - listening to the songs written in that language. Music helps learn the language, but only listening is not enough. You should use the lyrics together with song.

So if you want to improve your Russian language skills - pronunciation and understanding, then listening to the Russian songs.
It’s much easier way for learning Russian to listen to your favorite Russian songs, sing and improve your Russian day by day.

It’s free so you can just go here and begin improve your Russian right now

Technorati Tags: Russian alphabet, Russian language, Russian words

The good news is that:

• Russian letters look the same in Capital and lower case letters

• Russian words sound the same way they are written most of the time, so you will not make a lot of mistakes spelling or pronouncing Russian words or phrase.

Russian alphabet

Technorati Tags: Cyrillic alphabet, Russian alphabet

The modern Russian alphabet (русский алфавит, transliteration: russkiy alfavit) is a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet. It was introduced into Kievan Rus’ at the time of Vladimir the Great’s conversion to Christianity. [Source]

The Cyrillic alphabet also called azbuka, from the old names of the first two letters of almost all its variants) is a writing system, shared by six Slavic national languages (Bulgarian, Russian, Belarusian, Serbian, Macedonian, and Ukrainian) as well as non-Slavic (Moldovan, Kazakh, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Tajik and Tuvan of the former Soviet Union and Mongolian).

It is also used by many other languages of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Siberia and other languages in the past. Not all letters in the Cyrillic alphabet are used in every language that is written with it.

The Cyrillic alphabet was invented by brothers Saints Cyril and Methodius.

The Cyrillic alphabet achieved its current form in 1708 during the reign of Peter the Great. Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia, mandated the use of westernized letter forms in the early eighteenth century. Over time, these were largely adopted in the other languages that use the alphabet. Thus, unlike Modern Greek fonts that retained their own set of design principles, modern Cyrillic fonts are much the same as modern Latin fonts of the same font family.

Four letters were eliminated from the Russian alphabet in a reform (1917-1918).

The Cyrillic alphabet has been adapted to write over 50 different languages written using the Cyrillic alphabet, mainly in Russia, across Eastern Europe and Central Asia. In many cases additional letters are used, some of which are adaptations of standard Cyrillic letters, while others are taken from the Greek or Latin alphabets. Wikipedia has more on that here.

Svetlana Astanaeva,

Russian Lessons Online

Technorati Tags: Cyrillic alphabet, history of Russian alphabet, Russian alphabet

If you have any problems with the comprehension of Russian speech, then you need more practice in listening and speaking of Russian. Between the hearing and speech there is a direct connection. The more we talking, the better we understand, and vice versa. There’s no faster way to learn Russian than to speak it and you can do it even when there’s no one around by practicing with yourself. In the internet there are a lot of ways to train the hearing and comprehension of speech.

When you’re watching the Russian TV or listening to the Russian radio I suggest to make follows:

• Listen as much times, as possible

• Make comments in the Russian language write down those Russian words where te meaning isn’t clear for you

• Look up write down Russian words in a dictionary and translate them.

The good news is we all can make better our hearing and understanding. There is only one secret to improve our comprehension and pronunciation of Russian is to practice.

So if you want to practice your understanding of Russian speech or focus in on nuances of Russian pronunciation, then these sources are really help you in learning the Russian language and will give you something more like an actual conversation - speech taking place in real time that is continually new, that conveys information that we are interested in.

 In the internet, there are now many Russian online television stations, and so we have provided a listing of online TV streams featuring television news, television shows, and music TV in the Russian language to practice and improve your understanding and pronunciation of the Russian language.

Here is the most up to date Russian TV and Russian Radio Stations Listing

Watch, listen,  enjoy and learn the Russian language!

Svetlana Astanaeva,

Russian Lessons Online

Technorati Tags: learn Russian, Rusian Radio, Russian language, Russian speech, Russian TV, Russian words

Russian rock!

Everything about good music is positive, with the power to affect our lives forever. In our hurry-up dot-com world, musical experiences provide a sense of community and belonging.

Songs help us live and Russian songs help us study the Russian language.

Russian songs and music helps you to learn the Russian language the funniest way. However, songs aren’t just fun, but it is a powerful tool for learning the Russian language. Singing liven up learning the Russian language. When you’re having fun, you’re more motivated to learn.

Listening and singing the Russian songs will help you:

1. Learn New Words and Phrases of Russian.
2. It improves Comprehension Skills of the Russian language.
3. It develops Good Pronunciation and reduces an accent of Russian.
4. It helps in overcoming the language barrier and increases a comfort level of the Russian language.
5. It helps understand the alive Russian language and a wealth of cultural heritage of Russia.

Motivate yourself for learning the Russian language with Russian music!

Listen the Russian songs, relax, enjoy and… Sing, sing, sing!

Svetlana Astanaeva

Russian Lessons Online

Technorati Tags: learning Russian, Russian language, Russian songs

Learning to speak Russian well may be the best thing you can do to improve your life and there are a lot of good reasons for learning the Russian language…

That’s right. Do you think it would be fun to have access to information that other people can’t get? Talk and write letters to interesting people that others can’t communicate with? Make big jumps in your career, leaving others miles behind? Impress people around you whenever you opened your mouth?
You can get all of this if you speak Russian well.

If you ask most people who study the Russian language, they will tell you that they became intrigued by the Russian language, fascinated with Russia, and that they fell in love with Russia’s great literature, and that these are good enough reasons on their own to learn Russian language.

Here are some other benefits of learning Russian:

•     Russia is a country that spans over one third of the globe (over 6,592,800 square miles), making it the largest country in the world. Within this huge area of terrain there is a dazzling array of geographical and architectural splendours, from the spires of St Petersburg and domes of Moscow, to the mountains of the Caucasus, the waters of Lake Baikal, the seas (Aral, Caspian, Black), the great rivers and forests, the tundra, and so on… 

•    Russia has been (in its many guises) one of the most significant cultural and political forces of the twentieth century, not to mention earlier times, and will undoubtedly continue to loom large in world politics and twenty-first century history and culture…

•    Russian is the primary language of the 150 million citizens of the Russian Federation (as the Russian state calls itself) and is the native language of approximately 30 million people living in the other states that were formed after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In many if not all of those states (Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kirgystan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Estonia, Moldova,  Latvia  and Lithuania) Russian is widely spoken by people who are not themselves ethnic Russians. 

•    More companies today are expanding their business to Russia, because nowadays Russia has enormous reserves of valuable natural resources and an extremely well-educated populace – in other words, it has great potential for economic growth.  Current indications are that it is becoming increasingly easy and more profitable for western companies to do business in Russia. Over 300 US companies have already opened businesses in Russia, and Western European firms are even more actively investing in the region.

•    Russian language looks good on your resume and could make a big difference to your career. Knowing Russian language and culture is both very useful and very appealing to employers and to professional schools, while knowing the language and culture of a major and very remarkable European country indicates that a person can handle all kinds of different and even difficult challenges (although the Russian language is really nowhere near as hard as people who have never learned it tend to think) and can acquire useful knowledge on a very significant part of the world. 

•    Up to 60% of all of the world’s literature is published in both English and Russian, so that gives you an idea of just how important the Russian language is to the artistic community.

•    Russia possesses a centuries-old, rich, fascinating culture, which has had enormous influence on the world. There are the great works of literature, art, and cinema that we’ve probably heard of in passing, from Eugene Onegin and War and Peace to Battleship Potemkin… and then there are the countless and exciting novels, poems, pictures, films, that make up so much of Russian cultural life and that many in the West are barely aware of…

Learning the Russian language offers unique opportunity to experience Russian culture in depth. Russia’s position on the border between Europe and Asia and its unique history have formed a complex and fascinating cultural environment.

There are now many more opportunities than in the past to travel in Russia and experience this society first-hand. 

Learning Russian language opens the door to the study of Russia’s rich tradition of literature, art and music. While learning Russian language and culture is an intellectually stimulating and enriching experience in itself, the cultural knowledge and understanding that can be gained also have career implications.

Russian makes you a more powerful, happier person. It is not difficult to imagine some situations where knowing Russian gives you a great feeling.

I hope that, with my Russian lessons, your progress in Russian will soon give you a lot of satisfaction.

Svetlana Astanaeva,
Russian Lessons Online

Technorati Tags: learning Russian, Russia, Russian culture, Russian language