While thinking about how to go about continuing my posts here, I was recently considering the fact that we never/very rarely actually used what we learned in a practical way, and that perhaps it would be helpful to just 'dive in'. This way, we already have good examples of the words that we are learning.
We have all the tools to, with a dictionary, understand some quite complex language already, and I thought that maybe I would go through the somewhat tedious task of taking apart Russian texts... short stories, newspaper articles, fairy tales, etc. Or at least showing you how I usually go about doing it.
Hopefully this will be an encouraging experience, although since our vocabulary is still limited, there will be a lot of new words to learn.
So I've started off with a short story by Че́хов. This might seem tedious at first because we won't know every second word, but I just want to show you that with a little bit of perseverance we can already read and understand a short story by Че́хов, which - I think - is pretty cool.
The story is called Ра́дость (f), and I chose it for no other reason than that I had it lying around and it really is nice and short.
Here is the full version of the Russian text for your reference: clicky Aaand an English version, if you want to cheat :)
So, we will start with the title: Ра́дость... which means 'joy/bliss'. It is feminine (when something ends with ь it's difficult to tell) so, what does that mean? Well, for instance, it would be ра́дость моя́ - my joy.
Ok so here we go, let's have a quick look at the first couple of sentences:
Было двенадцать часов ночи. Митя Кулдаров, возбужденный, взъерошенный, влетел в квартиру своих родителей и быстро заходил по всем комнатам. Родители уже ложились спать. Сестра лежала в постели и дочитывала последнюю страничку романа. Братья-гимназисты спали. — Откуда ты? — удивились родители. — Что с тобой?
So, while we've been focusing on the technical aspects in past posts, this one will be more about just understanding what's going on. Generally, if you recognize the 'root' of the word you're halfway to understanding the meaning of the sentence without thinking too much about which case this word is in and all of the grammatical aspects. What I mean is that when you see the word но́чи, you know that this is some form of the word ночь 'night'... going from this, if you understand the other words in the sentence mean you'll be able to make out the meaning. Eventually you will develop an intuition for this.
First of all, we need to know how to 'say' all of this in our heads, so my first step is always to add stress marks. Look out for words like Возбуждённый, where often - even usually - the ё is written as а 'е'. This is ridiculous and whoever is responsible needs to be held accountable but that's how it goes :). I do not understand why you would have a letter and then not use it, but the thing is for native Russian speakers it's obvious.
Бы́ло двена́дцать часо́в но́чи.
Ми́тя Кулда́ров, возбуждённый, взъероше́нный, влете́л в кварти́ру свои́х роди́телей и бы́стро заходи́л по всем ко́мнатам. Роди́тели уже ложи́лись спать. Сестра́ лежа́ла в посте́ли и дочитыва́ла после́днюю страни́чку рома́на. Бра́тья-гимнази́сты спа́ли.
— Отку́да ты? — удиви́лись роди́тели. — Что с тобо́й?
Ok, now we're ready to start. We know all of the words in the first sentence - hooray! Ура́! Бы́ло - it was. As we know, this is the neutral past tense of the verb 'to be' - он был, она была́, оно́ бы́ло. Why neutral? It was... we're not referring to something specific, but the situation. Somehow this makes perfect sense to me, ask away.
Бы́ло двена́дцать часо́в но́чи.
Well, we know that двена́дцать means twelve, часо́в is the plural(род) of час(hour), and ночь means night. Но́чи, then, is the of the night or some such thing), I think it's the genitive form of ночь in any case... It was twelve o'clock at night
Since this is already dragging on a bit, I will split this up into smaller parts... but now we've at least made a start! Try it yourself. It's very satisfying as you start to read more and more fluently
In the next posts I think I will post the whole text with stress marks and provide a list of new vocabulary words in their dictionary forms to go along with it. I might have to split the story up into 3/4 posts – there are about 60 new words in there (the story has about 500)!