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to episode 12. Today we’ll be working with the letter Ц.
That’s a “ts” sound…As in that’s
…and Let’s…So, we’ll start by learning some common
Russian words that have that sound. Let’s hear them in context:
Russian equivalent of a king or supreme monarch is called a….царь
downtown area of a city is called the….центр
Papa John’s I got a slice of pepperoni….: пицца
those again:
Russian equivalent of a king is a…..
downtown area is called the…
were pretty easy, so let’s try a purely Russian word. Again, here it
rose, a carnation, a tulip….Each of those is a kind of…цветок
hold that thought as I sidetrack for a moment. Say the word ‘fruit.’
The Russian version is a cognate, except that they add a ‘k’ sound
before the final T. Listen…
we say ‘fruit’ and they say…фру
кт
now…I’m going to say some English words, and you say in Russian
whether the thing is a фрукт or
Apple…rose…orchid…banana….kiwi…lilly…
while we’re reviewing: What’s the name of that porridge which
Russians love for breakfast?
for lunch….Meat cooked on a skewer is called…
we also learned two Russian soups. The one based on cabbage is
the red one, with beets?
back to the letter of the day, let’s learn another very Russian word.
fundamental ingredient in any omelet is, of course,….яйца
breakfast today, I had some toast and two scrambled…яйца
start of that word almost sounds like “yikes”, doesn’t it?
But it ends with the letters “ts”, and then an A. яйца
Episode #8 we learned how to say, “I want…” Do you
in Ep #4 we learned how to say good morning. Do recall it?
greet your roommate: Good morning. Want eggs?
other day, I was walking with my daughter Sophia past and we passed
the local florist shop. She tugged my coat: Papa, I want a flower.
Can you say that in Russian?
more practice with this letter, I wrote a poem. It’s only eight words
long, and each one has our letter Ц in it.
We won’t bother translating it because, like all modern poetry, it
makes absolutely no sense. Anyway, repeat each word after the native
letter that it’s most often confused with is the Russian Z sound. (З)
let’s do side-by-side comparisons.
a lot easier to distinguish those letters when they come at the end
probably the toughest two words to distinguish—probably in the
whole language—are these:
first starts with an ‘S-V’ combination. свет
other starts with our letter of the day: Ц…
problematic because the meanings are also related. The first means
light, as in, the light was in my eyes: свет
that brings us back to our word for ‘flower’…Do you remember it?
the word for flower has grown, if you will, from the word color. So
that’s the connection you want to make.
what was the word for eggs?
remember that word, you could use this phrase: I dropped the eggs.
that leads us to…the end of today’s lesson. See you in Episode #13.