March 06, 2019

Understanding Spoken Russian – Learn Russian Ep. 6

33 minutes

Full Episode Audio

Exercises Only Audio

Download Full Episode (right click save-as)

Download Exercises

NOTE *

All

phrases intended for translating/listening practice have been

deleted.

Welcome

to Episode 6 of Understanding Spoken Russian.

(sound

of crying girl) Because she was crying, I gave Sophia a doll.

That’s

an odd way to start the lesson. And yet, allow me to repeat that:

Because she was crying, I gave Sophia a doll. Odder still, I’d

like you to repeat that out loud. Say it with me: “Because she

was crying, I gave Sophia a doll.”

Ok,

what is this guy up to? Well, hopefully you trust me by now. I

promise, in a minute you’ll see why I had you repeat that sentence.

But first, let’s review what we learned in Episode 5. Try to

translate the following phrases, and explain what kind of verb was

used…perfective or imperfective.

–

– –

Alright,

so…what was that phrase I had you repeat? “Because she was

crying, I gave Sophia a doll.”

Listen

to this Russian word: дал

woman would pronounce it: дала

What

kind of word do you think it is? With those L endings, it’s probably

a verb in the past tense, right? Let’s hear it in context: (cell

phone ringing)…

(Andrei)

“Here Mommy, take your phone.”

Андрюша

дал Маме телефон.

(sound

of fork dropping to the floor) “Oh, I dropped my fork. Sophia,

could you get me one from the kitchen?”

“Yes,

Daddy.”

София

дала Папе вилку.

Both

дал …and… дала

translate as “gave”. And дал

sounds a lot like the English word ‘doll’, doesn’t it? So that phrase

I told you in the beginning…What was it again?

Sophia

was crying so I gave her a doll.

That phrase should help you recall it.

Russian, giving something counts as doing something to the object.

For ex:

дал Антону футболку.

gave Anton a T-shirt. The word futbolka changed to futbolku, with

that ‘u’ ending.

this…

Мама

дала мне книгу.

Mom

gave me a book. Again, kniga (книга)

changed to knigu (книгу).

The

verb to give is obviously very useful to know, which is why

it’s our official new word of the lesson. But today’s real topic is

what happened to the words Mama and Papa and Anton when they received

those things. Listen again…

Андрюша

дал Маме телефон. –

Mama became

Mam-yeh

София

дала Папе вилку. – Papa became

Pap-yeh

дал Антону футболку. – Anton

became Antonu

Interesting.

Let’s listen to some more examples. Can you translate these?

–

– –

Let’s

run through those again with the name Jeff. So he’ll start by saying,

This is Jeff…

Это

Джеф. Я сказал Джефу нет. Я купил Джефу

новый телефон. Я дал Джефу шанс.

What

do you think that ‘U’ sound at the end of Jeff’s name is signifying?

Another way to ask that is: What does the ‘U’ sound tell the

listener? That ‘u’ sound added to the end of a guy’s name is a

recipient marker. It tells the listener that, in this case

Jeff, is receiving something.

So:

Я сказал Джефу нет. …I

said to Jeff no. Jeff was receiving the words.

купил Джефу новый телефон. I bought for

Jeff a new phone. Jeff was the recipient of a phone.

дал Джефу шанс. I gave (to) Jeff a chance.

Again, Jeff was the person who received the chance.

For

female names, the ending is “yeh”…same sound as the

location marker. So let’s do a few more with the name Polina. So

he’ll start by saying, This is Polina…

Это

Полина. Я сказал Полине нет. Я купил

Полине новый телефон. Я дал Полине шанс.

Polina

changed to Polinyeh in each one because she was the recipient.

This

is a major chunk of Russian grammar right here. Think of how often we

say things like,

“I

called her, I sent him an email, I sent her a text, I gave her the

money, I told him I’d be there.”

each of those…I called, I sent, I gave, I told…there’s a

recipient. If the recipient is guy, you’ll hear an U at the end of

his name: Mark becomes Marku…John becomes Johnu. If it’s a woman,

a ‘yeh’ sound. Yana becomes Yanyeh. Darina becomes Darinyeh.

–

– –

(telephone

ring)

Алло?

Привет, Папа. Хорошо, скажу. Урра! Папа

позвонил. Он купил пиццу.

What

do you think this means: Папа позвонил.

you hear the word “phone” in there, kind of?

puh-zvon-EEL…zvon…phone?

позвонил

means called on the phone. And it’s the perfective

form of the verb. No need to actively learn that one. You’ll use it a

few million times, so it’ll sink in naturally. And we’ll be hearing

it quite a few times in just a minute. But here’s the thing about

this recipient ending: It allows Russian to use a more flexible word

order than English.

English, you have to put the recipient right after the verb. For ex:

I called Mom this afternoon.

Mom comes

right after called.

gave Chris the money. Chris comes right

after gave.

Yes,

you could perhaps say: Chris I gave the

money…but it’s awkward, and much less

common. But in Russian, we’re more flexible. So tell me…Who called

who?

Марку

позвонил Грег.

Greg

called Mark. Right? Mark had the recipient “u” ending. And

Greg was in his basic form, meaning he did the action. Weird, isn’t

it? And you might think, “C’mon…Do Russians really phrase it

that way?” Absolutely. It all depends on the question that

prompted the statement.

someone asks: Who did Greg call? Then ‘Mark’ would go at the end of

the sentence:

Кому

Грег позвонил? Грег позвонил Марку.

But

if the question is: Who called Mark? Кто

позвонил Марку? Then we’d use this one: Марку

позвонил Грег. So it simply depends on the

question. And I can’t help but point out the rhyme here:

The

question word: Whom…кому? Марку.

…rhymes with the masculine answer. To whom? To Mark. Let’s

do some more. Again, Who called who?

–

– –

These

recipient endings are used even when the verb is unspoken. Just this

morning, Dedushka—our kid’s grandfather—was feeding the twins

kasha (каша), which is porridge.

William was being silly and insisting that Ded feed his toy dinosaur

instead. As Ded pretended to feed a spoonful to the dinosaur and then

to William, here is exactly what he said:

Одну

ложку динозаврику,

одну Уильяму.

Literally:

One spoon to the little dinosaur, one to William.

The

words: динозаврик…and… Уильям

…became…. динозаврику

…and….Уильяму.

because

they were the recipients of the spoonfuls.

Let’s

translate other phrases like that, with no verbs in them. Just say

who gets what, even if you’re not sure what the item is.

–

– –

Listen

to the masculine words client клиент and

travel agent турагент

сказал клиенту, что он должен позвонить

турагенту.

said to the client, that he should call a travel agent.

said to the client…клиенту….he

should call to the travel agent…турагенту

сказал официантке, что нам нужна ещё

одна ложка.

told the waitress that we need one more spoon.

официантка

with that basic ‘a’ ending, became

официантке…with the recipient “yeh”

ending because she was the recipient of what he said.

Listen

to this phrase: Is he your partner? (like…business partner)

Он

твой партнёр?

дала все документы твоему партнёру.

gave all the documents to your partner. And notice that now the

words “your” and “partner” rhyme. твоему

партнёру

Gotta

love it.

<<<

Tip of the day…..>>>

the last podcast, the tip was how useful Google’s exact match

function is, as well as its image search. Those are great because

they don’t rely on the computer having to understand anything. It’s

simply showing you what native speakers are doing. That’s great.

What’s not so great is how computers themselves understand and

translate language. During the 2019 Superbowl Google had an ad: We

translate one billion words every day. Yeah, and about four hundred

million of those translations are horribly mangled.

The

problem is, computers translate by statistical analysis. They simply

do not understand language. At all. For one thing, they’re infamously

bad with expressions. For ex: I feel like a milkshake.

American English, that means I feel like having a milkshake. Ok?

Languages do that sometimes…they leave off words which are

understood between native speakers. But poor Google just doesn’t get

it. Here’s how it translates that… Я чувствую себя как

молочный коктейль.

..which,

to a Russian speaker, is like saying: I feel the way a milkshake

feels.

can go the other way. A very common expression in Russian is to tell

someone:

Марк,

ты даёшь.

There’s

a multitude of ways you might translate that, depending on the

context, and what prompted the person to say that. But it’s an

expression of comical exasperation. Like, Only you could be like

that. Only you could do something like that.

So,

what’s Google’s gloriously translation? “Mark, you give.”

didn’t see that one in the Superbowl commercial.

One

more: “Dude, you’re driving me up a wall.”…comes out in

Russian as…

Чувак,

ты ведешь меня вверх по стене.

Instead

of giving an equivalent expression in Russian—some version of

‘you’re making me crazy’, the computer goes word by word: Dude,

you’re leading me by vehicle upwards along a wall.

you think your Russian friend reading that is going to have the

slightest clue what you mean?

They

also do terribly with slang. I talked to my buddy in the U.S. last

night, and at one point he said, and I quote: “My new laptop has

a bad-ass processor.” I couldn’t help myself. I typed it into

Google translate. Now here’s the Russian version…

People,

the Russian word плохой is the word

for terrible, horrible.

got the translation 100% wrong. The exact opposite of what he meant.

This is a very important tip, okay? Please don’t rely on and don’t

trust any computer translation. They’re just not there yet.

<<<

tip end >>>

Let’s

see if we remember our one new word from this lesson. Try to say…

–

– –

When

Svetlana was the recipient, did you say Svetlan-yeh? And when James

was the recipient, did you say James-u? If so, you’re doing great.

this next exercise, all I want you to do is say who did what to whom.

–

– –

Alright,

let’s go on to our final exam…Can you translate the gist of these

phrases? As always, if you don’t know a word, it’s no biggie. Just

add it into your translation. Like for this…

Маша

дала Папе вилку.

you don’t recall what a veelka (вилка)

is, just say: “Masha gave Dad a veelku (вилку)

….which

happens to be a fork. Ok? No pressure. Just try your best.

–

– –

Great

job, guys. And on a sidenote..Have any of you noticed that every

single phrase we’ve translated has been in the past tense? Dad

bought, Mom gave, Alina called…Well, that’s about to change.

And it’ll happen—present tense—in the next episode. See you

there.

Before

we go, I gotta have a little more fun with Google translate. Here’s

some Cardi B for you guys. Let’s run the lyrics through Google…

So,

Here’s how Google translated that into Japanese…

Let’s

translate those Japanese words into Danish…

…and

Danish back to English

put a stone in the clock. Google, I like it like that.

...more

View all episodes

By Understanding Spoken Russian

4.9

4242 ratings

March 06, 2019

Understanding Spoken Russian – Learn Russian Ep. 6

33 minutes

Full Episode Audio

Exercises Only Audio

Download Full Episode (right click save-as)

Download Exercises

NOTE *

All

phrases intended for translating/listening practice have been

deleted.

Welcome

to Episode 6 of Understanding Spoken Russian.

(sound

of crying girl) Because she was crying, I gave Sophia a doll.

That’s

an odd way to start the lesson. And yet, allow me to repeat that:

Because she was crying, I gave Sophia a doll. Odder still, I’d

like you to repeat that out loud. Say it with me: “Because she

was crying, I gave Sophia a doll.”

Ok,

what is this guy up to? Well, hopefully you trust me by now. I

promise, in a minute you’ll see why I had you repeat that sentence.

But first, let’s review what we learned in Episode 5. Try to

translate the following phrases, and explain what kind of verb was

used…perfective or imperfective.

–

– –

Alright,

so…what was that phrase I had you repeat? “Because she was

crying, I gave Sophia a doll.”

Listen

to this Russian word: дал

woman would pronounce it: дала

What

kind of word do you think it is? With those L endings, it’s probably

a verb in the past tense, right? Let’s hear it in context: (cell

phone ringing)…

(Andrei)

“Here Mommy, take your phone.”

Андрюша

дал Маме телефон.

(sound

of fork dropping to the floor) “Oh, I dropped my fork. Sophia,

could you get me one from the kitchen?”

“Yes,

Daddy.”

София

дала Папе вилку.

Both

дал …and… дала

translate as “gave”. And дал

sounds a lot like the English word ‘doll’, doesn’t it? So that phrase

I told you in the beginning…What was it again?

Sophia

was crying so I gave her a doll.

That phrase should help you recall it.

Russian, giving something counts as doing something to the object.

For ex:

дал Антону футболку.

gave Anton a T-shirt. The word futbolka changed to futbolku, with

that ‘u’ ending.

this…

Мама

дала мне книгу.

Mom

gave me a book. Again, kniga (книга)

changed to knigu (книгу).

The

verb to give is obviously very useful to know, which is why

it’s our official new word of the lesson. But today’s real topic is

what happened to the words Mama and Papa and Anton when they received

those things. Listen again…

Андрюша

дал Маме телефон. –

Mama became

Mam-yeh

София

дала Папе вилку. – Papa became

Pap-yeh

дал Антону футболку. – Anton

became Antonu

Interesting.

Let’s listen to some more examples. Can you translate these?

–

– –

Let’s

run through those again with the name Jeff. So he’ll start by saying,

This is Jeff…

Это

Джеф. Я сказал Джефу нет. Я купил Джефу

новый телефон. Я дал Джефу шанс.

What

do you think that ‘U’ sound at the end of Jeff’s name is signifying?

Another way to ask that is: What does the ‘U’ sound tell the

listener? That ‘u’ sound added to the end of a guy’s name is a

recipient marker. It tells the listener that, in this case

Jeff, is receiving something.

So:

Я сказал Джефу нет. …I

said to Jeff no. Jeff was receiving the words.

купил Джефу новый телефон. I bought for

Jeff a new phone. Jeff was the recipient of a phone.

дал Джефу шанс. I gave (to) Jeff a chance.

Again, Jeff was the person who received the chance.

For

female names, the ending is “yeh”…same sound as the

location marker. So let’s do a few more with the name Polina. So

he’ll start by saying, This is Polina…

Это

Полина. Я сказал Полине нет. Я купил

Полине новый телефон. Я дал Полине шанс.

Polina

changed to Polinyeh in each one because she was the recipient.

This

is a major chunk of Russian grammar right here. Think of how often we

say things like,

“I

called her, I sent him an email, I sent her a text, I gave her the

money, I told him I’d be there.”

each of those…I called, I sent, I gave, I told…there’s a

recipient. If the recipient is guy, you’ll hear an U at the end of

his name: Mark becomes Marku…John becomes Johnu. If it’s a woman,

a ‘yeh’ sound. Yana becomes Yanyeh. Darina becomes Darinyeh.

–

– –

(telephone

ring)

Алло?

Привет, Папа. Хорошо, скажу. Урра! Папа

позвонил. Он купил пиццу.

What

do you think this means: Папа позвонил.

you hear the word “phone” in there, kind of?

puh-zvon-EEL…zvon…phone?

позвонил

means called on the phone. And it’s the perfective

form of the verb. No need to actively learn that one. You’ll use it a

few million times, so it’ll sink in naturally. And we’ll be hearing

it quite a few times in just a minute. But here’s the thing about

this recipient ending: It allows Russian to use a more flexible word

order than English.

English, you have to put the recipient right after the verb. For ex:

I called Mom this afternoon.

Mom comes

right after called.

gave Chris the money. Chris comes right

after gave.

Yes,

you could perhaps say: Chris I gave the

money…but it’s awkward, and much less

common. But in Russian, we’re more flexible. So tell me…Who called

who?

Марку

позвонил Грег.

Greg

called Mark. Right? Mark had the recipient “u” ending. And

Greg was in his basic form, meaning he did the action. Weird, isn’t

it? And you might think, “C’mon…Do Russians really phrase it

that way?” Absolutely. It all depends on the question that

prompted the statement.

someone asks: Who did Greg call? Then ‘Mark’ would go at the end of

the sentence:

Кому

Грег позвонил? Грег позвонил Марку.

But

if the question is: Who called Mark? Кто

позвонил Марку? Then we’d use this one: Марку

позвонил Грег. So it simply depends on the

question. And I can’t help but point out the rhyme here:

The

question word: Whom…кому? Марку.

…rhymes with the masculine answer. To whom? To Mark. Let’s

do some more. Again, Who called who?

–

– –

These

recipient endings are used even when the verb is unspoken. Just this

morning, Dedushka—our kid’s grandfather—was feeding the twins

kasha (каша), which is porridge.

William was being silly and insisting that Ded feed his toy dinosaur

instead. As Ded pretended to feed a spoonful to the dinosaur and then

to William, here is exactly what he said:

Одну

ложку динозаврику,

одну Уильяму.

Literally:

One spoon to the little dinosaur, one to William.

The

words: динозаврик…and… Уильям

…became…. динозаврику

…and….Уильяму.

because

they were the recipients of the spoonfuls.

Let’s

translate other phrases like that, with no verbs in them. Just say

who gets what, even if you’re not sure what the item is.

–

– –

Listen

to the masculine words client клиент and

travel agent турагент

сказал клиенту, что он должен позвонить

турагенту.

said to the client, that he should call a travel agent.

said to the client…клиенту….he

should call to the travel agent…турагенту

сказал официантке, что нам нужна ещё

одна ложка.

told the waitress that we need one more spoon.

официантка

with that basic ‘a’ ending, became

официантке…with the recipient “yeh”

ending because she was the recipient of what he said.

Listen

to this phrase: Is he your partner? (like…business partner)

Он

твой партнёр?

дала все документы твоему партнёру.

gave all the documents to your partner. And notice that now the

words “your” and “partner” rhyme. твоему

партнёру

Gotta

love it.

<<<

Tip of the day…..>>>

the last podcast, the tip was how useful Google’s exact match

function is, as well as its image search. Those are great because

they don’t rely on the computer having to understand anything. It’s

simply showing you what native speakers are doing. That’s great.

What’s not so great is how computers themselves understand and

translate language. During the 2019 Superbowl Google had an ad: We

translate one billion words every day. Yeah, and about four hundred

million of those translations are horribly mangled.

The

problem is, computers translate by statistical analysis. They simply

do not understand language. At all. For one thing, they’re infamously

bad with expressions. For ex: I feel like a milkshake.

American English, that means I feel like having a milkshake. Ok?

Languages do that sometimes…they leave off words which are

understood between native speakers. But poor Google just doesn’t get

it. Here’s how it translates that… Я чувствую себя как

молочный коктейль.

..which,

to a Russian speaker, is like saying: I feel the way a milkshake

feels.

can go the other way. A very common expression in Russian is to tell

someone:

Марк,

ты даёшь.

There’s

a multitude of ways you might translate that, depending on the

context, and what prompted the person to say that. But it’s an

expression of comical exasperation. Like, Only you could be like

that. Only you could do something like that.

So,

what’s Google’s gloriously translation? “Mark, you give.”

didn’t see that one in the Superbowl commercial.

One

more: “Dude, you’re driving me up a wall.”…comes out in

Russian as…

Чувак,

ты ведешь меня вверх по стене.

Instead

of giving an equivalent expression in Russian—some version of

‘you’re making me crazy’, the computer goes word by word: Dude,

you’re leading me by vehicle upwards along a wall.

you think your Russian friend reading that is going to have the

slightest clue what you mean?

They

also do terribly with slang. I talked to my buddy in the U.S. last

night, and at one point he said, and I quote: “My new laptop has

a bad-ass processor.” I couldn’t help myself. I typed it into

Google translate. Now here’s the Russian version…

People,

the Russian word плохой is the word

for terrible, horrible.

got the translation 100% wrong. The exact opposite of what he meant.

This is a very important tip, okay? Please don’t rely on and don’t

trust any computer translation. They’re just not there yet.

<<<

tip end >>>

Let’s

see if we remember our one new word from this lesson. Try to say…

–

– –

When

Svetlana was the recipient, did you say Svetlan-yeh? And when James

was the recipient, did you say James-u? If so, you’re doing great.

this next exercise, all I want you to do is say who did what to whom.

–

– –

Alright,

let’s go on to our final exam…Can you translate the gist of these

phrases? As always, if you don’t know a word, it’s no biggie. Just

add it into your translation. Like for this…

Маша

дала Папе вилку.

you don’t recall what a veelka (вилка)

is, just say: “Masha gave Dad a veelku (вилку)

….which

happens to be a fork. Ok? No pressure. Just try your best.

–

– –

Great

job, guys. And on a sidenote..Have any of you noticed that every

single phrase we’ve translated has been in the past tense? Dad

bought, Mom gave, Alina called…Well, that’s about to change.

And it’ll happen—present tense—in the next episode. See you

there.

Before

we go, I gotta have a little more fun with Google translate. Here’s

some Cardi B for you guys. Let’s run the lyrics through Google…

So,

Here’s how Google translated that into Japanese…

Let’s

translate those Japanese words into Danish…

…and

Danish back to English

put a stone in the clock. Google, I like it like that.

...more

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More shows like Understanding Spoken Russian

Speaking Russian

Learn Russian | RussianPod101.com

Very Much Russian - Learn Russian as Russians speak it!

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Easy Russian: Learn Russian with native speakers | Учим русский с носителями языка