Now I just need to learn Russian...

[MKSheppard]

So I was driving down Connecticut Avenue, returning from visiting AU Library for book scanning; and also the National Zoo (Inverberates and Reptiles are fucking ugly while mammals rock); and I decided to see if a certain store was open -- when I originally found it, it was on a Sunday and it was closed.



Wandering in, I found myself surrounded by russian books and movies; including a Russian translation of Clinton's memoirs (hehheeh)

Their military section was decent. Perhaps Stas can translate some of these titles for me?



After some asking, I found something that I've been looking for ever since I heard about it on Tanknet.



Sadly, Volume III and IV weren't there. I must have them when they come out. I immediately snapped it up of course. Now all I need to do is learn Russian.

Later, I visited a bookstore down the street, and saw that ROL also sold posters; so I ran back and bought this for $5.



That is going to look so good next to my computer.

[Havok]

Why don't you learn it then? Is it a hard language to pick up?

[MKSheppard]

Why don't you learn it then? Is it a hard language to pick up?

IMO....Russian is not very hard to learn by listening -- the sounds of the words are very similar to a lot of other languages. The big problem is Cyrillic; which is a very different system than the Romanized Alphabet a lot of us are taught in.

[MKSheppard]

Demon Cat wants your soul.


Contact was made with Agent 212 of the PLA(N).

[Darth Wong]

Why don't you learn it then? Is it a hard language to pick up?

IMO....Russian is not very hard to learn by listening -- the sounds of the words are very similar to a lot of other languages. The big problem is Cyrillic; which is a very different system than the Romanized Alphabet a lot of us are taught in.

Yes, but cyrillic looks so cool.

[MKSheppard]

Agent 941 of the Canadian Underground in DC.


The NSA keeps a close watch over all.

[Walsh]

From what I've read about the language, the grammar is quite difficult for an Indo-European language, the case system will cause many headaches, and the vocabulary is huge.

Surprisingly, the alphabet can be mastered in an hour or so, and will probably be the least of your worries, the orthography is also far better than English (that is, words are spelled more like how they sound).

The US Foreign Service Institute rates Russian as a class II language, which means about 1100 hours of study are required by an experienced learner to reach "general professional proficiency".

[aerius]

While we're on the topic of Russian stuff, did you know that Russia still makes vacuum tubes?

[Zor]

Don't underestimate our beavers, Shep, they have already taken over Tierra del Fuego.

Zor

[General Soontir Fel]

I can translate the titles of the WWII books for you. From bottom to top:

The Swastika over the Volga: Luftwaffe vs. Stalin's Air Defense

The Soldier of the 20th Century: A Life in Standoff

Hitler's "Fireman": Fieldmarshal Model

Dive Bombers: the Evolution of the Diver--the Epoch of the Air War

Soviet Submarine Fleet 1922--1945

Cadres Decide Everything

Stalin's Falcons: an Analysis of the Actions of Soviet Aviation 1941--1945

The Wars of the Muscovite Rus against the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Poland in the 14th--17th centuries.

Path of the Fighter: American Aviation in the Pacific War

Stalin's Bosporus Expedition

Stalingrad: Dedicated to the Participants of the Great Battle at Stalingrad

At the Start of War: Memoirs of a Marshal of the Soviet Union

Battle of Kursk: Decisive Turning Point of World War II

Hitler's Chief Spy: the Secret of Wilhelm Canaris

General Staff in the War Years: from Stalingrad to Berlin

Ten Years and Twenty Days

Aces of the Third Reich

Classified Wars

I can't make out the last two. The white letters on the grey book say "of the general staff", but I can't read the words above that.

How did you get a picture of the cat like that?

[MKSheppard]

How did you get a picture of the cat like that?

Complete blind luck. He was pacing back and forth on a tree limb, and I didn't know how well it came out until I loaded it up on my computer

[Pollux]

The Cyrillic alphabet is the least of your worries. I picked it up in about a month or so with no formal education when I was 12.

The case system, which we're just starting to scratch the surface of in my high school class, is what I foresee as being the most difficult part of the language to pick up.

Still doesn't hold a candle to Mandarin though... fucking tones.

[K. A. Pital]

Last book says "The Secret front of the General Staff".

All in all, though, I wouldn't advise much from this heap of books. The book you took is probably the only real worthy monography out of them all.

P.S. Do not harbor much hopes about spoken Russian. As well as written Russian, it remains one of the hardest languages to learn for a foreigner, second only to the asiatic group - sino-japanese languages.

In fact, written Russian might be a tad easier. There are ways to become a good reader without real knowledge of the language.

[FSTargetDrone]

Sheppard, what kind of book is the one with the parading IS-2s on the cover? Does it have a lot of photographs, or is is mostly text? I'd find it worthwhile for the photographs alone.

Nice pics of the various animals, btw.

[Netko]

Cyrillic really isn't an issue - it has nearly 1 to 1 mapping to the Latin alphabet. Its a one afternoon project to get basic proficiency with it and then just reading a book or two to let it sink in (well, it is if you understand the underlying language).

And Russian is by far not the worst of the, traditionally difficult for English speakers, Slavic languages. Slovene, for one, is much more difficult do to the use of the dual form that people not used to it in their language find hard to adapt conceptually. And yes, unlike English, you can pretty much forget about spoken fluency with Slavic languages if you're coming from English - some have managed it, but most who learn the language never get the case system right when speaking - it isn't a bar to understanding, but its a permanent mark of "outsider". On the other hand, do to that difficulty and the self-awareness of Slavic peoples of it, if you do learn the language, you'll probably be very welcomed in the country who's language you learned. Most seem to consider your willingness to inflict such pain for limited gain upon yourself something worthy of respect.

[K. A. Pital]

Most seem to consider your willingness to inflict such pain for limited gain upon yourself something worthy of respect.

Yeah. If a foreigner is fluent in a Slavic language, that's a good respect mark in Russia as far as I know. However, if you speak badly, no such boons...

[Vympel]

Being Greek allows for me to sound out Russian words if I just keep in mind the few letters that are different - however, knowing what they mean is another matter entirely

[Gandalf]

Why don't you learn it then? Is it a hard language to pick up?

IMO....Russian is not very hard to learn by listening -- the sounds of the words are very similar to a lot of other languages. The big problem is Cyrillic; which is a very different system than the Romanized Alphabet a lot of us are taught in.

Really? I found Cyrillic to be incredibly easy.

It took about four hours worth of study memorise all of the letters.

[Ford Prefect]

Yes, but cyrillic looks so cool.

That's because it looks angry. As though you're not supposed to speak whtever is written in cyrillic, but rather bark it.

Also Shep, what is the book you bought about? I mean, I'm guessing it covers tanks, but in what way?

[Walsh]

Cyrillic really isn't an issue - it has nearly 1 to 1 mapping to the Latin alphabet. Its a one afternoon project to get basic proficiency with it and then just reading a book or two to let it sink in (well, it is if you understand the underlying language).

And Russian is by far not the worst of the, traditionally difficult for English speakers, Slavic languages. Slovene, for one, is much more difficult do to the use of the dual form that people not used to it in their language find hard to adapt conceptually. And yes, unlike English, you can pretty much forget about spoken fluency with Slavic languages if you're coming from English - some have managed it, but most who learn the language never get the case system right when speaking - it isn't a bar to understanding, but its a permanent mark of "outsider". On the other hand, do to that difficulty and the self-awareness of Slavic peoples of it, if you do learn the language, you'll probably be very welcomed in the country who's language you learned. Most seem to consider your willingness to inflict such pain for limited gain upon yourself something worthy of respect.

You shouldn't rate a language's difficulty by how many foreigners can speak it.

A Dutch man once told me that since very few English speakers learn Dutch, that it therefore must be incredibly difficult. Not only is Dutch among the simplest of languages for an English speaker, but needless to say, most English speakers who are willing to learn another language are rarely going to go for one as... err... obscure as Dutch.

[tim31]

Dutch is just German with the punch taken out of it.

What is this thread anyway? "Should Shep Learn Russian?" or "Shep's Day At The Zoo" ??

[Glocksman]

As an aside, one of the Russian speakers where I work once told me (he was a volunteer translator for our union) that it literally gave him a headache to quickly translate between Russian/English and English/Russian during our grievance meetings involving Russian speaking workers.

[Netko]

You shouldn't rate a language's difficulty by how many foreigners can speak it.

Huh? I wasn't. I specifically noted why Slavic languages in general are difficult for English-as-the-mother-language people to learn (cases and the rules surrounding them that are often riddled with exceptions) and I should probably add that crossing into a different group tends to always be difficult since many words tend to have similar roots within a groups' languages while that obviously not being the case when crossing groups (excepting the common latin root of many words in indo-european languages). Hence the difficulty when switching from a Germanic language (English) to any Slavic one. The probable exception on the learning side is English because its just so damn prevalent today that even the lowliest peasant in Shitkanistan probably knows at least a few words. I then especially mentioned Slovene as a problem because, in addition to all the above, it also has the dual form (so you have singular, dual, plural). I can't see where you got the idea that the difficulty is determined by the number of foreigners speaking the language.

What is true is that very few "western" (read: people from Germanic and Romance language groups) manage to learn Slavic languages well enough to blend in with native speakers - and more often then not its not just an issue with accent (as it is with English), but rather them never getting a hang of all the cases and, especially, the numerous exceptions (anecdotally, since you brought up the Dutch, I know a Dutchman married to a Croat woman who come down to the Croatian seaside every summer for 2 months so that the kids would get a bit of sea and sun and see their grandparents with the rule that while they're down here they only speak Croatian - they've been doing that for close to 20 years now and while the kids have learned the language with only a weird accent, the husband still has problems with cases occasionally). So most Slavic people, accustomed to the famed difficulty of their languages to Westerners, tend to consider those Westerners that do take the effort of learning the language as someone who should be respected for respecting them enough to go to the trouble which often immediately gets said Westerner gobs of hospitality.

I know I'm restating things a bit but I hope that its clearer now since I really can't figure out where you got the idea that the language's learning difficulty has anything to do with the number of foreigners that speak it.

[Frank Hipper]

Russian confounds me; I can pick a few words out here and there in writing, only if I have a clue as to the subject matter...and that's being on the optimistic side.

"Эскадренный броненосец", "Броненосный крейсер", and "Новости" are about the only words I don't have to think about to recognise.

Without any sort of context, it's all Greek to me.

[fgalkin]

Yes, but cyrillic looks so cool.

That's because it looks angry. As though you're not supposed to speak whtever is written in cyrillic, but rather bark it.

No, that would be German, ya grot.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin