LESSON TRANSCRIPT

Russian Alphabet Made Easy #10

Review of True, False, and New
Friends

# 10
COPYRIGHT © 2013 INNOVATIVE LANGUAGE LEARNING. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Zdrastvuite, Ya Svetlana! Welcome to Russianpod101.com’s Алфавит Made Easy!
The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn the Russian Cyrillic alphabet: the
Алфавит !
In the first nine lessons, you learned 21 of the 33 Russian letters! We're two-thirds
through the alphabet and half-way through this series! Today we are going to take a
break from learning new letters and instead focus on reviewing the ones we've already
learned. Then you'll learn how to write some more sentences!
First we'll review the True Friends. It may have been a while, but do you remember
them? They are the ones that look and sound like English letters! They should all look
familiar, but let's review.
First we had “А”
Then “К”
Then “М”
And “О”
And finally “Т ”
Are you feeling confident with those letters? Now's the chance to go back to an old
lesson and review! No? Then let's now review the False Friends. As you remember,
these are Russian letters that look like English letters but have much different
pronunciations. There were seven of these.
First we learned “Е”
Then “Н”
And “В”
After that we had “Р”
And then “С”
“У”
And finally “Х"
Alright! Moving onward and into slightly more difficult territory, we had the New Friends,
which don't look like English letters at all, but have familiar English sounds. There were
9 of those.
First up was “Б”
And “Г”
Then “Д ”
And “З”
After that “И”
And “Л”
And then

RUS S I ANPOD101.COM RUS S I AN ALPHABET MADE EAS Y #10 - REVI EW OF T RUE, FALS E, AND NEW FRI ENDS 2
“П”
Then “Ф ”
And finally “Э”
Wow! You've learned a lot of letters! And you can write a lot of words with them, too.
Let's write some more.
Here we have a simple exchange. Try reading it aloud to yourself. [pause]
Кто она? Она Екатерина. Откуда она? Она из России.
You probably already recognize a lot of the words! You know that “Кто она?” means
“Who is she?” You might also guess that “Она Екатерина” means “She is Catherine.”
Екатерина is the Russian form of Catherine. The question “Откуда она?” introduces a
new word, “Откуда”, which means “From where?” So this line translates to “Where is
she from?” Lastly, “из России” means “from Russia.” “из” means from, and “России” is
a grammatical form of Россия, the Russian name for “Russia”.
Let's go ahead and practice writing out this dialogue line by line.
Кто она? Она Екатерина. Откуда она? Она из России.
Let's try another example. This one should be fun.
First, try sounding out the words! [pause]
Спасибо за внимание!
Maybe you have heard “Спасибо” before. It means “Thank you.” Next we say “за”
which means “for,” and “внимание” which means “attention.” So this phrase is the
Russian equivalent of “Thanks for your attention.”
You'll often hear this at the end of a presentation or speech. But another place you'll
see “внимание” is on warning signs.
Now let's practice writing this phrase by hand.
Спасибо за внимание!
Now it's time for Svetlana's Insights.
If you are in Russia, try and read the signs around you. If that’s not possible, by
picking up a Russian book or newspaper, you'll have a great opportunity to start
recognizing the letters in a real-world setting. If you’re up for a real challenge, try and
read people's handwriting!
That's all for the review! No more friends for you! From the next lesson we'll meet “the
Strangers” - the most foreign of the Russian letters for English learners. We'll learn that
and much more in the next Алфавит Made Easy lesson!
Пока Пока

RUS S I ANPOD101.COM RUS S I AN ALPHABET MADE EAS Y #10 - REVI EW OF T RUE, FALS E, AND NEW FRI ENDS 3