Dialogue

Vocabulary

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Lesson Transcript

INTRODUCTION
Oxana: Привет всем! Я Оксана
Eddie: Eddie here. Gengo Russian Season 1, Lesson 7. Don’t answer the Russian questions incorrectly. In today’s lesson, we have our first encounter on real, live Russian soil.
Oxana: Yes. And unfortunately the first person you are going to meet is going to be perhaps a little intimidating.
Eddie: But you won’t be intimidated because of all the Russian you’ve learned already.
Oxana: Yes. Let’s review some of it now.
Eddie: Well, we learned about how to express your condition.
Oxana:Yes, a pronoun in dative plus an adverb, like [мне холодно].
Eddie: I'm cold.
Oxana: Or [ему скучно].
Eddie: “He’s bored”. And we also learned to say what you have and what you don’t have.
Oxana: [у меня есть] and [у меня нет].
Eddie: And some important parting words you’ll hear very often.
Oxana: [Всего хорошего! До свази. До свидания!] and [До скорого].
Eddie: Ok, now that we’ve got all your stats covered, you’re ready for the next step - the interrogation. Let’s listen to the conversation.
DIALOGUE
Девушка:[Здравствуйте, ваш паспорт пожалуйста.]
Woman: Zdravsrvuite, vash pasport pozhalujsta.
Джон: [Вот, пожалуйста.]
John: Vot, pozhaluista.
Девушка: [Сколько вы пробудете в России?]
Woman: Skol’ko vy probudete v Rossii?
Джон: [Двенадцать (12) дней.]
John: Dvenadtsat’ dnei.
Девушка: [Где вы будете жить?]
Woman: Gde vy budete zhit’?
Джон: [В отеле “Голден Эпл”.]
John: V Otele “Golden Apl”.
Девушка: [Какая цель вашего приезда в Москву?]
Woman: Kakaya tsel’ vashego priezda v Moskvu?
Джон: [В основном бизнес, но хочу и немного попутешествовать.]
John: V osnovnom biznes, no hochu i nemnogo poputeshestvovat’.
Девушка: [Хорошо, спасибо.]
Woman: Horosho, spasibo.
--
Eddie: One more time, slowly.
Oxana: Ещё раз, медленнее.
Девушка:[Здравствуйте, ваш паспорт пожалуйста.]
Woman: Zdravsrvuite, vash pasport pozhalujsta.
Джон: [Вот, пожалуйста.]
John: Vot, pozhaluista.
Девушка: [Сколько вы пробудете в России?]
Woman: Skol’ko vy probudete v Rossii?
Джон: [Двенадцать (12) дней.]
John: Dvenadtsat’ dnei.
Девушка: [Где вы будете жить?]
Woman: Gde vy budete zhit’?
Джон: [В отеле “Голден Эпл”.]
John: V Otele “Golden Apl”.
Девушка: [Какая цель вашего приезда в Москву?]
Woman: Kakaya tsel’ vashego priezda v Moskvu?
Джон: [В основном бизнес, но хочу и немного попутешествовать.]
John: V osnovnom biznes, no hochu i nemnogo poputeshestvovat’.
Девушка: [Хорошо, спасибо.]
Woman: Horosho, spasibo.
Eddie: One more time, natural speed with the translation.
Oxana: Ещё раз, с переводом.
Oxana:[Здравствуйте, ваш паспорт пожалуйста.]
Eddie: Hello. Your passport, please.
Oxana:[Вот, пожалуйста.]
Eddie:Here you are.
Oxana:[Сколько вы пробудете в России?]
Eddie: How long will you stay in Russia?
Oxana:[Двенадцать (12) дней.]
Eddie: 12 days.
Oxana: [Где вы будете жить?]
Eddie: Where will you live?
Oxana: [В отеле “Голден Эпл”.]
Eddie: In the Golden Apple hotel.
Oxana: [Какая цель вашего приезда в Москву?]
Eddie: What is the purpose of your visit to Moscow?
Oxana:[В основном бизнес, но хочу и немного попутешествовать.]
Eddie: Mainly business, but I would also like to travel a little.
Oxana: [Хорошо, спасибо.]
Eddie: Ok, thank you.
POST CONVERSATION BANTER
Eddie: Well, the unfortunate thing is that upon arriving in Russia, the first chance you get to use your Russian is with a government official.
Oxana: Yes, it can be a little intimidating.
Eddie: Yeah, I mean even at the UK border I feel suspicious even though I'm not.
Oxana: But remember, try not to sweat it.
VOCAB LIST
Eddie: Let’s take a look at the vocabulary for this lesson.
Oxana: [Здравствуйте!]
Eddie: Hello.
Oxana: [Здравствуйте!]
Eddie: Next.
Oxana: [ваш]
Eddie: “Your” - polite or plural form.
Oxana: [ваш]
Eddie: Next.
Oxana: [паспорт]
Eddie: Passport.
Oxana: [паспорт]
Eddie: Next.
Oxana: [пожалуйста]
Eddie: Please.
Oxana: [пожалуйста]
Eddie: Next.
Oxana: [сколько]
Eddie: How much, how many, how long.
Oxana: [сколько]
Eddie: Next.
Oxana: [быть]
Eddie: To be.
Oxana: [быть]
Eddie: Next.
Oxana: [день]
Eddie: [inaudible 00:05:04]
Oxana: [день]
Eddie: Next.
Oxana: [где]
Eddie: Where, where at.
Oxana: [где]
Eddie: Next.
Oxana: [жить]
Eddie: “To live” or “to stay”.
Oxana: [жить]
Eddie: Next.
Oxana: [какой, какая, какое, какие]
Eddie: What kind.
Oxana: [какой, какая, какое, какие]
Eddie: Next.
Oxana: [цель]
Eddie: Purpose.
Oxana: [цель]
Eddie: Next.
Oxana: [приезд]
Eddie: “Arrival” or “visit”.
Oxana: [приезд]
Eddie: Next.
Oxana: [в основном]
Eddie: Mainly, mostly.
Oxana: [в основном]
Eddie: Next.
Oxana: [но]
Eddie: But.
Oxana: [но]
Eddie: Next.
Oxana: [хотеть]
Eddie: To want.
Oxana: [хотеть]
Eddie: Next.
Oxana: [немного]
Eddie: A little.
Oxana: [немного]
Eddie: Next.
Oxana: [путешествовать]
Eddie: To travel.
Oxana: [путешествовать]
Eddie: Next.
Oxana: [хорошо]
Eddie: Good.
Oxana: [хорошо]
Eddie: Next.
Oxana: [спасибо]
Eddie: Thank you.
Oxana: [спасибо]
VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE
Eddie: Let’s have a closer look at the usage for some of the words and phrases from this lesson. And we can help you not to sweat it because these immigration officers, well, they’re pretty predictable.
Oxana: Yeah, unless you do something crazy or look crazy or something you can pretty much know ahead of time what they are going to ask you. So study today’s dialogue on the plane over and you’ll have no problem.
Eddie: So guaranteed first word, Oxanna.
Oxana: [паспорт] No matter how chatty the officer might be, you’ll recognize this word among all others.
Eddie: “Passport”, of course. Now, I diverge. Make sure to get a visa before coming to Russia.
Oxana: Yes. Almost every foreigner needs a visa to enter Russia. Well, I don’t because I'm Ukrainian, but I'm sure I will need one in a couple of years. Ok, now next. Here’s something nice to learn - some possessive pronouns.
Eddie: You’re familiar with the pronouns [мой, моя, моё] and [мои], which mean “my” with masculine, feminine, neutral and plural nouns. Well, the pronoun [ваш] is of the same category but it means a polite or plural “your”.
Oxana: Yes, so the request was [Ваш паспорт, пожалуйста].
Eddie: Which literally means “your passport, please”. And in this instance, when you’re giving the officer your passport, maybe in English we would say “here you are” or something. Well, in Russian they say “please” back. It also means “you are welcome” very often.
Oxana: [Вот, пожалуйста]
Eddie: Which is literally “here, please”. You can just say [пожалийста], it’s a common answer when someone asks you to do something or give something. Just say “please” back and do it.
Oxana: Now we hear the next very typical question. The keyword of which is [сколько].
Eddie: It’s a very useful Russian question word because it includes pretty much everything measurable in it. One word for “how long, how much” and “how many”. How nice is that? And what do you think the immigration officer is asking about? Of course, it’s how long you’ll stay in the country. The sentence we hear is…
Oxana: [Сколько вы пробудете в России?]
Eddie: Literally “How long you will be in Russia?” Let’s take a closer look at the word…
Oxana: [пробудете]
Eddie: Literally it means “will have been” and the ending indicates the second person “you”. Because it has the prefix [про] in the beginning, it indicates the complete action which we’ve just translated as “will have been”, but if you drop the prefix [про], you will get a simple verb, “will” or “will be” - [будете]. In our situation, the customs officer expects you to return to your country someday, therefore he uses the grammatical form that emphasizes the completion of your stay. But we still translate it as “will you stay” in proper English. How would you say “I will stay” or “he or she will stay”, Axanna?
Oxana: [Я пробуду/ он пробудет/ она пробудет.]
Eddie: We’ll come back to Russian verbs a little later. Ok, so did anyone catch how many days John will be spending? Oxanna, a recap please.
Oxana: [Двенадцать (12) дней.]
Eddie: Yes, of course. Again, from our Boot Camp 4 on numbers. You all caught that was 12 days.
Oxana: And [дней] comes from the word [день] meaning “day”, but it’s used in plural form and in genitive case.
Eddie: Give us some more examples with the numbers and days, Axanna.
Oxana: Ok. [Один день, два дня, три дня, четыре дня, пять дней, шесть дней, семь дней, восемь дней, девять дней] and [десять дней].
Eddie: So basically starting from 5 it’s all [дней].
Oxana: Yes, from 5 to 20. Then from 25 to 30 and so on. And “2 to 4 days” will sound like [дня].
Eddie: The next question we have is…
Oxana: [Где вы будете жить?]
Eddie: Which literally means “Where you will live”. Remember, the statement in Russian differs from the question only by the intonation you put into it. The word order in questions and statements is the same. So the new word we have here is…
Oxana: [где] meaning “where”, which indicates the location. You can’t use it in the meaning of “where to” but only as “where at”.
Eddie: Next word we take the verb [пробудете] that we’ve just learned, drop the prefix [про] and get a very important grammar part of Russian language - the future tense indicator, “will” or “will be”. So the verb that it puts into the future is…
Oxana: [жить] meaning “to live”.
Eddie: Literally, “will live”. Now, here’s a little side point about the verb [жить]. In Russian, if you’ll talk about staying in a place or living in a place, it’s the same verb this [жить].
Oxana: Well, there is a verb in Russian similar to “stay” but it’s more like “make a stop” and it’s used for a short stay in a hotel or even at a friend’s house, so technically we can use either in our situation, but I personally prefer “to live”.
Eddie: Plus we can make many more examples with [жить] than with that other word you never mentioned. Give us the examples.
Oxana: [Я живу в Мосве.]
Eddie: I live in Moscow.
Oxana: [Он живёт у бабушки.]
Eddie: “He lives with his grandmother.” Ok. Next, John tells the officer where he intends to live.
Oxana: [В отеле “Голден Эпл”]
Eddie: Literally, “in hotel Golden Apple”. Does this hotel really exist, Axanna?
Oxana: It sure does. I’ve never been there though, but I heard it’s got a very interesting design. You can see a huge golden apple in the lobby with a couch inside. The rooms are supposed to look cool too, but Moscow has a lot of decent hotels and five-star really means five stars sometimes.
Eddie: Good to know. But we have another useful question word in our dialogue.
Oxana: [какая]
Eddie: It means “what kind” or “what sort”, but in English we just translate it as “what” sometimes. Here it’s used in the feminine gender because the noun following this question word is feminine.
Oxana: [цель]
Eddie: [цель] means “purpose” so [какая цель].
Oxana: [Цель вашего приезда в Москву.]
Eddie: [вашего приезда] literally means “of your arrival”, where both the pronoun and the noun are used in the genitive case. The “of” case, as you remember.
Oxana: And [в Москву] means “to Moscow”. Lesson number five explains in detail the reason why [Москва] soddenly changed its ending to [у], remember? We say [в] meaning “to” plus a place. And if this place gets feminine gender like [Москва, Россия] or [Калифорния], we have to change its ending into [у] or [ю]. [В Москву, в Россиь, в Колифирнию]
Eddie: : Ok. Next we have one of those always useful phrases that adds flavor to your language. And don’t think you can’t practice it with a stone-cold serious customs officer. He may warm up to you a great deal if you talk to him in normal, human language instead of mono-syllabic replies to his questions. So the word is…
Oxana: [в основном]
Eddie: Which means “mainly” or “mostly”. And how does the sentence sound?
Oxana: [В основном бизнес, но хочу и немного попутешествовать.]
Eddie: So you caught that his main purpose in Moscow is business. Good luck to him in that, but he also wants to travel a little. We know the word [немного] from the previous lessons. It means “a little”, but let’s take a look at the new words.
Oxana: [хочу] It means “I want”, but you still have to put [я] before it. [я хочу] It’s a very good word to remember, so now if you want something, you won’t just point at it and make weird sounds and you won’t wave your hands to explain your desire. You will just say [Я хочу].
Eddie: And what could we possibly want? Give us some examples.
Oxana: Ok, for example, [Я хочу спать].
Eddie: I want to sleep.
Oxana: [Я хочу есть.]
Eddie: I want to eat.
Oxana: [Я хочу в туалет.]
Eddie: I want to go to the toilet.
Oxana: [Я хочу домой.]
Eddie: “I want to go home.” Next we hear a small but interesting particle.
Oxana: [и]
Eddie: Which, as we already know, means “and” but here it’s used as a very conversational equivalent of “also”. It’s often used in Russian language somewhere in the middle of the sentence.
Oxana: You can check the examples of its usage in the PDF files.
Eddie: Great. Now let’s talk about the word “travel” a little. The dictionary form to “travel” would sound like…
Oxana: [путешествовать]
Eddie: But we can hear a prefix [по] in the beginning. What does it mean?
Oxana: This prefix has a softening tone in it, a flavor of modesty even, kind of like “a little”. So it means “to travel a little”.
Eddie: So John is trying to seem like a shy guy, emphasizing the fact that his trip to Russia will be short and will come to its end very soon. Not to worry, officer. John is not staying in Russia, he’s definitely going back to Michigan.
Oxana: Yeah, I thought so. He’ll have enough of Russia in his 12 days. So the officer is satisfied with his answer and says [Хорошо, спасибо].
Eddie: Which means “Good, thank you”. But [хорошо] in Russian is widely used as just a conversational “ok”.

Lesson focus

Oxana: [Хорошо] We’re going to look at some grammar points now.
Eddie: Ok. In this lesson, we’ll introduce you to Russian verbs. Don’t worry, we won’t overload you with theory, but just give you the idea of what you’ll have to deal with in future.
Oxana: We’ll also use examples from our dialogue.
Eddie: So, ready? Ok. Russian verbs only have three basic tenses: present, past and future. But this simplicity gets complicated by things called aspects. Aspects are used to indicate whether an action was completed or is still on-going. And are called the imperfective aspects and the perfective aspect. Just like in English, they are only used in the past and future tense, but in English we use extra verbs like “had” and “have”. For example, “I’ve stayed” and “I’ve been staying”, where the first one indicates the complete action and the second one implies that the action is on-going. So aspects in Russian are used to show this difference. Aspects are created by changing the prefixes, not the endings like nouns according to the cases. The example we can use from our lesson is…
Oxana: [Вы пробудете.]
Eddie: Right. We can translate it as “you will have been” or “you will have stayed”. And if we drop the prefix [про], we get…
Oxana: [Вы будете]
Eddie: Which means “you will stay”. These prefixes never change according to genders, numbers, cases and so on. They’re constant, but there’s quite a variety of them, so this is something you will have to sweat on in the future.
Oxana: But not now. Today just take it as an introduction to the Russian verbs and what they can be like. We’ll need your knowledge later for much greater things.
Eddie: Another things we should talk about is forming the future tense. In Russian, it can be done with the help of the verb “to be”. Actually, the same one we just used in the meaning of “stay”. The dictionary form of it is…
Oxana: [быть]
Eddie: All you have to do is modify the verb “to be” according to the person, first, second or third and add a dictionary form of any verb. Let’s practice a bit.
Oxana: [Я буду есть.]
Eddie: I will eat.
Oxana: [Он будет спать.]
Eddie: He will sleep.
Oxana: [Она будет читать.]
Eddie: She will read.
Oxana: [Вы будете смотреть?]
Eddie: “Will you watch?” And the last grammar point for today, the prefix [по*] that we heard in the word “to travel”.
Oxana: [попутешествовать]
Eddie: As we’ve mentioned, this prefix softens the verb and can be translated as “a little”. Let’s use it with the verbs we’ve just heard.
Oxana: [есть]
Eddie: To eat.
Oxana: [поесть]
Eddie: To eat a little. To have a snack.
Oxana: [спать]
Eddie: To sleep.
Oxana: [поспать]
Eddie: To take a nap.
Oxana: [читать]
Eddie: To read.
Oxana: [почитать]
Eddie: To read a little.
Oxana: [смотреть]
Eddie: To look, to stare, to watch.
Oxana: [посмотреть]
Eddie: “To have a glance.”

Outro

Eddie: That just about does it for today. See you soon.
Oxana: [До свидания!]
--
Девушка:[Здравствуйте, ваш паспорт пожалуйста.]
Woman: Zdravsrvuite, vash pasport pozhalujsta.
Джон: [Вот, пожалуйста.]
John: Vot, pozhaluista.
Девушка: [Сколько вы пробудете в России?]
Woman: Skol’ko vy probudete v Rossii?
Джон: [Двенадцать (12) дней.]
John: Dvenadtsat’ dnei.
Девушка: [Где вы будете жить?]
Woman: Gde vy budete zhit’?
Джон: [В отеле “Голден Эпл”.]
John: V Otele “Golden Apl”.
Девушка: [Какая цель вашего приезда в Москву?]
Woman: Kakaya tsel’ vashego priezda v Moskvu?
Джон: [В основном бизнес, но хочу и немного попутешествовать.]
John: V osnovnom biznes, no hochu i nemnogo poputeshestvovat’.
Девушка: [Хорошо, спасибо.]
Woman: Horosho, spasibo.

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