Vocabulary

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Lesson Transcript

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 last lesson we introduced the first two Strangers, “Ч” and “Я”. Have you been reviewing how to read and write them? I hope you're ready to move on!
In this lesson we’ll learn two more “Strangers” and some more sentences for your notebook!
The first Stranger is “Й” and it is a letter that doesn't make the sound of its name! It looks similar to a Russian “И”, and the name even means “Short И”. However, Й is never pronounced alone - It only appears in combination with a vowel. For example: “ой, ай, eй”... As you may have noticed, it makes a sound similar to “И” but a bit shorter. I hope that's not too difficult! We’ll see some more examples at the end of the lesson. In printed form, size is the only difference between the upper and lowercase versions.
Here’s the uppercase.
Й (print, upper)
And the lowercase.
Й (print, lower)
The cursive uppercase “Й” looks like this. It's exactly the same as “И” except for crown on top.
The lowercase Й follows the same pattern. You probably won’t have any problems writing this letter!
Now let’s write them.
Й (cursive, upper)
And the lowercase.
Й (cursive, lower)
The second letter may look strange, but it has a pretty familiar sound. This is “Ц”, and it makes a “T”-”S” sound like the Z’s in “pizza”. While it's rare in the English language, it's more common in Russian, and can even be found at the beginning of words. In printed form, size is the only difference between the upper and lowercase versions.
Here’s how to write the printed versions.
Ц (print, upper)
And the lowercase.
Ц (print, lower)
In cursive, uppercase “Ц” is easy to write and read. It's written with a single stroke and connects easily into the next letter.
The lowercase looks exactly the same, but smaller. Although “Ц” looks quite similar to “И” in lowercase, the distinctive loop below the line makes it easier to recognize.
Ц (cursive, upper)
And the lowercase.
Ц (cursive, lower)
Great job! Now let's take what we’ve learned so far and look at some examples that we can write!
First up is a question and answer that you may recognize, but with some new vocabulary. Try reading it aloud.
[short pause] We read this as “Кто это? Это Мой отец.” You should have been able to pronounce the first question with no problems. As you may have guessed, “Кто это?” means “Who is this?”
The answer should look familiar as well. “Это” means “This is” but “Мой отец” is new. Notice how “Мой” is pronounced with a blend of “O” and “й”- this is what “й” does to other vowels. The last word, “отец,” is a good word to know, because it means “father.” So the answer to the question “Who is this?” is “This is my father.”
Кто это? Это Мой отец. (cursive)
The next phrase uses both of our new letters! [short pause]
We read this phrase as “йогурт с малиной”.
Let's go over the words in the phrase. йогурт means ‘Yogurt’, C means ‘with’ and малиной means ‘raspberries.’ Yogurt and raspberries! Yum!
йогурт с малиной (cursive)
That’s it for this lesson. In the next lesson, we'll introduce a few more Strangers. See you in the next Алфавит Made Easy lesson!
Пока Пока

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