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 met several new friends and started using “Б” and “Г”. If you’re watching this lesson that means you’re feeling comfortable with those and ready for a new challenge!
In this lesson we'll continue with the New Friends category. Remember, these are letters that don't look like English letters, but have sounds that can be found in English.
Our first new friend is “Д”
Maybe you recognize this letter from a James Bond movie, or maybe you've seen “Дa” spelled out before. If you have, you probably realize that “Д” is pronounced just like the English Dee. In printed form, size is the only difference between the upper and lowercase letters.
Here’s the uppercase.
Д (print, upper)
And the lowercase.
Д (print, lower)
Now we’ll look at the cursive versions. English speakers will be happy to see that the cursive uppercase Д looks pretty similar to an uppercase Dee! What a nice new friend! While it's written in a slightly different way, it should be easy to recognize. It is written in one stroke and you have to pick up your pen to begin the next letter.
Unfortunately, “Д” isn't such a nice friend when it comes to the lowercase - it looks just like a lowercase English Gee! This means you should have no problem writing it, but it's easy to accidentally read it as “Gee”.
Now we’ll write them.
Д (cursive, upper)
And the lowercase.
Д (cursive, lower)
Let's move on to another New Friend.
The second letter we'll learn in this lesson looks like the number three -- З. While it may look strange, “З” has a pretty familiar sound. “З” always makes a “З” sound, and despite how it looks, it sounds exactly like the English Zee.
Here’s how to write the printed versions.
З (print, upper)
And the lowercase.
З (print, lower)
Now let's look at how to write “З” by hand.
Uppercase “З” is pretty similar to the printed version. It's one stroke, but we have to pick up our pen before moving on to the next letter. The lowercase is where it gets interesting. Remember learning cursive in elementary school? If you remember how to write a lowercase Zee, then you'll be happy to see that the cursive “З” is strikingly similar.
Now it's time to write it.
З (cursive, upper)
And the lowercase.
З (cursive, lower)
Okay! That's it for our New Friends in this lesson. Now it's time to bring everything together in order to write some new words.
First up is a very common word that you'll use when talking about your plans. Can you read it by yourself?
[short pause] It's "зaвтра". You are forgiven if you said зaвMра. The lowercase cursive т looks a lot like an English "M".
Now try to write it yourself.
зaвтра (cursive)
The next word is a fun one. Let's see if you can read it! [wait a sec]
Did you read it as “Дед Мороз”? It can be tricky to know when “O” is “oh” and when it is “ah”, but we'll talk more about that in a later lesson. “Дед Мороз” means “Santa Claus”!
So let's try writing it. Both Дед and Мороз should start with uppercase letters.
Дед Мороз (cursive)
Remember that after the uppercase Д, you have to pick up your pen to start the next letter. М, on the other hand, connects easily to the next letter. Nice job!
Now it's time for Svetlana’s insights.
You may have noticed that some uppercase letters like “Д” don't seem to be connecting very well. This happens with many uppercase letters in Russian. In these situations you have the choice of either letting the letter stand alone and starting from the next lowercase letter, or adding a little connecting tail to the uppercase letter. However,when writing, most people don't connect “Д”, “B”, and other difficult-to-connect uppercase letters.
That's it for this lesson. Next time, we'll continue to introduce more New Friends. See you in the next Алфавит Made Easy lesson!
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