How do you usually feel as a new month approaches?

Are you excited and ready to improve your Russian… and then life gets in the way?

Here’s a little insurance you can take out- sign up for my monthly newsletter and you’ll get a quick language tip + boost of motivation on the 7th of every month! This June I’m going to share three ways you can wish your friends a happy birthday without using the tired old с днем рождения. Curious? Sign up right now!

(No spam ever, of course.)

Here's a sneak peek at next week's newsletter...

Hmmm.

Looking at the pictures in this post so far, there certainly are quite a few cute kittens. Too many?

We'd better balance things out with one more picture... and then no more cat pictures today, I promise. ?

Onward to the May roundup!

Что нового

Lots of interesting links this month-

• Can you guess what "бегу – волосы назад" means?

• Learn Russian from commercials.

• Lots of resources here for learning Russian military words.

• 5 Russian words that used to have a different meaning.

• Struggling with Russian? Consider language learning fitness.

• A short read about tea culture, самовары, and all that good stuff.

• Good read on that famous Khrushchev-Nixon-Pepsi moment. (A few years ago, Pepsi was still using this picture in an advertising campaign in Ukraine. Here's my picture of it.)

• Залить за воротник, уговорить бутылку, and other expressions about drinking.

• This site promises to help you "Improve your Russian with Immersive, Interactive Videos."

• And finally, my very favorite find of the month: this old song!

5.17 Progress Report

COMPLETED

Read Andreyev's The Little Angel story... done! When I was a teenager, I bought a super-depressing book of Russian short stories. (I know what you're thinking- doesn't that pretty much describe every piece of Russian literature? But this book was even more depressing than you'd expect.) After reading the book, I lost it and forgot what it was called. This book might actually be that book and even if it's not, it's suitably depressing enough. Although the Wikisource formatting is sometimes a little weird, it's cool to be able to read these stories for free online.

Last month I joined a FB group for Russian-speaking travel bloggers. Although I haven't written anything since the original intro, I've still been scanning through the group posts a few times a week.

It turns out that my new penpal is a prolific blogger, so it's hard to keep up with all her posts. There's one I definitely want to read this week, though, about how she lost all her baby weight just 3 months after giving birth. I'll try to keep up more with her future posts. This month I'm going to write her back in Russian (snail mail) and restart an old Russian snail mail campaign with another penpal.

Getting all the way through Russian Step By Step: Verbs of Motion took over a year. :/ I was SOOOO excited to find out that such a workbook exists, but the actual product was a little disappointing.

• Pros: includes some idiomatic meanings of verbs of motion, has an answer key, available on Amazon, pretty decent sentences considering that they all had to involve verbs of motion (like, "Тигр бежет за кабаном." and "Шарик летит в небо. Лети быстрее!")
• Cons: distracting typos (like "translate into Russain"), veeeery sparse grammar explanations (just a few examples for each verb)

This workbook is definitely not for beginners, since you're already expected to know how to decline nouns. Also, it never once actually mentions the terms совершенный вид and несовершенный вид. Maybe, the authors are trying to make it easier by not using these terms, but it was confusing for me.

If you already have a decent grasp on Russian verbs of motion, this might be a good way to just get some repetitive practice. If you're looking for more explanations, I recommend Schaum's Russian Grammar. There's a second Russian Step By Step: Verbs of Motion workbook, but I'm going to skip it for now.

I finished the final 2 dialogs at Russiaforfree.com without making my husband listen to me read them aloud. 😉

DIDN'T HAPPEN

The свекровь visit was a partial success- everyone survived and there were absolutely no snarky comments from either her or me this time, ура! We did speak Russian together all day, every day, but the 'learn 2 new words a day' plan didn't happen because I didn't write anything down.

And with all the traveling this month, D and I haven't watched much. We did catch the first episode of a show called Анжелика- thanks for tip, Teango! Замуж за американца, Как я стал русским, and Китайский язык за 16 часов are getting moved to next month's plan. Живая земля ended, so I'm not sure if the course is still accessible.

6.17 Study Plan

What are your language goals for June 2017?

Leave me a comment below! ?