My First Russian Lesson

It was better than a hangover, but not as good as a major caffeine withdrawl.

I spent 30 minutes learning the sounds of the Cyrillic (ki-RIL-ik) alphabet. Then I spent the next 1.5 hours sounding out about 100 words. After which I slept 12 hours and got up the next day still feeling wasted.

Can you imagine? I even paid for this torture! There is special psychological treatment for people like me somewhere... but they'll NEVER catch me! Ha ha ha!

Please study the graph below for half an hour, then go to the following page and try to read for another hour and a half. (Don't try to comprehend! That could cause serious injury and irreversible damage!) Only then will you have a small taste of the mental acrobatics required to learn a new alphabet.

Click on the graph to enlarge the image. Click here to enlarge the image AND hear the actual sounds of the letters. Enjoy it in all its terrible glory!

Try out your new Russian phonics skills by reading this page!

In case you're wondering "Why Russian?", the answer is two-fold:
1. There is so much Russian spoken in my house, in my workplace, and just all over the place generally in Moldova, it really is necessary in order to know what's going on around me.
2. Because there IS so much Russian here, it is simply too good of an opportunity to waste to learn a valuable language like Russian.

Discussion on the Romanian vs. Russian langauage debate that rages here in Moldova to come at a later date.