Learn about the types of games that Russians enjoy the most
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Natalia: Здравствуйте, с Вами Natalia. |
| Yura: I'm Yura and you're listening to Absolute Beginner Season 1, Lesson 23, Win Big in Russia. |
| Natalia: Yura, what are we going to learn in this lesson? |
| Yura: In this lesson, you'll learn about comparative adjectives in Russian. |
| Natalia: This conversation takes place in a cafe. |
| Yura: This conversation is between Nika and Ben. |
| Natalia: The speakers are close friends therefore they will be speaking informal Russian. |
| Yura: Let's listen to the conversation. |
| DIALOGUES |
| Natalia: Привет! Ну, как выставка? |
| Yura: Очень интересная. Интереснее, чем я думал. А как боулинг? Кто выиграл? |
| Natalia: Дима выиграл... А мы с Катей проиграли. Я играю ещё хуже, чем Катя. |
| Yura: Не расстраивайся, ты лучше всех играешь в биллиард! |
| Yura: Okay, let's do that one more time slowly. |
| Natalia: Привет! Ну, как выставка? |
| Yura: Очень интересная. Интереснее, чем я думал. А как боулинг? Кто выиграл? |
| Natalia: Дима выиграл... А мы с Катей проиграли. Я играю ещё хуже, чем Катя. |
| Yura: Не расстраивайся, ты лучше всех играешь в биллиард! |
| Yura: Okay, one more time with natural [native 0:02:23] speed with the translation. |
| Natalia: Привет! Ну, как выставка? |
| Yura: Hi, so how was the exhibition. |
| Natalia: Очень интересная. Интереснее, чем я думал. А как боулинг? Кто выиграл? |
| Yura: It's very interesting, even more interesting than I saw it. How was bowling? Who won? |
| Natalia: Дима выиграл... А мы с Катей проиграли. Я играю ещё хуже, чем Катя. |
| Yura: Dima won. Katya and I lost. I play even worse than Katya. |
| Natalia: Не расстраивайся, ты лучше всех играешь в биллиард! |
| Yura: Don't be upset, you play pool better than anyone else. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Apparently, bowling is not for Katya and Nika. |
| Natalia: Well, Nika is really good at pool. I wonder when Ben had a chance to witness that. It feels like we've been following their every step. |
| Yura: Obviously not every step and I don't think we should. What we should do though is take a look at the vocabulary for this lesson. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| The first word is… |
| Natalia: интересный |
| Yura: Interesting. |
| Natalia: интересный |
| Yura: And the next word is… |
| Natalia: думать |
| Yura: Do think. |
| Natalia: думать |
| Yura: And the next word is… |
| Natalia: выиграть |
| Yura: To win. |
| Natalia: выиграть |
| Yura: And the next word. |
| Natalia: проиграть |
| Yura: To lose. |
| Natalia: проиграть |
| Yura: And the next word is… |
| Natalia: ещё…чем… |
| Yura: Even more than. |
| Natalia: ещё…чем… |
| Yura: And the next word. |
| Natalia: хуже |
| Yura: Worse, inferior to. |
| Natalia: хуже |
| Yura: And the next word. |
| Natalia: расстраиваться |
| Yura: To get upset. |
| Natalia: расстраиваться |
| Yura: And the next word. |
| Natalia: лучше |
| Yura: Better. |
| Natalia: лучше |
| Yura: And the next word. |
| Natalia: лучше всех |
| Yura: Better than anyone else, the best. |
| Natalia: лучше всех |
| Yura: And the last word. |
| Natalia: биллиард |
| Yura: Pool, billiards. |
| Natalia: биллиард |
| KEY VOCAB AND PHRASES |
| Yura: Let's have a closer look at the usage for some of the words and phrases from this lesson. |
| Natalia: And the first word we'll look at is… |
| Yura: Interesting. |
| Natalia: интересно, as you remember, before, we learned this word as an adverb "интересно", and it meant I wonder or I'm curious. |
| Yura: Almost any verb in Russian has its adjective form and vice versa. The adjective for interesting is "интересный". |
| Natalia: But we use it in the feminine gender in this lesson because the noun that is described was feminine "Интересная выставка", interesting exhibition. |
| Yura: He said it was even more interesting than he thought. What's the verb for, to think again? |
| Natalia: думать and in the past tense and masculine gender, it sounds like "думал". |
| Yura: And what was that little word that meant than in the phrase, more interesting than? |
| Natalia: The word "чем". It's used mostly with comparative adjectives which we'll talk about in our grammar part. |
| Yura: Okay. Sounds good. Now, let's take a look at the key words for this lesson, to win and to lose, as we are talking about games. |
| Natalia: выиграть to win and проиграть to lose. |
| Yura: You're already familiar with the word "ирать" to play. The word to win and to lose are created just by adding prefixes "вы-" and "про-". |
| Natalia: You will learn more about the prefixes in the future lessons. There are more than 20 different prefixes in the Russian language that can completely change the meaning of one word. |
| Yura: How nice is that? All you have to remember is prefixes, "вы-" for win and "про-" for lose. |
| Natalia: Yeah, that's convenient. Next, we have two words that can be used in one phrase "ещё... чем...", even more something than. |
| Yura: Of course we can just use a comparative adjective with the word "чем", than. In which case, we will get a simple phrase like, better than. But if we add "ещё" before it, we will emphasize on a comparative adjective and translate the phrase as, even better than. |
| Natalia: Let's compare, хуже, чем я |
| Yura: Worse than I am. |
| Natalia: ещё хуже, чем я |
| Yura: Even worse than I am. Let's take a look at the last word, to get upset, and then get to the grammar. |
| Natalia: Okay. To get upset in Russian is long word "расстраиваться". It's a reflexive verb which is very often used to comfort somebody "не расстраивайся", don't be upset or don't take it close to heart. |
| Yura: What if you are telling it to two or more people or one person but with respect? |
| Natalia: Then you just use a plural form and say "не расстраивайтесь". |
| Yura: I see, okay. Grammar time. We have some important matters to cover. |
| GRAMMAR POINT |
| Today, we'll talk about comparative adjectives. In English, they're often formed by adding the ending "er" to an adjective, for example, stronger, brighter and so on. |
| Natalia: In Russian, comparative adjectives are formed by adding "-ее" to the adjectives and changing their endings into "-ee". For example, let's take an adjective from our lesson "интересный", interesting. All you have to do is drop the ending "ый" and replace it with "ее". You'll get "интереснее", which is more interesting. |
| Yura: Luckily, comparative adjectives are seen for all genders and numbers. |
| Natalia: Right. Let's take another adjective, say, "красивый", beautiful or pretty. Again, you drop the ending from the adjective and replace it with "ee". what do we get? |
| Yura: "красивее" more beautiful or prettier. |
| Natalia: Right. But just like in English, there are exceptions from the common rules, Yura. Better sounds like "лучше", although the original word is "хороший", good and the word for worse "хуже", which comes from the word "плохой", bad. |
| Yura: Let's take a look at the phrases " хуже, чем…" and "лучше, чем…" |
| Natalia: These phrases stand for worse than and better than. Here are some examples, Всё хуже, чем я думал. |
| Yura: Everything is worse than I thought. |
| Natalia: Эта книга лучше, чем та. |
| Yura: This book is better than that one. We also came across the phrase "лучше всех" in the dialogue. What was it? |
| Natalia: "лучше всех" means better than everyone else, but can be translated as the best. The opposite of it would be "хуже всех", worse than anyone else can be translated as the worst. For example, ты лучше всех! |
| Yura: You are the best. |
| Natalia: я выступила хуже всех |
| Yura: I was the worst to perform. My performance was the worst. I think that was pretty easy. The pattern for comparative adjectives is just replacing the ending with "-ee", and there are only exceptions лучше, better and хуже worse. I am pretty sure you already nailed this lesson. That just about does it for this lesson. |
| Natalia: Listeners, can you understand Russian TV shows, movies or songs? |
| Yura: How about your friends or love ones, conversation in Russian? |
| Natalia: If you want to know what's going on, we have a tool to help. |
| Yura: Line by line audio. |
| Natalia: Listen to the lesson conversations line by line and learn to understand natural Russian fast. |
| Yura: It's simple, really. |
| Natalia: With a click of a button, listen to each line of the conversation. |
| Yura: Listen again and again and tune your ears to natural Russian. |
| Natalia: Rapidly understand natural Russian with this powerful tool. |
| Yura: Find this feature on the lesson page under premium member resources at RussianPod101.com. Thanks for listening. Have a great day. |
Outro |
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| Yura:Bye. |
| Natalia:Bye. |
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