Learn several Russian phrases related to work
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Natalia: Привет всем! Как дела? |
| Yura: Yura here. Welcome back to RussianPod101.com Absolute Beginner Season 1 Lesson five; Russian’s Five-Year Plan. |
| Natalia: So Yura, what are we going to study in this lesson? |
| Yura: In this lesson, you’ll learn how to talk about work. |
| Natalia: And the conversation takes place in a café. |
| Yura: The conversation is between Ben and Nika. |
| Natalia: The speakers now know each other therefore they will be speaking informal Russian. Okay, let’s listen in. |
| DIALOGUES |
| Natalia: Бен, кем ты работаешь? |
| Yura: Я - экономист, работаю в банке. А ты? |
| Natalia: А я ещё студентка, учусь на журналиста и подрабатываю в кафе. |
| Yura: А ты на каком курсе? |
| Natalia: На пятом, в этом году заканчиваю. |
| Yura: Здорово, удачи! |
| Yura: Okay, let’s do that one more time, slowly. |
| Natalia: Сейчас ещё раз, медленно. |
| Natalia: Бен, кем ты работаешь? |
| Yura: Я - экономист, работаю в банке. А ты? |
| Natalia: А я ещё студентка, учусь на журналиста и подрабатываю в кафе. |
| Yura: А ты на каком курсе? |
| Natalia: На пятом, в этом году заканчиваю. |
| Yura: Здорово, удачи! |
| Yura: Okay, one more time with natural native speed with the translation. |
| Natalia: Ещё раз с естественной скоростью носителя языка с переводом. |
| Natalia: Бен, кем ты работаешь? |
| Yura: Ben, what do you do for a living? |
| Natalia: Я экономист, работаю в банке. А ты? |
| Yura: I’m an economist. I work in a bank. And you? |
| Natalia: А я ещё студентка, учусь на журналиста и подрабатываю в кафе. |
| Yura: I’m still a student. I study to be a journalist. I also work part time in a café. |
| Natalia: А ты на каком курсе? |
| Yura: What year are you? |
| Natalia: На пятом, в этом году заканчиваю. |
| Yura: Fifth year. I’m graduating this year. |
| Natalia: Здорово, удачи! |
| Yura: Cool, good luck. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Yura: It’s Nika’s fifth year in the university. What degree will she get after she graduates? |
| Natalia: A specialist degree. It’s somewhere in between the bachelors and Masters degree. Some universities give Masters diplomas after five years. |
| Yura: So it’s not like in the west, four years of bachelors, two years of Masters. |
| Natalia: Traditionally, there were five years of education in Russia, but the degrees that Russian universities gave were incompatible with existing western academic degrees. So they modernize their structure according to the Bologna Process in 2007. So basically all the degrees and the whole educational structure is standardized throughout Europe now. |
| Yura: I see, but I guess not all universities have implemented the new law yet. Nika’s department of journalism still works according to the old model. It will change their soon too. But for now, let’s take a look at the vocabulary for this lesson. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| The first word we have is. |
| Natalia: работать |
| Yura: to work |
| Natalia: работать |
| Yura: And the next word is? |
| Natalia: экономист |
| Yura: economist, financier |
| Natalia: экономист |
| Yura: And the next word is? |
| Natalia: банк |
| Yura: bank |
| Natalia: банк |
| Yura: And the next word is? |
| Natalia: ещё |
| Yura: yet, still, else, also, more |
| Natalia: ещё |
| Yura: And the next word? |
| Natalia: студент |
| Yura: student |
| Natalia: студент |
| Yura: And the next word is? |
| Natalia: учиться |
| Yura: learn, study, educate yourself. |
| Natalia: учиться |
| Yura: And the next word? |
| Natalia: журналист |
| Yura: journalist |
| Natalia: журналист |
| Yura: Okay, and the next one is? |
| Natalia: подрабатывать |
| Yura: to work part time, to make money on the side |
| Natalia: подрабатывать |
| Yura: And the next word? |
| Natalia: кафе |
| Yura: café |
| Natalia: кафе |
| Yura: And the next one is? |
| Natalia: курс |
| Yura: course, university year |
| Natalia: курс |
| Yura: And the next word? |
| Natalia: пятый |
| Yura: fifth |
| Natalia: пятый |
| Yura: Okay, and the next word? |
| Natalia: в этом году |
| Yura: this year |
| Natalia: в этом году |
| Yura: Okay and the next one? |
| Natalia: заканчивать |
| Yura: to finish |
| Natalia: заканчивать |
| Yura: And the next word? |
| Natalia: здорово |
| Yura: cool, great |
| Natalia: здорово |
| Yura: Okay and the last word on our list? |
| Natalia: Удачи. |
| Yura: Good luck. |
| Natalia: Удачи. |
| KEY VOCAB AND PHRASES |
| Yura: Okay. 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: The first word is not my favorite, but unfortunately there is nowhere I can hide from it. The word, to work. |
| Natalia: “работать”. Yeah, it’s hard to be particularly fun of this word. |
| Yura: Remember in the previous lesson, we learned conjugations. We learned to modify the verbs according to a person. Well the rules still work for today’s verbs. The word "работать" sounds different in the phrase do you work and I work. |
| Natalia: Right. When you are talking to your companion, you say "работаешь" but when you’re talking about yourself, it’s "работаю". |
| Yura: Okay. Now, we have the word ready for a phrase, the question, what do you do for a living in Russian sounds as what do you work as? |
| Natalia: If we translate it word for word, it sounds as, as who do you work? It sounds as "кем ты работаешь". So we know the phrase "ты работаешь" already. Now, all you have to do is put "кем" to the beginning. |
| Yura: Natalia, кем ты работаешь? |
| Natalia: Я - лингвист. |
| Yura: You’re a linguist? You have a very broad profession. |
| Natalia: Well, right now “я - учитель”. |
| Yura: Right, now you are teacher. “Я тоже учитель”, I’m a teacher too. |
| Natalia: So, it’s that easy. To say what you are, you just need “Я”, “I” and your occupation. |
| Yura: Ben is economist. Let’s practice the structure on some more examples. |
| Natalia: Okay. Я - журналист. |
| Yura: I am a journalist. |
| Natalia: Я - врач. |
| Yura: I’m a doctor. |
| Natalia: Я - фотограф. |
| Yura: I’m a photographer. |
| Natalia: Я - бухгалтер. |
| Yura: I’m an accountant. |
| Natalia: Я - студент. |
| Yura: I’m a student. The good thing is except for the word student, other occupations are not differentiated by gender. Basically it’s always masculine. |
| Natalia: Right. Everything we listed above works for both men and women. |
| Yura: Next, we had the phrase I work in a bank. |
| Natalia: Я работаю в банке. The word bank itself sounds as "банк", but in the phrase, I work in a bank, it changes into "банке". |
| Yura: Remember the same happened to the countries and cities in the phrases like I live in or I was born in Oregon. Oregon became "Орегоне", “Я живу в Орегоне”. |
| Natalia: That’s right. So listen how the places will change in the phrase, I work in. “Я работаю в больнице.” |
| Yura: I work in a hospital. |
| Natalia: Я работаю в магазине. |
| Yura: I work in a store, shop. |
| Natalia: Я работаю на фирме. |
| Yura: I work in a company. |
| Natalia: Я работаю дома. |
| Yura: I work at home, great. Okay, let’s get back to our characters. Now we know that Ben is “экономист” and he works “в банке”. What does Nika do? |
| Natalia: Nika “ещё студентка”. "Ещё" means still, yet and "студентка" is just a female version of student. |
| Yura: Right. So, what is she studying to be? |
| Natalia: She said, "я учусь на журналиста". |
| Yura: Oh, a journalist. So, the phrase studying to be is "учусь на", right? |
| Natalia: Yes. In the previous lesson, we learned the word "учу" without the ending "s", that’s because we had the subject of studying Russian. When we have something in specific we learn, we say "учу". But when by learning, we mean the general process like studying for the exams or studying in the university, we have to add "s'" in the end. |
| Yura: The phrase studying to be a, also implies the general process of studying which involves more than one subject. Therefore we say "учусь'". |
| Natalia: "На" it literally means on and is used in the context to be a in Russian. Note that the professions that go after this phrase have "a" added to the end. For example, “Я учусь на врача.” |
| Yura: I’m studying to be a doctor. |
| Natalia: A doctor itself sounds as "врач". Я учусь на бухгалтера. |
| Yura: I’m studying to be an accountant. |
| Natalia: An accountant itself sounds as "бухгалтер". |
| Yura: Okay. So, Nika is studying to be “журналист”, but she also works part time if I remember correctly. |
| Natalia: Yes, she does. To work part time is translated only with one word into Russian “подрабатывать”. In Russian we don’t use words like fulltime or part time. Instead we just say, I work, “Я работаю” or “I make some money on the side”, “Я подрабатываю” which is basically working part time. |
| Yura: That’s pretty interesting. Nika is working part time “в кафе”, “in a café”. No need to explain here. |
| Natalia: Alright. Next, Ben is asking the year of the university Nika is in. |
| Yura: A sly way to ask how old she is. |
| Natalia: Maybe, but anyway, he asks "ты на каком курсе?" |
| Yura: Literally it means what course are you on? “Курс” stands for university year in Russian. |
| Natalia: And "на каком" literally means on what, on which. When you answer this question, you also need "на" there plus an ordinal number. |
| Yura: Are there names for the students in Russia, like freshmen and sophomore? |
| Natalia: No, just years. There are only five possible answers to the question "ты на каком курсе?", because there are only five years people study in the universities to get a specialist degree. After which they start counting years from the beginning, but mentioning the degree they are studying for like, “It’s my second year of doctor’s,” for example. |
| Yura: Right. But as we have mentioned before, the universities are accepting a new western model of education. So there will be only four years for the bachelors degree and two from Masters. |
| Natalia: But still we should learn how to name all five years for now. It’s still useful. So here’s how you say, “I’m a freshmen, I’m a sophomore,” and so on. “Я на первом курсе.” |
| Yura: It’s my first year. I’m a freshman. |
| Natalia: Я на втором курсе. |
| Yura: It’s my second year. I’m a sophomore. |
| Natalia: Я на третьем курсе. |
| Yura: It’s my third year. I’m a junior. |
| Natalia: Я на четвёртом курсе. |
| Yura: It’s my fourth year. I’m a senior. |
| Natalia: Я на пятом курсе. |
| Yura: It’s my fifth year. I’m fifth year senior. Now, let’s talk about the most exciting part of the university studies, the graduation. |
| Natalia: Okay, sounds good. Actually the word graduation or to graduate is not that commonly used in Russian. Instead, we say to finish, “заканчивать”. |
| Yura: And to say that I’m finishing this year, I should say "Я заканчиваю в этом году". What if I graduated last year, Natalia? |
| Natalia: Then you have to put the verb into the past tense. And in the past tense, we should mind the gender, just like we did in the phrase, I was born. For girls, it sounded as "я родилась", and for guys, "я родился". Same thing here. I graduated would sound as “я закончил” for guys and "я закончила" for girls. |
| Yura: You forgot the phrase for last year. |
| Natalia: Oh, right, “в прошлом году”. So, again, this year would sound as "в этом году". And last year "в прошлом году". |
| Yura: And if you wanted to say that you graduated from this and this university, it will sound like this: “я закончил”, university name, “университет”."I graduated from, university name, university.” |
| Natalia: Right. And for a girl, it would sound as “я закончила”, university name, “университет”."I graduated from, university name, university.” |
| Yura: Okay, I think we got it. We only have two more words to learn for today and they are both exclamatory. The first one sounds something like cool, awesome. |
| Natalia: Yeah “Здорово! And another word is good luck wish, “удачи”. Yes, in Russian it’s just one word for good luck, "удачи!". |
| GRAMMAR POINT |
| Yura: This lesson’s grammar part is not going to be boring. All we will do is try to put together everything that we learned today and tell a little story about yourself. |
| Natalia: We’ve done it before telling about where we were born and where we lived, remember? We will do the same in this lesson, but with some new words and expressions. Okay, let me start. Я - учитель. |
| Yura: I’m a teacher. |
| Natalia: Я работаю в университете. |
| Yura: I work in the university. |
| Natalia: Я подрабатываю на фирме. |
| Yura: I work part time in a company. |
| Natalia: Я закончил университет в этом году. |
| Yura: I graduated from the university this year. Okay, I graduated several years ago, but it’s nice to feel young again for a moment. |
| Natalia: Right, I understand. Now, let’s talk about myself, Я - лингвист. |
| Yura: I’m a linguist. |
| Natalia: Я учусь на переводчика. |
| Yura: I’m studying to be an interpreter. |
| Natalia: Я работаю на фирме. |
| Yura: I work in the company. |
| Natalia: Я закончила университет в прошлом году. |
| Yura: I graduated from the university last year. Did you really? |
| Natalia: Not really last year, but I did graduate from a university. And I’m not studying anymore, but we are just practicing the structures now, right? |
| Yura: Sure, okay. I think that was a good practice. Now, it’s your turn, listeners. Okay, so that just about does it for this lesson. |
| Natalia: Dear listeners, ever pressed for time? |
| Yura: Listen to the dialogue lesson recap. |
| Natalia: These audio tracks only contain the target lesson dialect. |
| Yura: So, you can quickly recap a lesson. |
| Natalia: Spend a few minutes learning on days when you don’t have time to study a full lesson. |
| Yura: The audio tracks are just a few minutes long. |
| Natalia: But you’ll still pick up key Russian phrases along the way. |
| Yura: Go to RussianPod101.com. |
| Natalia: And listen to this lesson’s dialect only audio track. |
Outro |
|---|
| Yura: Have a great day! |
| Natalia: Пока-пока. |
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