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!
You made it! This is our very last lesson together! In this lesson, we won't be learning any new letters, punctuation, or pronunciation, but instead will review everything that we've covered so far. If you find this lesson easy, then that just means that you are ready to move on to the next stage of Russian learning!
Do you remember the True Friends? Those were letters that look and sound like English letters. How about the False Friends? Those ones look familiar but have a very different sound. And how about the New Friends? Those letters looked strange, but they had the familiar sound of a single letter in English! And of course there were the Strangers - completely new looking letters that have no equivalent in English. All together, we learned the 33 letters of the Russian Cyrillic Alphabet! Congratulations!
You're all done with new letters, so that means there are no limits to the new Russian phrases you can write. Let's see a few.
Here's an idiom that is used quite frequently, especially by children. Can you read it? [pause] “Не имей сто рублей, а имей сто друзей.” It roughly translates to “It's better to have 100 friends than 100 rubles.” which is the Russian currency.
Now let's write this down so you can add it to your notebook.
E Не имей сто рублей, а имей сто друзей. (cursive)
Next up we have a rather famous expression that was used by Premier Gorbachev when a subordinate was trying to weasel out of his responsibility. Can you read it? [pause] “Вешать лапшу на уши”
Literally it means “to hang noodles on ears” but it’s used to mean “to talk nonsense” or tell lies. Gorbachev famously told his subordinate “Don't hang noodles on my ears,” so these days even non-Russian speakers have heard of this idiomatic expression. Now try writing these famous words by hand!
Вешать лапшу на уши. (cursive)
Nice job! I think you're ready to move onto the final challenge!
Are you familiar with a pangram? How about the phrase “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog?” A pangram is a sentence or phrase that uses all the letters of an alphabet. Now we're going to look at one in Russian. If you can read and write a phrase that uses every letter of the Russian alphabet then you know you've mastered it!
Here you go! I know it's long, but don't let it intimidate you, you've been preparing for this moment for 19 lessons! I'll give you 10 full seconds to try and read it by yourself. Remember to use accent marks to guide you in your pronunciation.
We read it as “Съешь же ещё этих мягких французских булок, да выпей чаю.”
Let's go over the meaning. “Съешь же” is a casual way of ordering someone to eat, and “ещё” means “more.” After that we have “этих мягких французских булок” which means “these soft French buns,” and finally we see “да выпей чаю” which means “and drink some tea.” So the entire sentence roughly translates to “Eat some more of these soft French buns and drink some tea.” Weird, right? Well, so is a quick brown fox jumping over lazy dogs! Now it's time to write it.
“Съешь же ещё этих мягких французских булок, да выпей чаю. (cursive)
Now it's time for Svetlana’s insights.
You're done! I recommend that you go out and pick up a few Russian children's books. There are lots of wonderful Russian folktales and stories that are accessible even to beginners, and some of them may even have accent marks. After you try reading them, try writing your favorite passages by hand - this will give you a chance to polish your handwriting skills.
You have learned a lot about the Russian alphabet and I certainly hope that you keep expanding that knowledge. Be sure to come to Russianpod101.com for the latest lessons and all kinds of other Russian learning materials. And if you're ready to learn some useful Russian phrases, I'll be waiting for you in the Russian in Three Minutes series.
Do svidanya!

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