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Welcome
to episode 2 of Learn Russian Pronunciation. Today we’ll tackle one
of the biggest sticking points for students of Russian: The rolled R.
We’ll start by repeating the following four words after the native
speaker.

рок

рэп

бар

марс

You
probably noticed that those were all cognates. That is, they sound
very much like their English counterparts. The first two were types
of music. Rock and rap. Listen again…

The
next two were locations. A bar, and the planet Mars.

To
get a feel for the rolled R, try saying the word “udder.”
Did you feel your tongue bounce off the roof of your mouth? That’s
what a rolled R feels like. So, for practice, for that first one you
could say: udder-ok. Now you can do the same with the word
бар…Try: bah—udder…бар

Let’s
try some Russian names that have an R in them:

Тарас

Лора

Грег

Марк

And
some place names. Can you guess these?

Россия

Украина

Берлин

Рим

Рим
is how Russians say Rome, but
I’m not sure, really, why they changed that vowel.

Let’s
take it up a notch. Here’s the Russian word for hamburger.
Listen…

гамбургер

It’s
one of those words…once I got it down, it’s all I ordered. I’d pop
into a vegan cafe, everyone’s drinking wheat grass…”Эй,
девушка! Гамбургер, пожалуйста.”

Now
here’s another tough one. The Russian word for reporter.
Listen:

репортёр

That’s
a tough one. There are three R’s there. ре…пор…тёр

Anyway,
for our official new word of the day, let’s try this one: игрушка

That,
to me, is so Russian!

Again,
instead of me simply telling you what the word means, let’s see if
you can figure out the meaning from context.

When
I was a boy, my Han Solo action figure was my favorite игрушка.

My
son William’s remote control car is his favorite игрушка.
It’s all he plays with.

Tell
me, as a kid, what was your favorite игрушка?

This
is how your brain prefers to learn new words…by figuring out the
meaning on its own, from context. Think about it. You know what an
игрушка is, and I never actually
told you. Here…Let’s try this. I’ll name objects and you call out
whether it’s an игрушка or not.
Ready?

a
yo-yo – игрушка

watermelon
– not an игрушка

Lego
blocks – игрушка

a
suitcase – not an игрушка

a
Barbie doll – игрушка

A
Hot Wheels car – игрушка.

Alright…Speaking
of new words, do you recall the word we officially learned in the
first episode?

Fill
in the blank: My wife and I have three year old twins. Sophia is our
little girl, and William is our….мальчик.

And
what’s the Russian word for ‘toy’?

Игрушка

Getting
back to our main topic, our rolled R, listen and repeat as our
speakers pronounce the names of famous people, all of whom have at
least one R in their name. Can you figure out who each person is?

Крис
Пратт

Франк
Синатра

Ариана
Гранде

Брад
Пит

Роджер
Федерер

Chris
Pratt, Frank Sinatra, Ariana Grande, Brad Pitt, (phew, that one was
tough): Roger Federer.

How
about these brands? Repeat, and try to guess what they are:

Прада

Мерседес

Рибок

Памперс

Хаммер

Prada,
Mercedes, Reebok, Pampers, Hummer

And
if you get those vowels correctly, if you can avoid the temptation of
saying (American accent) Pampers, and make it (Russian)
Памперс…you’ll go a long way to
reducing your accent in Russian.

Okay,
one more list. Repeat these items and try to guess what they are…

телевизор

гитара

компьютер

радио

трактор

television,
guitar, computer, radio, tractor

Last
quiz before we go. Substitute the two Russian words that we’ve
learned in these episodes, into the following sentence:

When
I was a ____ my favorite ____ was Lego.

When
I was a мальчик my favorite
игрушка was Lego.

Remember, if you’re looking to learn conversational Russian, and put your rapidly improving pronunciation chops to good use, then go check out my Russian Made Easy podcast. I think you’ll really like it. And in the meantime, I’ll see you in the next episode where we tackle Russian’s dreaded consonant clusters! See you there.