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* NOTE *
All phrases intended for translating/listening practice have been deleted.

Hey
guys, welcome to my new course, Understanding Spoken Russian. If
you’re having trouble understanding fluent Russian speech, you’ve
come to the right place. Maybe you’re new to the language and you’re
curious what your Russian friends around you are saying. Or maybe
you’ve been studying for a while and can speak ok, but you find
listening to Russian frustrating, especially when they talk so fast.
Either way, in this course we’re going to unlock the mysteries
of spoken Russian.

And I have to say, I’m really excited about this one. It fits perfectly with my Russian Made Easy podcast because it takes the opposite approach. In that course, as you build up a big vocabulary, we do a whole lot of speaking. You’re always repeating after the native speakers, and translating English phrases into Russian. And that’s great. That’s what a conversational Russian course should do.

But
not here. This podcast is all about listening and
understanding. The beautiful thing about that, as you’ll see, is that
it takes the pressure off you. I wont ask you to memorize anything,
and yet, all the same, you’ll find yourself slowly but surely
understanding spoken Russian.

And
I have a whole lot of experience with that. I’ve been living in
Russia and now Ukraine for over ten years. My wife Darina and I have
three kids under the age of five, who we’re raising to be
tri-lingual—each of them speak English, Russian and Ukrainian. And
having carefully observed their language acquisition these past few
years, I’ve gotten fresh insight into how they’re doing it.

How
these little kids come to understand language so quickly. I
understand the process, now…

a
process you and I can exploit…right here, in these lessons.

So
let’s get started.

Imagine
you’re hanging out with some Russian friends and one of them, Yuri,
is searching frantically for something. Listen as Polina asks him
which places he’s looked already…

Don’t
worry about echoing what they say. We will do tons of speaking
in my other courses. I just want you to relax and listen. So…Polina
asks Yuri about other spots he may have searched. Listen?

Do
you hear the “yeh” sound at the end of those words?

Here’s
some more, in a different context. This time, Sergei is telling the
places where he’s worked over the years. Listen….

Polina
laughs and adds…

That
“yeh” sound at the end of all those places is a location
marker. It tells Russians that someone or something is located
in or on that place. Because, in their simplest forms, those
words don’t end with “yeh.” In their simple,
dictionary form, they are машина…чемодан…комната…Нью
Йорк Бостон and so on.

Here’s
the key point:

A
“yeh” sound at the end of a word—often, but not
always–marks it as a location.

File
that away for a moment and listen to this next bit. We’re going to
hear the word Где…and
I want us to figure out what it might mean. So, Yuri is a musician,
and just before a gig he’s in a panic, running around the apartment
looking for something…

Later
you’re in a shopping mall with Yulia and her little boy Andrusha. And
suddenly she turns around and the kid is gone. In a panic she asks…

What
do you think Где means?

Где
translates as Where?
It’s our one new word for the lesson. And notice the beautiful
symmetry: Где is asking about a location
and thus it, too, ends with that “yeh” sound. It’s just one
example of the incredible importance that rhyming plays in the
Russian language.

Now
here’s our first exercise. Imagine Polina is on her smartphone,
connecting with her friends who are located all over the place. Yuri,
who’s sitting with you on the couch, asks her where each friend is.
Can you translate what they’re saying?

– – – Exercise Omitted – – – keep in mind this is a listening course, so putting the answers here so they can be read, defeats the purpose. If you have done the exercises but are having trouble and / or would like to see how things are written, mention the issue you are having in the comments and I’ll either post a reply or e-mail them to you directly. —

Of
course, since they were located in those places, the words had
that “yeh” sound at the end.

Remember
our musician friend who was in a panic, looking for his instruments?
Listen to these more complex replies and again, see if you can spot
the word with the “yeh” ending…

– – –

The
location can be pretty much anywhere or anything. Imagine
someone’s asking what’s in the soup they’re eating…

Soup
is acting as a location, so it needs that “yeh” sound added
on. By the way, that “F” sound before the word (в
супе) translates as “in”…as
long as there’s that yeh sound at the end. Same with the “V”
sound. (В багажнике) There’s the
“yeh” sound at the end, so the “V” translates as
“in.”

Same
with “Na” (На стадионе).
We have “yeh” at the end, so the “Na” must mean
“inside.”

Let’s
work with a few more locations. There’s a popular grocery chain here
in Ukraine called Новус. So who is in
Новус right now? Listen…

Hear
the “yeh” ending? Новус becomes
В Новусе because he’s located
there.

Эпицентр
is another big chain. It’s a copy of
Lowe’s in the U.S. Who is in Epicenter
right now?

The
Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg is the highlight of any visit to
that incredible city. (Эрмитаж)
So, who’s in the Hermitage at
the moment?

You
might be wondering, why is he making such a big deal about that “yeh”
ending? I’m sure I’d get the meaning even if I didnt hear it.

No.
You wouldn’t. Because, for example, Линда
идёт В Старбакс…without the yeh at the end, has
a very different meaning. It means the person is NOT there at all,
but only on their way. So, being able to spot that “yeh”
ending is crucial.

In
these next ones, in fact, that’s all I want
you to do: Tell me whether you heard the “yeh” locational
ending.

–
– –

The
“yeh” ending has to be added even to the end of people’s
names…if they’re acting as a location. For example: Let’s say Uncle
Igor has lost his spiders. Everyone’s searching the apartment for
them. Suddenly, Polina sees one and she screams…

See?
Marvin became На Марвине!

Bart
became…На Барте!

Olga…На
Ольге!

Mama
became…На Маме!

<<And
now here’s your language learning tip of the day.>>

Two
tips, actually, in this maiden episode of the course. The first is,
whenever you learn something—someone’s name at a party, some new
words in Russian—you need to take a short break and think about
something else. That will be the function of these language tips in
each episode, to get you thinking about something different. Why?
Because a minute later, when I ask you to recall what we learned,
that gap—this gap—allows your brain to make that first
pathway back to the new information…back to the person’s name, or
the new words, or whatever you just learned. That gap is a key part
of developing your memory.

The
other tip is this: When you’re just starting out in a new language,
believe it or not the meaning of most words is irrelevant.
Take my two year old son, William. The other day I asked my
father-in-law where he put our rocking chair that no one was ever
really using. He told me it’s…в
подвале.

Now,
I know that William doesn’t know where that is. He’s never been down
there. But now he knows that the podval is a location. …the
‘F’ sound in front and the “yeh” at the end tell him that.
And he knows a little more than that, actually. Because he knows
that, in Russian, “pod” (под) means under or
beneath. We’re always telling him, “William, your toy is
под столом—under the table—or
под холодильником—under
the fridge. So if I asked him, “William, is the podval up or
down?” he would correctly point downwards. But he has no image
of the place in his mind.

Instead,
his brain categorizes the word podval as: A place below us where
we store big things that we no longer use. You could say he gets
the gist of the word. The precise meaning isn’t important to him. Not
yet. But the word is in there, and nicely set up as a location. All
he needs is for Daddy or Grandpa to bring him down to the podval one
day, and then he’ll finally know what it is.

You
might be thinking, Why not just tell us anyway? What’s the harm?
Well, for one thing, a basement in an American single-family home is
a very different place than the podval in a Russian apartment
building. So the image you’d form in your mind would be way off. But
the real reason is, for most words, in the earliest stages of your
studies, the meaning is an unnecessary bur