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*
NOTE *

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

Welcome
to Lesson #2 of Understanding Spoken Russian. Let’s start today with
a quick test on what we learned in the first lesson. Can you
translate the gist of these phrases? What we’re after is the person’s
name or the item’s name, the location, and whether they are in
that place, or merely headed there. As before, if you hear a location
without the “yeh” sound, we’ll assume the person is
on their way there. Ready?

– – – 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. —

On
to today’s lesson. Listen to the following phrases. Don’t try to echo
the native speaker, and don’t try to translate. Just relax and let it
sink in…

What’d
you hear? I heard a guy’s name, followed by a word that ended
with an L. Listen again. We’ll chop off the last word in each of
those…

I
wonder what kind of words those are: купил…смотрел…сказал

Well,
let’s think about English for a second. I’ll pull three phrases from
some emails.

Last
night, Rick went to the Knicks game.

Yesterday,
Greg played a gig in Buffalo.

Abbott
bought another guitar.

Rick
went…Greg played….Abbott bought

So
we have a person’s name followed by what they did. In grammar terms,
a subject followed by a past tense verb. Could Russian be doing the
same thing? Well…yes.

Those
verbs— ходил играл купил—all
end with the letter L (Л).

Let’s
listen to some more. These will all feature a guy who has done
something….

We’re
not stressing about meaning. That’ll come just a little later. We’re
doing something much more important here. We’re discovering the
patterns of the language. And this is a very common and pretty simple
one: With just a few exceptions—so few I can basically count
them on one hand—Russian verbs end with an L when a guy did
the action.

As
I’ll often ask you to do, I want you to file away that bit of info
for a moment as I teach you our one new word for this lesson.
Listen…

работал

I
wonder if you can pick it up from context. Listen…

When
he was younger, my brother was a bag boy in the Safeway grocery
store.

If
he could speak Russian, he’d tell you…

So,
работал translates
as “worked,” or “used to work,” or even, “was
working.”

And
it is said of a guy. There’s a feminine version which we’ll learn in
the next lesson.

To
hep you recall it, think of the English word robot.
работа. Because rabota is actually a
Czech word which translates as ‘forced labor.’ (The German word
arbeit, which also means ‘work’ was derived from robota, too.)
Anyway, you want to make that connection. A robot was made to do
work….and работа is the Russian
word for work or for a job.

But
again работал with an L at the end
translates as “was working.”

So,
listen as Sergei tells you all the places he’s worked…

Listen
as Polina tells you where her Papa worked…

–
– –

Let’s
listen to sentences with other verbs. I wonder if you can translate
them.

For
ex: On the morning of the Super Bowl, my Russian roommate came home
with a friend of his, and they were carrying a huge cardboard box
that had SAMSUNG written on it. He smiled and said…

They
mount it on the wall, and now Polina calls to invite her friends
over, telling them…

Sergei
bought a television. We heard that “ил”
sound at the end of the word, so we know it’s a statement about what
he did. Maybe instead he bought a telephone…

The
next day Sergei comes back to the apartment. He’s wearing cleats and
shinpads, he’s got grass stains all over. He’s got his Lionel Messi
jersey on. And he explains…

When
Polina comes over and sees his dirty cleats by the door, she asks me:

играл…that
L tells us she’s asking about the past…about what Sergei wasdoing.
Maybe
instead he was playing baseball.

That
evening I come into the kitchen, he’s in front of the chopping board,
there’s bits of carrots and celery and onion, and there’s a pot
bubbling on the stove. He explains…

Then,
when Polina’s mom offers to bring over some food, Polina tells her…

Sergei
cooked soup. приготовил…the L
tells us…what?

That
it was in the past.

Maybe
instead he cooked spaghetti…or a salad…or borscht.

Remember,
I don’t want you bothering to repeat these or memorize them. We’re
just listening, and seeing if we understand. One more. I see a friend
in Starbucks. He’s sitting with his laptop open, and headphones on.
Seeing me, he politely shuts his computer and takes off his
headphones, explaining…

I
was watching a video on youtube. And notice that you-tube becomes na
youtube-yeh (на ю-тубе),
with that “yeh” at the end, because that was the location
of the video…you-tube was where he was watching it.

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

In
the first episode of this course, I made a point about not
repeating after the native speakers.

For
today’s tip, I want to explain the reasoning behind that. The issue
is, if you always listen with the intent of mimicking the
speaker, all your attention becomes focused on the physical side,
trying to get your mouth to make those sounds, and so you miss a
thousand little details which all point to the meaning of
what’s being said.

Again,
think of little kids. My two youngest—William and his twin sister
Sophia…they didn’t say a word their first two years of life. But
believe me, they were listening and paying attention. And by doing
that, they noticed how the ends of words change in Russian depending
on how they’re used.

We
saw one example of that in the first lesson, right? Words like the
park, or a divan, or New York…if someone’s just talking about them,
they keep their basic ending. New York is big. We’re going to the
park. But if someone is located there, the end changes. We’re
in the park-eyh, Daddy’s in New Yorkyeh, and so on.

The
patterns of how words change are actually pretty straightforward and
very consistent…but you have to be listening for them. And that’s
why—jut when you’re doing this particular course—I ask you to not
repeat after the speaker. The only exception to that is when we learn
our one new word for the lesson. That one you can practice a
bit. So that word где
from the first lesson, and работал
from today. But other than that, just relax…but listen
close.

<<END
TIP>>

For
fun, I’m going to play some really tough clips, now, that I pulled
from Russian videos on youtube. These are just guys making video
blogs. In this first one, can you spot our new word from today? The
guy speaks blazingly fast, so we’ll listen a few times…

I’ll
play it again. He said: They’ve been asking me for a long time to
talk about how I was working in МТС is
the largest mobile phone company in Russia.

In
this next one, can you spot a past tense verb?

Here’s
that same guy—he’s a personal driver in Moscow. Do you hear another
word ending with an ‘L’? He said: While the boss is working out, I
also headed out for a stroll. I also headed out.

One
more guy. He’s talking about the American TV shows that he watches.

It
was the very last word. Listen again…

He
said: The first two seasons there were really awesome, the third was
weaker but I watched it.

Then
he talks about the fifth season of the show, it’s called Homeland.
Listen for two words ending with “—ал”

He’s
talking about the fifth season…”I was waiting for it, when it
will come out, I missed it.”

In
each of those, we have a guy talking about himself…about what he
did. Past tense.

So,
just for now, at this stage, what you want to be listening for is—a
if the subject is a guy—listen for words ending with an L. Because
once you start catching that, it’s a lot easier to fill in the
meaning. That’s the whole point of this course. So, here are some
more…

–
– –

Question:
What do you think the most common verb is in English? It