<figure class="wp-block-image"></figure>

Full Episode Audio

<figure class="wp-block-audio"></figure>

Exercises Only Audio

<figure class="wp-block-audio"></figure>

Download Full Episode (right click save-as)

Download Exercises

*
NOTE *

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

Welcome
to Episode 6 of Understanding Spoken Russian.

(sound
of crying girl) Because she was crying, I gave Sophia a doll.

That’s
an odd way to start the lesson. And yet, allow me to repeat that:
Because she was crying, I gave Sophia a doll. Odder still, I’d
like you to repeat that out loud. Say it with me: “Because she
was crying, I gave Sophia a doll.”

Ok,
what is this guy up to? Well, hopefully you trust me by now. I
promise, in a minute you’ll see why I had you repeat that sentence.
But first, let’s review what we learned in Episode 5. Try to
translate the following phrases, and explain what kind of verb was
used…perfective or imperfective.

–
– –

Alright,
so…what was that phrase I had you repeat? “Because she was
crying, I gave Sophia a doll.”

Listen
to this Russian word: дал

A
woman would pronounce it: дала

What
kind of word do you think it is? With those L endings, it’s probably
a verb in the past tense, right? Let’s hear it in context: (cell
phone ringing)…

(Andrei)
“Here Mommy, take your phone.”

Андрюша
дал Маме телефон.

(sound
of fork dropping to the floor) “Oh, I dropped my fork. Sophia,
could you get me one from the kitchen?”

“Yes,
Daddy.”

София
дала Папе вилку.

Both
дал …and… дала
translate as “gave”. And дал
sounds a lot like the English word ‘doll’, doesn’t it? So that phrase
I told you in the beginning…What was it again?

Sophia
was crying so I gave her a doll.
That phrase should help you recall it.

In
Russian, giving something counts as doing something to the object.
For ex:

Я
дал Антону футболку.

I
gave Anton a T-shirt. The word futbolka changed to futbolku, with
that ‘u’ ending.

Or
this…

Мама
дала мне книгу.

Mom
gave me a book. Again, kniga (книга)
changed to knigu (книгу).

The
verb to give is obviously very useful to know, which is why
it’s our official new word of the lesson. But today’s real topic is
what happened to the words Mama and Papa and Anton when they received
those things. Listen again…

Андрюша
дал Маме телефон. –
Mama became
Mam-yeh

София
дала Папе вилку. – Papa became
Pap-yeh

Я
дал Антону футболку. – Anton
became Antonu

Interesting.
Let’s listen to some more examples. Can you translate these?

–
– –

Let’s
run through those again with the name Jeff. So he’ll start by saying,
This is Jeff…

Это
Джеф. Я сказал Джефу нет. Я купил Джефу
новый телефон. Я дал Джефу шанс.

What
do you think that ‘U’ sound at the end of Jeff’s name is signifying?
Another way to ask that is: What does the ‘U’ sound tell the
listener? That ‘u’ sound added to the end of a guy’s name is a
recipient marker. It tells the listener that, in this case
Jeff, is receiving something.

So:
Я сказал Джефу нет. …I
said to Jeff no. Jeff was receiving the words.

Я
купил Джефу новый телефон. I bought for
Jeff a new phone. Jeff was the recipient of a phone.

Я
дал Джефу шанс. I gave (to) Jeff a chance.
Again, Jeff was the person who received the chance.

For
female names, the ending is “yeh”…same sound as the
location marker. So let’s do a few more with the name Polina. So
he’ll start by saying, This is Polina…

Это
Полина. Я сказал Полине нет. Я купил
Полине новый телефон. Я дал Полине шанс.

Polina
changed to Polinyeh in each one because she was the recipient.

This
is a major chunk of Russian grammar right here. Think of how often we
say things like,

“I
called her, I sent him an email, I sent her a text, I gave her the
money, I told him I’d be there.”

In
each of those…I called, I sent, I gave, I told…there’s a
recipient. If the recipient is guy, you’ll hear an U at the end of
his name: Mark becomes Marku…John becomes Johnu. If it’s a woman,
a ‘yeh’ sound. Yana becomes Yanyeh. Darina becomes Darinyeh.

–
– –

(telephone
ring)

Алло?
Привет, Папа. Хорошо, скажу. Урра! Папа
позвонил. Он купил пиццу.

What
do you think this means: Папа позвонил.

Do
you hear the word “phone” in there, kind of?
puh-zvon-EEL…zvon…phone?

позвонил
means called on the phone. And it’s the perfective
form of the verb. No need to actively learn that one. You’ll use it a
few million times, so it’ll sink in naturally. And we’ll be hearing
it quite a few times in just a minute. But here’s the thing about
this recipient ending: It allows Russian to use a more flexible word
order than English.

In
English, you have to put the recipient right after the verb. For ex:
I called Mom this afternoon.
Mom comes
right after called.

I
gave Chris the money. Chris comes right
after gave.

Yes,
you could perhaps say: Chris I gave the
money…but it’s awkward, and much less
common. But in Russian, we’re more flexible. So tell me…Who called
who?

Марку
позвонил Грег.

Greg
called Mark. Right? Mark had the recipient “u” ending. And
Greg was in his basic form, meaning he did the action. Weird, isn’t
it? And you might think, “C’mon…Do Russians really phrase it
that way?” Absolutely. It all depends on the question that
prompted the statement.

If
someone asks: Who did Greg call? Then ‘Mark’ would go at the end of
the sentence:

Кому
Грег позвонил? Грег позвонил Марку.

But
if the question is: Who called Mark? Кто
позвонил Марку? Then we’d use this one: Марку
позвонил Грег. So it simply depends on the
question. And I can’t help but point out the rhyme here:

The
question word: Whom…кому? Марку.
…rhymes with the masculine answer. To whom? To Mark. Let’s
do some more. Again, Who called who?

–
– –

These
recipient endings are used even when the verb is unspoken. Just this
morning, Dedushka—our kid’s grandfather—was feeding the twins
kasha (каша), which is porridge.
William was being silly and insisting that Ded feed his toy dinosaur
instead. As Ded pretended to feed a spoonful to the dinosaur and then
to William, here is exactly what he said:

Одну
ложку динозаврику,
одну Уильяму.

Literally:
One spoon to the little dinosaur, one to William.

The
words: динозаврик…and… Уильям
…became…. динозаврику
…and….Уильяму.

because
they were the recipients of the spoonfuls.

Let’s
translate other phrases like that, with no verbs in them. Just say
who gets what, even if you’re not sure what the item is.

–
– –

Listen
to the masculine words client клиент and
travel agent турагент

Я
сказал клиенту, что он должен позвонить
турагенту.

I
said to the client, that he should call a travel agent.

I
said to the client…клиенту….he
should call to the travel agent…турагенту

Я
сказал официантке, что нам нужна ещё
одна ложка.

I
told the waitress that we need one more spoon.

официантка
with that basic ‘a’ ending, became
официантке…with the recipient “yeh”
ending because she was the recipient of what he said.

Listen
to this phrase: Is he your partner? (like…business partner)

Он
твой партнёр?

Я
дала все документы твоему партнёру.

I
gave all the documents to your partner. And notice that now the
words “your” and “partner” rhyme. твоему
партнёру

Gotta
love it.

<<<
Tip of the day…..>>>

In
the last podcast, the tip was how useful Google’s exact match
function is, as well as its image search. Those are great because
they don’t rely on the computer having to understand anything. It’s
simply showing you what native speakers are doing. That’s great.
What’s not so great is how computers themselves understand and
translate language. During the 2019 Superbowl Google had an ad: We
translate one billion words every day. Yeah, and about four hundred
million of those translations are horribly mangled.

The
problem is, computers translate by statistical analysis. They simply
do not understand language. At all. For one thing, they’re infamously
bad with expressions. For ex: I feel like a milkshake.

in
American English, that means I feel like having a milkshake. Ok?
Languages do that sometimes…they leave off words which are
understood between native speakers. But poor Google just doesn’t get
it. Here’s how it translates that… Я чувствую себя как
молочный коктейль.

..which,
to a Russian speaker, is like saying: I feel the way a milkshake
feels.

We
can go the other way. A very common expression in Russian is to tell
someone:

Марк,
ты даёшь.

There’s
a multitude of ways you might t