<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 7 of Understanding Spoken Russian. To
start with today, Alex is going to ask me a question. Listen?

–
– –

Depending
on where you’re at in your studies, you might’ve understood all of
that, or almost none of it. Either way, in today’s episode we’re
going to discover a key pattern in there and put it to work for us.
The sound I want to extract from that for now—the sound I want
slipping deep into your subconscious—is: жив

As
that reverberates through your mind, let’s do some review. In these
complex phrases, can you spot who did what to whom?

–
– –

What
was that little word we started the lesson with? жив.
Let’s see if we can get it from context.

In
every action movie, there’s a scene where the hero gets badly hurt.
His buddy pushes away the rubble, finds the guy, and asks him:

Тони!
Ты ещё жив?

(dyin’)
Да….

What
do you think he asked him? Tony, are you still alive? So жив
translates as “alive” or “living.”

It’s
not all that common on its own, but it’s the root of one of the most
common verbs in conversational Russian. Let’s listen again to the
opening conversation, and translate as we go.

Марк,
где ты живёшь? – Mark, where do you live?

Я
живу в Киеве. – I
live in Kiev.

Полина,
где ты живёшь? – Polina,
where do you
live?

Я
живу в Донецке. – I
live in Donetsk.

А
ты, Алексей? Где ты
живёшь? –
And you,
Alex? Where do you live?

Я
живу в Москве. –
I live in Moscow.

So,
я живу translates as “I live.”

ты
живёшь translates as “You live.”

Those
are our new words for this lesson. We’ll work with them in a second,
but here’s an important sidenote. In Russian, as in many languages,
depending on who you’re speaking to
there are different words you use to
say the same thing. There are two
categories that we put people in:

Is
the person someone you can speak friendly with, like a friend or
family member?

Or…Is
it a person you need to speak politely with, like your boss, or any
adult you don’t know.

We’ll
cover this in detail a bit later in the series, but the main point is
that the same exact thought will be expressed two different ways. For
ex:

Let’s
say I’m talking with my buddy: “Yo, dude what’s up? Hey, I
wanted to ask..Где ты живёшь?”

That
was informal speech.

Now
I’m with my boss, who’s also bilingual. “Ahem, hello sir….I
was wanting to ask: Где Вы живёте?”
That’s the same exact question: “Where do you live?”
But with different words.

Another
ex: To a friend who’s just gotten a new job, you might ask: “Where
do you work?”

Где
ты работаешь?

To
a stranger on a train, you’d ask that same question like this: Где
Вы работаете?

Just
know that for today, we’ll be speaking informally, as if to friends.
Try to say…

–
– –

And
now try it with wherever you live. If you’re not sure how to
pronounce your city in Russian, or whether you’re getting the ending
right—because there are exceptions to that “yeh”
ending—just go to the website, UnderstandingSpokenRussian.com and
leave a comment at the bottom of Episode 7.

So,
in this first exercise, all I want you to do is tell me if the person
is speaking in the present tense, or the past. If you can translate,
great, but if not..just past or present. Ready?

–
– –

Let’s
add another verb into the mix. видишь

Imagine
you’re searching for your suitcase. Finally your roomate spots it and
he says…

Эй,
видишь? Твой чемодан на балконе.

Or
he’s looking for his бумажник…

Где
мой бумажник?

Видишь?
Он на столе.

Видишь?
they ask, pointing. Do you see? ВИД-ишь…has
our core word from Episode 5: вид

But
now we’re hearing it in the present tense. Listen to him say, Yes, I
see.

Да.
Вижу.

She
would say it the same way…

Да.
Вижу.

It’s
only the past tense where the gender of the subject is reflected.
Last one: смотришь

You
walk into the living room and your roomate Vadim is watching TV. The
commercials are running, so you ask him…

Вадим,
что ты смотришь?

Whenever
I’m outside with my kids when they’re playing, they always want to
know…

Папа,
ты смотришь?

Dad,
are you watching?

So
let’s do that same exercise from before, but include these other
verbs…seeing and watching. Again, translate if you can, but
otherwise just say: past or present.

–
– –

Я
работаю. Я живу. Я смотрю. Я вижу.

When
speaking in the present tense—about where they work,or where they
live—a Russian speaker starts with “ya” (Я)
and then uses a verb ending in an ‘U’ sound. It
might be “У or Ю”
but the ‘u’ sound is always there. There are so few exceptions to
this, it’s scarcely worth noting.

Ты
работаешь. Ты живёшь. Ты смотришь. Ты
видишь.

Similarly,
when speaking in the present tense about where you work, where
you live, and so on—a Russian speaker starts with Ты
and then uses a verb ending in an ‘ish’ sound. It might be ИШ
ЕШ ЁШ but the “sh” sound is always there.
Again, this is when “you” is a friend or a kid.

So
all I want to do here is spot these patterns. Just tell me if it’s
you or I doing the action. And we’ll mix in some unfamiliar verbs.
Ready?

–
– –

In
this next exercise, pretend you are the person speaking. He’ll start
by saying his name. Literally: Me they-call Anton. Then he’ll talk a
bit about himself. Just listen…

NOTE:
The episode’s Russian Immersion section has also been deleted from
this transcript. Again, this is because the entire focus of this
course is listening and understanding. People don’t (yet) come with
subtitles.

That
one had some new words in it. What do you think this means?

Ты
читаешь журнал.

You
are reading a magazine.

And
this?

Ты
читаешь книгу.

You
are reading a book.

Remember
читал from Episode 5? Я
прочитал рецепт…I read the recipe…

So
these are the present tense forms of that verb, “to read.”.
Listen again…

I’m
reading a funny email

Я
читаю смешной имейл.

Or
simpler. Just: I am reading.

Я
читаю.

Are
you reading my blog?

Ты
читаешь мой блог?

Try
to translate these…

<<
tip of the day>>

Even
in a course like this, where the entire focus is on listening and
getting the gist of what native speakers are saying, it’s still a
good idea to do interactive exercises…the way we just did. I like
it because it forces you to kind of sit straight and listen closely.
Which is why we’ll be doing more of that in future lessons.

The
tip here is, if you’re using this course in conjunction with some
other resource—you have to choose carefully. I remember back
when I was first getting started in Russian, I looked for that kind
of interactive listening stuff online and it was so frustrating.
Because even when they spoke slowly, they weren’t using the vocab I’d
learned. It made feel like I wasnt making progress. So what I did,
believe it or not, was hire native speakers in my area—this was in
Mesa, Arizona—and had them make up simple but realistic dialogs
like that…and I recorded them. I basically created my own course
material. That’s when my progress in Russian really started to
accelerate…because the exercises were at just the right level.

Which
is why I added what I call my ‘Russian Immersion’ podcast to my
online, Russian Accelerator course. There, each podcast episode uses
only the vocabulary you’ve learned up to that point. So you’re
suddenly having these long exchanges all in Russian and without that
frustration of feeling lost. Like I said, if you’re supplementing,
choose your resources carefully.

<<end
tip>>

So,
let’s try one more interactive listening exercise. Again, just answer
ДА or НЕТ…

Bonus
question here. Even if you dont understand, see if you can answer…

Где
я сижу?

Ты
сидишь на диване.

Any
guess on what that means? Ты сидишь на диване.

You’re
sitting on the couch.

Next,
let’s listen to some clips from Russian TV. Again, I’ll use that
show, the Thundermans, about a family of superheros. This first
snippet starts with “Конечно,
милая,”…”of course, sweety.”

Then
what does the mother say?

That
was of course ridicuously fast. See if you can spot the two verbs.
One in the present tense, then one in the past….

She
said: Ко