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[langtalk]

Hi! Kind of curious, do you have a favourite Russian/Slavic fairy tale? Are there any movie/tv/novel adaptations that you particularly like? Thank you for running this blog, it always brings beautiful things to my dash!

Hi! Yes, I do. I like “Marya Morevna", “The Feather of Finist The Bright Falcon”, “Tsarevich Ivan, the Fire-Bird and the Grey Wolf”, “The Three Kingdoms, The Copper, The Silver, And The Golden”, “The Truth and The Lies”, “Sadko”, “The Sun, The Moon and Voron Voronovich”, “Witch and sister of Sun”, “Nastasya Mikulishna”… well, I love many tales xD

But there are very few movies. Just a few Soviet adaptations:

1. “Sadko”, 1953 - https://youtu.be/zedi4fgeMeI (with eng sub)

2. “Koschei The Deathless”, 1944 - https://youtu.be/wtsDw6gowrA (no sub, sorry)

3. “Morozko” or “Father The Frost”, 1964 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAsCujfg7VU (dubbed in English!)

4. “Finist The Brave Falcon”, 1975 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMRWHQAF2I0 (with eng sub)

5. “Varvara The Long Braid”, 1969 - https://youtu.be/S1W8Y3BcYpA (no sub sorry)

6. “Skilful Marya”, 1959 - https://youtu.be/OqVwAeKIOyY (no sub sorry)

7. “Viy”, 1967 - https://youtu.be/zyg0WUsY9HI (spanish sub), https://youtu.be/W6wpEpfx5dQ (eng sub)

8. “Vasilisa The Beautiful”, 1939 - https://youtu.be/sKR_H5fSuVI (eng sub)

Also there are several modern films based on Russian/Ukranian fairy tales:

1. “Viy” or “Forbidden Empire“, 2014 - https://youtu.be/h5ZnsaG7RhU (dubbed in English!)

2. “Gogol. The Beginning”, 2017 - https://youtu.be/537rmn8EzII and “Gogol. Viy”, 2018 - https://youtu.be/_Fhe4f0d3v8 (sorry these two are just trailers!)  These two movies are about Nikolai Gogol - russian writer of 19 century. He wrote tales and novels inspired by ukranian folklore. The movies filmed in a fantasy/mystical genre. “Viy” of 1967 and “Viy” of 2014 are also adaptations of his novel of the same name. (Viy is a evil spirit in the novel)

3. “The Last Hero”, 2017 - https://youtu.be/IXbVuRoybr8 (just trailer sorry!) I really like this movie. It’s about a guy who accidentally landed in the world of the russian fairy tales. Good comedy, with good graphic and good actors’ play. Also there are stunning Baba Yaga and cool Koschei The Deathless.

Cartoons! Many cartoons!

1. “Vasilisa Mikulishna” - https://youtu.be/CnysHoprhsQ (eng sub)

2. “Tsar Saltan” - https://youtu.be/b3TQevs14CE (eng sub)

3. “There Once Was A Dog” - https://youtu.be/wvZfOMbAUnU (eng sub) Beautiful and a little sad tale.

4. “Fly’s house”, 2014 - https://youtu.be/tUgZEGYPjvA (eng sub) Absolutly crazy musical cartoon! Watch it! :D It was really made ofplasticine.

5. “Kolobok”, 2014 - https://youtu.be/9M286oRxFxs (eng sub) Beautiful musical cartoon.

You can watch more cartoons here: Mountain of Gems and here: Russian Animation with Sub.

I don’t know any tv or novel adaptation and never heard of it, so I think it don’t even exist.

[langtalk]

Hello! I'm starting to learn Russian and I have the New Penguin book (which is amazing btw!) but since it doesn't have audio I'd need another resource to practice listening in the meanwhile. What do you recommend? Thank you in advance :)

The things I recommend the most are podcasts and Youtube videos. I am going to only list a few of them.Podcasts:

Slow Russian Podcast

Russian Made Easy

Russian 101 Beginner Listening Comprehension

Youtube:

Real Russian Slow Russian Videos

Amazing Russian

Easy Russian

Other:

Beelinguapp (hear Russian stories with the English translation next to it) [Android] [iOS] 

Glossika (listen and then speak the Russian you hear)

Find an Anki deck for Russian with audio

3ears.com

Start listening to normal-paced Russian in order to get used to it. One of the things I used to do was watch interviews on Вечерний Ургант and see what words I could make out, even if I didn’t understand the whole video. 

[langtalk]

Italian resources

PDF Grammar textbooks [all in English]

Italian for Dummies

Colloquial Italian (with audio)

Ciao!

Teach Yourself Italian (with audio)

Teach Yourself - Italian conversation (with audio)

Teach Yourself - Beginner’s Italian (with audio)

Easy Italian Step-by-step

Routledge Intensive Italian course

Online free courses

Duolingo [available for English, French and Spanish speakers]

Memrise Italian course [in English]

Corso d'italiano (with dialogues) [in Italian]

ItalianPod101 [in English]

Babadum (flashcards with audio)

Basic phrases

Basic Italian phrases, vocabulary and grammar

Italian phrases

Useful Italian phrases

Verbs conjugators

Verbi italiani [available in Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, English, German and Russian]

Conjugate Italian verbs [available in Italian, Spanish, English and Dutch]

Online dictionaries

Cambridge Dictionary (English-Italian)

Collins (English-Italian; Italian-English)

Corriere (English-Italian; Italian-English)

Wordreference (English-Italian; Italian-English)

Hoepli (Spanish-Italian; Italian-Spanish)

Radios

RAI radio 1

RAI radio 2

RAI radio 3 [Audiobooks are here]

Kiss Kiss Italia

RTL 102.5

Radio 105

R101

Television

RAIPlay (national public broadcaster)

Mediaset Play (commercial broadcaster)

Online newspapers

Corriere della sera

Mattino

Messaggero

Repubblica

Focus

Continuar lendo

[langtalk]

Fun fact: the Italian words uccidere “to kill” and occidente “West” are cognate and share the same kad-/ked- Indo-European root, one meaning to “to cut into pieces, to kill” and the other “to fall, to plummet, to die”. 

While uccidere (from occīdere) refers to the literal act of killing something or someone, occidente (from occĭdere) “West” refers figuratively to the death, namely the fall, of the sun that’s dying at the horizon.

[langtalk]

me: hears a foreign language on a show

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when you don’t know a word in your target lang so you make up a compound word and it turns out to be the word you didn’t know:

[langtalk]

[langtalk]

hearing your target language in a random place and being able to understand even the smallest, tiny bit of what they’re saying is the best feeling in the whole wide world

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“i didn’t sign up for a goddamn history/literature/art course” as a complaint about languages courses absolutely baffle me because history, culture, everything is important when learning a language, not just the grammar, karen

[langtalk]

lifehack: whenever someone asks me to say something in a language I'm learning, I literally just translate the phrase "I don't know what you want me to say so I hope this is enough"

[langtalk]

Disney Song Playlists In Other Languages

please note that not every playlist will have the same songs!

French

Brazilian Portuguese

Spanish

Ukrainian

Italian

Russian

Korean

Japanese

[langtalk]

hi! i recently started learning russian and i'm currently tackling conjugation of present tense verbs. i'm wondering if you have any exercise/workbook links to practice it? thank you, hope you have a lovely day!

Hello!

For websites/apps, there are the following:

Russian verb blitz app

Russian verb trainer (paid app)

Cooljugator website

For worksheets/books, there are the following:

The big silver book of Russian verbs PDF

Verb cheatsheet

Verb conjugation sheet by @apamexico

[langtalk]

The agonizing wish to learn fifty languages at the same time and the subsequent difficulty to balance them out, resulting in several shallow languages and the unreachable dream of fluency am I right ladies

[langtalk]

An important part of learning a language is spending hours at a time looking up music in your target language and being introduced to all sorts of weird and wonderful shit you’d never listen to in your native language

[langtalk]

To Bring

So, instead of working on actual projects, I’m procrastinating by typing verbs. If it’s imperfective, it’s in the present tense and if it’s perfective, then it’s in the future tense.

They go with что (acc), откуда (gen with из or с), куда (acc with в or на), and кому (dat).

Приносить to bring on foot, imperf Я приношу Ты приносишь Он приносит Мы приносим Вы приносите Они приносят

Принести to bring on foot, perf Я принесу Ты принесёшь Он принесёт Мы принесём Вы принесёте Они принесут

Привозить to bring by vehicle, imperf Я привожу Ты привозишь Он привозит Мы привозим Вы привозите Они привозят

Привести to bring by vehicle, perf Я привезу Ты привезёшь Он привезёт Мы привезём Вы привезёте Они привезут

[langtalk]

Nouns, adjectives, pronouns - their endings can be formalized (more or less) easily. Verbs are different. Here you can find my slideshow with 40+ slides about how to conjugate verbs in Russian.

[langtalk]

Prefixes Change Meaning

Here is an example how prefixes may change the meaning of the verb:

Говорить - to talk

Поговорить - to have a talk

Приговорить - to sentence

Уговорить - to convince

Договорить - to finish a talk / a speech

Выговорить - to articulate, to rebuke.

Подговорить - to talk into (usually something secret or/ and illegal)

Enjoy :)