Words... what do they all mean?

I probably totally bombed the section of the Russian unit test that involved matching up authors/poets with their dates and biographies, but the poetry recitation went _swimmingly_. I was the last one to go in for the oral section, and when I was done Профессор told me that everyone had pretty much had the words down, but that I had "real feeling," and paused and inflected in all the right places. Theatre major FTW!!!

We have to memorize this poem for Russian and it's beautiful so I thought I'd share it with you all.

Я вас любил - Александр Сергеевич Пушкин

Я вас любил: любовь, еще, быть может,
В душе моей угасла не совсем;
Но пусть она вас больше не тревожит;
Я не хочу печалить вас ничем.

Я вас любил безмолвно, безнадежно,
То робостью, то ревностью томим;
Я вас любил так искренно, так нежно,
Как дай вам Бог любимой быть другим.

I loved you - Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin

I loved you once: and love, perhaps, is still
Within my soul, as yet not fully doused;
But do not let that trouble you too much -
I do not wish to sadden you at all.

I loved you silently, hopelessly,
By modesty and jealousy tormented;
I loved you so sincerely, so tenderly,
As, may God grant, you will be loved again.


Couldn't make it rhyme without messing up the words too much, though I'm very happy that the meter for the most part translated straight across. It has made it much easier to memorize it since I realized it's iambic pentameter, just like the Sonnets.

I feel surprisingly good about the Russian final I just took. Like, I think I might actually have aced it. *gasp* I think the only mistakes I made were little things like в versus на and when they were prepositional versus when they were accusative.

Oh, and yeah. There was a three-line dialogue I totally just skipped because I could not for the life of me remember the verb he was wanting us to use. elven_alchemist, как сказать "to order" по-русский?

Gyah, so apparently I am one of _two_ people who have registered for Russian 2B in the spring semester. This means it will likely be cut. And Dr. Gray is a _lecturer_, not technically a professor, so he's not allowed to set up Independent Study. So guh. There goes that. Crumbs.

Maybe I'll pick up Arabic. Or Greek? The alphabet shouldn't be bad, after Russian. Or I could be totally vanilla and go back to clean up my Spanish. *yawn* so cliche. Same with starting Italian. Romance languages are so passé (... ignore the fact that's a French word). But, oh, to not have to worry about cases anymore... and only have two genders... and decent sound-spelling correspondence... *wistful sigh* If only it didn't feel like taking the easy way out.

Oh, slight change of topic: we're doing comparatives in Russian, and today in class we were going down the list of irregular ones, and they have хороший, хорошо, лучше ~ good, well, better. And someone commented on the oddity, and Профессор replied, "Well, English has 'good, better, best' - where'd that come from, either?" with a shrug.

"German," says I, even though I know it was a rhetorical question, "gut, besser, best."

Профессор gives me this you-had-to-call-me-on-that-didn't-you look and says to the rest of the class, "See? That's what you get for having smart students."

*blush*

For those who are curious, ( the Russian alphabet )

elven_alchemist, totally feel free to correct and/or refine this.

*note: this is based on American pronunciation of aforementioned vowels. Mild extrapolation will therefore be needed for the Kiwi accent.

Okay, so teachers should totally not hand out candy in class.

Lately, мой любимый профессор has been bringing us candy: Kit Kats, Tootsie Pops, Starburst, etc. Dunno why but hey I'm not complaining. But today for some reason the sugar just really hit me. This unit is about giving directions, and describing various modes of transportation (which means we're dealing with the ever-so-lovely verbs of motion). Well, one of the verbs for "to go" (unidirectional, imperfective, by vehicle) - ехать - conjugates awfully similarly to the verb for "to eat" - есть. So, "Today I'm going to work by means of/in a taxi," = Севодня, я еду на работу на такси. ((bold indicates the stressed syllable))

So профессор looks around the room and asks, "Why couldn't you say, 'я еду на такси'?"

I helpfully reply, "Because that means, like, 'I'm eating the taxi.'" And I get this image of, like, Cookie Monster happily munching on a taxi, and it gives me the giggles like you wouldn't believe. I think I might have actually made a munching sound in the midst of the giggles, too. Профессор grins at me and then asks the rest of the class, "Where'd the candy go? I don't think we have enough sugar over here." *facepalm*

And elven_alchemist, why is it на автобусе, на машине, etc.? Why на + prepositional? Shouldn't it be instrumental: автобусом, машиной? Like пешком is instrumental. It makes more sense, since it's the case for "by means of..." expressions. But my учебник doesn't even mention the possibility. Is using the instrumental case in situations like this completely wrong, or just archaic or something?

*spazzes out at the Russian on the main page*

Okay, so the контролная работа turned out not to be so bad. Профессор handed out the written part and then said he'd be in the room next door for the oral part, and when he asked who wanted to be first, we all looked down at our papers and pretended to be hard at work. Then a voice from the back of the room pipes up, "Sierra!" and профессор looks at me and is like, "Okay, let's go." And I'm just wtf? _So_ not cool.

So when I come back in and ask the others, "Who wants some?" they all look down at their papers again, so I'm like, "Okay, who called on me?" and two of the other girls point to the girl who called on me, and she gets all indignant and calls them traitors. lol So when _she_ comes back, she sends one of the girls who ratted her out, etc. It was like this vicious cycle of backstabbing. But in a funny way.

And I got to go home early and call alphadsnz_fb at a decent hour of the night (for him), which was lovely.

Just in case studying for my Russian unit test (which is in half an hour) didn't fry my brain enough over the weekend, my Child Development teacher popped a quiz on us today. Gyah! Who cares whether a zygote develops limb buds at 5 weeks or not? I'm trying to cling desperately to the _six_ different verbs Russian has for "to go" (and this is just traveling, not even counting all the other things we use "go" for). I shit you not. Unidirectional, or multi-? By foot, or vehicle? Continuous or habitual, or one-time? elven_alchemist, your language was on crack when it came up with that.

And just to make life fun, there are completely separate verbs for "traveling multi-directional by foot" and "strolling." Can't we just use гулять all the time and forget about ходить and its (way too many) permutations? Ой. You'd think a language that spent most of its life without an alphabet would be _simpler_ than others.

I actually held a little impromptu in-class dialogue in Russian with my professor yesterday! We've been talking about months and seasons and at which time(s) we do certain things. So he's going around the room, asking students questions like: when do you ski? when do you swim? etc., and the one he asks me is: "Когда вы отдыхаете?" ~ when do you relax?

I snort and reply wryly: "Я никогда не отдыхаю." ~ I never relax.

He frowns. "Очень жаль. Рочему так?" ~ That's too bad. Why so?

"Я мама." ~ I'm a mom.

Ррофессор nods in understanding (he has 3 kids). "Дочка, да? Как её зовут?" ~ A daughter, right? What's her name?

"Её зовут Морган." ~ Her name is Morgan.

"Морган. И сколько ей лет?" ~ Morgan. And how old is she?

"Ей два года." ~ She's two.

*pause for the "awws" to work their way through the girls in the class*

Ррофессор asks, "Она ходит?" ~ Is she walking?, as he mimes a few uneasy steps.

"Да, она ходит хорошо." ~ Yes, she walks well. (though I wasn't about to try explaining about her foot situation and thus why this makes me much prouder than I would otherwise be.)

He jogs in place. "И... бежит?" ~ And... does she run?

Well, she tries, but, "Нет, не ещё." ~ No, not yet.

"Она говорит?" ~ Does she talk?

I roll my eyes. "Да, очень. Она говорит... по-болгарский. Обычно я не могу её понимать. А она говорит _всё_ время." ~ Yes, a lot. She talks... in Bulgarian. Usually I can't understand her. But she talks _all_ the time.

That makes him and the rest of the class laugh, and he claps for me before going on with the lesson.

Granted, most of that is hardly challenging stuff, but I didn't have to check my book at all, and I've never had a conversation run that long before, especially not with the eyes of the whole rest of the class on me. So, yay!