Not sure what’s being said here

I wonder if someone could tell me what’s being said in this recording. It’s an extract from a set of tapes called Penguin Basic Russian produced to accompany the original Penguin Russian Course book. Got them about 10 years ago when I made my first (brief) attempt to learn Russian and I’ve just recently started using them again. I guess it’s just one word I’m not sure of. This is what it sounds like to me at present.

Ольга Лапухова всегда носит ???? в город

The context and the verb носить leads me to think it should be a thing, but maybe it’s a name. Anyway, hopefully it will be ridiculously easy for someone here to understand and then I’ll scratch my head and wonder how it could have presented me with such an insurmountable difficulty in the first place :)

Sounds to me like the name "Анна"

Surprisingly I can't make it out either. What I hear does not make much sense.

Ольга Лoпухова всегда носит Анночку в город?

"Ольга Лопухова всегда носит Аночку в город. "
Аночка, должно быть, маленькая девочка, ещё младенец.

Большое спасибо! :D

That makes perfect sense now. I thought it might be Анна-something but it didn't make sense to me either as I couldn't imagine it meant a person was carrying another person. Then I started to think it was some material or thing called амничка but I couldn't find a word like that in the dictionary.

Thanks again.

I must be really good cuz i understood it first time around.

Well done! :) I'd never heard that name before and unfortunately they tend to introduce words and names on the tapes that never appeared in the book. Is that a diminutive of another name or a name in itself?

It's a dimunitive of Anna (I guess :roll: , although most people would use Анечка), but the sentence itself is ridiculous. "всегда носит в город"? Laughable. I have seen this before in textbooks written by non-native speakers. Words are just thrown in without any concern for coherence. The bottom line is that it's very easy to misunderstand or start looking for alternative ways to understand a nonsensical expression.

It's part of a set of oral exercises to get the learner used to using the verbs of motion.

The full statement was

Ольга Лопухова всегда носит Аночку в город, а сегодня?

then there’s a short pause on the tape for you to come up with the ‘correct’ response which then follows.

Ольга Лопухова сегодня тоже несёт Аночку в город.

…and then you’re supposed to repeat it again after the native speaker. There’s about 8 of those in that section. I thought they were useful enough for getting some practise speaking Russian but it’s a pity if the sentences are totally artificial and don’t sound like anything anyone would say in real life. I think the recordings were made in the 1970s and the book they were based around was published in 1961. So I guess back then, they were still too focused on using grammatically correct examples with not much thought as to whether they sounded natural or not.

Where did you find these tapes?

It was after I bought the Penguin Russian Course about 10 years ago. In that book there was an address you could write to and order the tapes. They were produced at the University of Exeter. Actually, if you like, I could upload the full exercise that extract was taken from to see what you make of it.

does it p*ss you off knowing that if you had stuck with it 10 years ago you would now be bad-ass at russian??

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Originally Posted by Cyphyr

Ольга Лопухова всегда носит Аночку в город, а сегодня?

then there’s a short pause on the tape for you to come up with the ‘correct’ response which then follows.

Ольга Лопухова сегодня тоже несёт Аночку в город.

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God, this is even worse. If the old witch всегда (always, no exceptions) carries Annochka around (and keeps Mishenka's remains in the freezer, apparently), then today she is doing the very same thing, obviously.

And if they wanted to use a person's name to "carry", why not use something useful, something from everyday life that we can easily relate to:

Ольга Лопухова всегда носит Макаров в город.
Ольга Лопухова всегда носит Калашников в город

I can say that the lady on the tape has a thick foreign accent. What the hell did they mean by repeating again and again after the native speaker? What native speaker? The lady on the tape is not a native speaker.

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Originally Posted by VendingMachine

I can say that the lady on the tape has a thick foreign accent. What the hell did they mean by repeating again and again after the native speaker? What native speaker? The lady on the tape is not a native speaker.

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I think I'll agree here with VM.

Hee...freezer.
HOW DID YOU KNOW WHERE I PUT MISHENKA'S BODY!? :O
TELL ME!

Okay, I'm done.

Well, this is very interesting. There are two people on the tapes called Ирина and Пётр and they're referred to as “native speakers”. The full exercise is here, for anyone who’s interested (I've edited it a bit to strip out or shorten some of the pauses in it). More totally absurd utterances I guess :) Thanks to everyone for their feedback on this anyway.

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Originally Posted by Lt. Columbo

does it p*ss you off knowing that if you had stuck with it 10 years ago you would now be bad-ass at russian??

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Well, on the basis of what I’ve learned here, if I stuck with those tapes back then I might only have succeeded in 'perfecting' a dreadful foreign accent :)

Seriously though, I guess it would be nice if I had stuck with it but really there seemed to be just too many demands on my time (college exams for one thing). I'm just happy to have got back studying it again and to have progressed enough that I'm confident of staying with it this time round - I haven’t been using this course as my main learning resource, just started using it recently mainly for revision purposes and to try different exercises.

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Originally Posted by Cyphyr

Actually, if you like, I could upload the full exercise that extract was taken from to see what you make of it.

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Yes, I would be interested to check it out.

Decided to put it up anyway. The link's in my last post above, middle of the second line. Looks like these exercises mightn't be the best going by the previous comments though.

I don't hear any foreign accent, I don't know where this came from. They speak unusually slowly, and that's all. Well, the lady talks like an old first-grade teacher, so I would not call her accent sexy, but it is still Russian. Many of the sentences are OK, and at this stage might serve their purpose.

I don't hear any accent, but it sounds strange anyway. Perhaps because of unnatural or oldfasioned inflexion? Add I don't hear preposition 'в' (in) at all? Did you hear it?

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Originally Posted by adoc

I don't hear any foreign accent, I don't know where this came from. They speak unusually slowly, and that's all. Well, the lady talks like an old first-grade teacher, so I would not call her accent sexy, but it is still Russian. Many of the sentences are OK, and at this stage might serve their purpose.

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У Петра есть явный (для моего уха акцент), У Ирины акцент слабее, но тоже мной улавливается. Музыка речи тоже подхрамывает. Уверена на 99.9%. Наверное, они таки да носители языка, но приехали детьми и потеряли чистоту произношения. :D

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Originally Posted by mariashara

I don't hear any accent, but it sounds strange anyway. Perhaps because of unnatural or oldfasioned inflexion? Add I don't hear preposition 'в' (in) at all? Did you hear it?

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Come on, no accent my bum. Listen to how she says Анночка - the a is more like the "a" in the English "Ann" and the ч is not Russian - it's too hard, it's more like the English ch in "match". The vowel о in носит is more like the aw in "law" in British English than the true Russian o. Overall, her intonation is foreign.

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Originally Posted by adoc

I don't hear any foreign accent, I don't know where this came from. They speak unusually slowly, and that's all. Well, the lady talks like an old first-grade teacher, so I would not call her accent sexy, but it is still Russian. Many of the sentences are OK, and at this stage might serve their purpose.

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This is not a Russian accent. It's got the word FOREIGN written across its forehead in block letters.

This sounds like a weird mixture of old-fashioned pronunciation (you can hear it in intonations -- I heard some elderly people talk like that when I was a kid) and, yes, a touch of foreign accent. I would go with Lampada's theory that they used to be native speakers who lived among the foreigners too long.

Daughter of a "white officer"?

They are Russian speakers, but sometimes some slight accent can be heard, I guess they spend quite a long time in USA or UK.

They speak slowly, and that changes intonations sometimes, probably because they were forced to speak slower then usual. But exercises sound OK to me to learn Russian, but I am not an expert.

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Originally Posted by VendingMachine

Daughter of a "white officer"?

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I spoke with some immigrants from times of Revolution-1917, and their children, they spoke perfect Russian, sometimes better then many Russians in Russia.

My wife already gets ribbed by her mates for having picked up a funny accent when she goes home to visit, and she's only been in the UK on-and-off for about 4 years.

I've heard a couple of non-native speakers (Britons) speak Russian with a better accent than that lady in the recording.

I can't remember where on the tape but I recall hearing Пётр say a short sentence in English and I thought at the time ‘Wow, he’s got a perfect English accent anyway’ so it looks like it was rather too perfect if it came at the expense of his Russian accent.

It’s a shame their accents are not very obviously Russian. There shouldn’t really be an issue with it. You’d think the makers of the course would have at least gone to the trouble of selecting speakers with authentic and indisputably Russian accents.

The copyright notice on the tape says 1979 and like I said, they were produced at the University of Exeter in Devon, England. They were obtained from ‘Drake Educational Associates’ at an address in Cardiff and the address and details were given in the Penguin Russian Course (the predecessor to the more familiar New Penguin Russian Course). There are 30 different sections corresponding to the 30 lessons in the book with an average of maybe four or five different exercises for each section.

That exercise is taken from lesson 11 so they’re perhaps still speaking somewhat more slowly and unnaturally at that stage. I think they might speed up a bit later on in the course. Still, it’s no excuse if the accent sounds that foreign to some people.

I have to say though, I have found them quite useful so far, if only to get me to practice speaking some Russian. When I have to construct a sentence and speak it within the pause given it does feel like I’m exercising a different part of my brain than usual :)

If anyone is interested in hearing some more of them, I guess I could upload them but I don’t really have any webspace for it. I just quickly got that geocities site set up to upload the original clip. I don’t know if they’ll close it down if it’s just being used to upload and download files.