Thread: Russian words for her / she question

I am a relative beginner and have been studying Russian on my own for about a year. I am in the second edition of Pimsleur and have a question . One of the things I find confusing about the language is that they use different words for the same english word depending on the context it is used in. For example I have learned 3 different ways to say the word her or she

1) Ana - her / she
2) Yee You (EE with little dots over the second E) - she
3) Yeahh - her

I am confused as to which one to use and when. They seem to interchange. Any help would be appreciated.
Scott

You = ю
Yoh = ё (e with little dots) /it sounds like spanish "Yo" - "I"/

"Её" sounds "yee yo", but not "yee you"

Она (ona) = she
Её (yee yo) = her

"Yeahh" - I don't know this word.

Originally Posted by Оля

You = ю
Yoh = ё (e with little dots) /it sounds like spanish "Yo" - "I"/

"Её" sounds "yee yo", but not "yee you"

Она (ona) = she
Её (yee yo) = her

"Yeahh" - I don't know this word.

I think they meant Ей.

Originally Posted by scott

I am a relative beginner and have been studying Russian on my own for about a year. I am in the second edition of Pimsleur and have a question . One of the things I find confusing about the language is that they use different words for the same english word depending on the context it is used in. For example I have learned 3 different ways to say the word her or she

1) Ana - her / she
2) Yee You (EE with little dots over the second E) - she
3) Yeahh - her

I am confused as to which one to use and when. They seem to interchange. Any help would be appreciated.
Scott

You need to learn cases. Pimsleur is useless, don't use it. Use a proper course that teaches grammar.

Она = she
Её = her (when 'she' is the firect object)
Ей = "to her", also expresses direction to her, or "with her", "by her".

They are not used interchangeably, they are governed by strict rules of grammar.

You shouldn't be looking at how the word is in English, but more the words grammatical funciton in English.

Can you not see that in English

"She is pretty"
and
"I like her"

The "She" and "Her" have different grammatical functions?

We have two words in English - She and Her. They are used in various different gramatical contructions.

You need to just go and buy this book!
http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?i ... 40120416-2

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/custom ... 55&s=books

Originally Posted by DDT

You need to just go and buy this book!
http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?i ... 40120416-2

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/custom ... 55&s=books

I was very pleased when I followed that link and saw the New Pengiun! I love that book!

I love it too TATY! Mines falling to shЫt from overuse and I am going to have to buy another one

Originally Posted by DDT

I love it too TATY! Mines falling to shЫt from overuse and I am going to have to buy another one

I also though about buying a new one. They should make a more rigid version, maybe even hardback.

here's a link to my old post, it looks like you will benefit from reading the materials I linked to there.

http://masterrussian.net/mforum/viewtopic.php?t=8314

And really, do think about changing the way you are learning the language -- you can really go only so far using Pimsleur and without learning the grammar and the written language, and after a year of study you've surely already exhausted the limits of the methods you are using now.

Thank you very much Taty, DDT and Alya, Those were exactly the type of answers I was looking for. I have taken your advice and purchased and am using the New Penguin Book. I have previously learned the alphabet and am reading cyrillic. I do have to say that the Pimsleurs helps me tremendously in conjunction with new Penguin because it is my only source of hearing spoken Russian. My biggest problem is that I dont have anyone to speak to or to listen to. I dont think I could learn with New Penguin alone. I dont know what I will do when I am complete with all three pimsleurs. I go over each lesson for several days and learn everything inside out. Then I go back and review to make sure I havent forgotten anything. Thanks again for your replys. I have studied about an hour a day consistently for over a year now and I still only just identify 1 of 20 words when I hear a Russian speak. But I am persistent and slow and steady. Someday I will get there.
Scott

Originally Posted by scott

Thank you very much Taty, DDT and Alya

If you mean me, my name is Оля (Olya)

Sorry I am relatively new at reading and New Penguin tells me to read the O as an A unless it has a stress mark. Sorry about that. Olya. Also forgot to include laxxy. Scott

My name is pronounced like "́ola", but the "l" is soft.

I've heard many learners saying that spoken Russian is more difficult to understand than some other languages. Perhaps the pervasive vowel reduction plays a role here.
I for one can vouch that different languages are not equal in this respect -- I'm trying to learn some Japanese now, and comparing my today's understanding of spoken Japanese to how much I was able to understand in spoken English when my general knowledge of the language was comparable, I can definitely say that Japanese is a lot easier in this respect, being so very clear. And spoken Russian is probably harder for an English native speaker than spoken English is for a Russian one.

It's great that you started with a regular textbook, a lot of people seem to be happy about that particular one.
FYI: Written Russian typically has no stress marks, so you should not draw any conclusion from the lack of them.
Also, Russian names are typically transliterated into English from their written form, rather than transcribed by sound, so that Олег is normally written "Oleg" rather than "Alekh", and so on.

Originally Posted by scott

Sorry I am relatively new at reading and New Penguin tells me to read the O as an A unless it has a stress mark. Sorry about that. Olya. Also forgot to include laxxy. Scott

Just to clarify. O is pronoucned like A if it is unstressed. To mark stress, learners books and dictionaries use an acute accent on the stressed vowel. However real Russian does not use stress marks, as Russians just know where the stress falls.

And no matter how the O is prounced, we still write it as O.

One of my biggest obstacles in learning Russian as a relative beginner is that there is no opportunity to use Russian. Therefore there is no way to practise the language. I live in the New England area of the USA and do not know of any Russian speakers in my area. Other than English we seem to only hear Spanish. I would venture to guess that a Russian who is learning English has more opportunity to use English.

When I do get the opportunity to listen to spoken Russian such as on videos the language goes too fast and many words seem slurred into one another. Also the fact that words change their endings depending on the context seems to throw me as a beginner, Therefore even the words I do know the meaning of seem to go past me. This is probably true for all languages when a new learner is listening. I continue to perseveer. Pimsleus to be my best learning tool as it allows me to listen and respond to myself. Scott

Originally Posted by scott

One of my biggest obstacles in learning Russian as a relative beginner is that there is no opportunity to use Russian. Therefore there is no way to practise the language. I live in the New England area of the USA and do not know of any Russian speakers in my area. Other than English we seem to only hear Spanish. I would venture to guess that a Russian who is learning English has more opportunity to use English.

Depends on the area of course, but most large metropolitan areas have a substantial population of Russians (or, sometimes, Ukrainians: e.g. Stamford, CT). So do most universities. So it depends on where you are.

When I do get the opportunity to listen to spoken Russian such as on videos the language goes too fast and many words seem slurred into one another. Also the fact that words change their endings depending on the context seems to throw me as a beginner, Therefore even the words I do know the meaning of seem to go past me. This is probably true for all languages when a new learner is listening.

Well -- some are definitely far better than others, I was rather surprised how I could correctly write down a Japanese sentence from a movie or TV, knowing maybe only 10% of the words, after just a couple months of Pimsleur.
I definitely wasn't able to do anything close back when I was learning English. And I expect Russian to be worse.

I continue to perseveer. Pimsleus to be my best learning tool as it allows me to listen and respond to myself. Scott

Pimsleur is a good tool, especially for pronunciation. I would not rely on it alone too much for listening -- they speak in a forcedly slow and clear fashion. Also it teaches some rather unnatural (I would even say incorrect) expressions, and skips grammar altogether, which is rather crucial. You need to supplement your studies from other sources.
And, especially since you don't have too many speaking opportunities, maybe you should consider concentrating on reading first. Understanding third-party speech is a lot harder task, probably way too hard for a beginner. It is quite normal to be able to read original novels and still not understand anything on TV.
If you do manage to get a Russian conversation partner, you may get some basic conversation practice -- it will be A LOT easier than understanding TV and videos.

Pimsleur doesn't work because it confines the user largely to certain mundaine conversations. Since grammar is overlooked the learner can't think out the spectrum of expressions taught to them.

You will get to Russia, won't know how to read signposts and simple texts, and natural Russian speach will be so unfamiliar to you. And then the perosn you are conversing with won't say stuff in the unnatural way they do and won't stick to the script.

Originally Posted by TATY

Pimsleur doesn't work because it confines the user largely to certain mundaine conversations. Since grammar is overlooked the learner can't think out the spectrum of expressions taught to them.

You will get to Russia, won't know how to read signposts and simple texts, and natural Russian speach will be so unfamiliar to you. And then the perosn you are conversing with won't say stuff in the unnatural way they do and won't stick to the script.

It does not quite work as advertised, yes, but it is not useless.
A lot of people seem to agree that the pronunciation it gives is quite good and superior to that from most other methods. It teaches a small vocabulary, and drills its' expressions pretty well, which is a good thing, which is going to come especially helpful when a textbook (that should be used in parallel) comes to those expressions too.

Of course it works only when the expression is correct, which is not always, otherwise it's detrimental. I still remember listening to a randomly selected lesson and hearing absolutely horrid things like "ja hochu est' koe-chto".

Maybe most importantly for many people, it does not rely on any book and allows one to effectively utilize the commute time. I've done all 3 parts of Pimsleur Japanese while commuting, time otherwise spent less productively. It might be worth its' price just for that factor alone.

But there is no doubt that Pimsleur alone will not take you anywhere.

Thanks Laxxy for all your advice. I use Pimsleurs for all the reasons you recommend and find it useful for the same reasons. I am also studying the New Penguin text but find memorizing all the different rules and exceptions to grammar a little difficult. I do however get a general understanding of why things are what they are. It also helps me to read and build my vocabulary . The major reason I do use Pimsleur is exactly as you stated, "commute time" I commute up to 3 hours a day and I feel that it is much better spent listening to Pimsleur that listening to the radio. I have actually gained a lot from it even in identifying words in spoken Russian. I have listened to Videos on the Golosa site

http://www.gwu.edu/%7Eslavic/golosa/video/

and can make out a lot of what they are saying. I guess the next best step I can take is to find a Russian friend or speaker. Do you have another suggestion for a beginner, motivated learner? Thanks again for all your help. I am in the Southern New Hampshire area of the USA. Scott