Thread: Handwritten Russian

I am still trying to get started on learning Russian, and I can't figure out how to write the Russian letters on paper. Is there a website or something out there(other than a person) that can show me how to handwrite Russian?

http://masterrussian.com/blalphabet.shtml - Not so useful, since it doesn't show how to join the letters.

http://www.lang.ourfamily.com/propisi/home.html - This might help also.

Oh, those are "прописи" (handwriting excersise books) for children. They must be really helpful. I remember I had the best handwriting in the class because it looked exactly as in the "пропись".

I often wondered if the best way to learn a language would simply be to start playing around with the material that they use in school and to watch cheburashka and other kids shows.....

I didn't know you had to join the letters together when you write them. Our teacher just told us to write them close together. Maybe she just doesn't want to teach us that yet.

hand written Russian isnt really hard to learn, infact my russian (on paper) looks far neater than my english, possibily due to the rules of joing letters up and such. i think you should have words with your teacher

Usually all Russians join letters together. I do it too but sometimes I do not join them in cases when it is not very comfortable. My opinion is that you should join them as you consider more comfortable. There are no strong rules about it. But writing Russian letters apart is not a good idea.

i think the worst word to join up would be пиши, i wrote it and frankly it looked like a series of wavey lines

he, yes you are right. But I think it is not a big problem.

Originally Posted by Bunny

I didn't know you had to join the letters together when you write them. Our teacher just told us to write them close together. Maybe she just doesn't want to teach us that yet.

It's not necessary to join them, but it is certainly faster to write joined letters than one by one.

Wow those are some interesting drawings they want me to draw in the handwriting exercise books, i guess that is to get used to making the right shapes.

mrgreen

I usually put a line over т and a line under ш when I write. It's easier to read it that way. Many people do that, too. That way the word пиши would look more like a word than a bunch of wavy lines. =)

But I wouldn't put letters apart if I were you. Try doing that in a russian school, and you're gonna get killed by your teacher. I never saw anyone do it. Not like in english. =)

we never got to draw rockets and trucks and other cool stuff in our writing classes.

A little off topic but in algebra do Russians use x and y or do they use something else?

Originally Posted by Rahul

A little off topic but in algebra do Russians use x and y or do they use something else?

Since he asked, let me extend the question: what about function symbols, such as "sin", "cos", "lim", etc.?

Yes, Russians use Latin alphabet in mathematics. So, this means "x" and "y" for variables. Also "sin", "cos" for "синус" and "косинус", and so on.

The mathematical notation is rather international thing. So, in Russia it's the mostly the same as in the rest of the world. There's some minor difference I can recall now: the symbols for tangent and cotangent are "tg" and "ctg". And the typesetting rules for formulas differ slightly (is this *really* interesting for someone? If so, I can consult LaTeX manuals for details).
(And don't forget, what the number names like "billion", "trillion" and so on mean different things in the anglo-saxon countries and in the rest of the world!)

Originally Posted by Scorpio

And the typesetting rules for formulas differ slightly (is this *really* interesting for someone? If so, I can consult LaTeX manuals for details).

To me it is.

I write it just as it comes up on the computer... which is probably a bad thing in many ways but it's the easy way out


lol, I'm so cheap

I write Russian just as it is printed in books.
I HATE cursive in English, and I don't know why Russians would insist on using it... but the emphasis in school doesn't really reflect reality.
Like in 4th grade our teachers would only accept homework written in cursive letters, so we do have the same emphasis in traditional schools to use cursive letters here in America instead of printing, but everyone gives up on that crap later on.
Cursive in Russian and English is just so much harder to read, when its handwritten (specially with some people's handwriting).
Agh! Can you imagine Arabic handwriting!?