Thread: would anybody get me accented text with translation

o.k you've studied the basics, finished a couple of courses. what now? reading of course. PROBLEM: HALF THE TIME OF READING IS SPENT ON SEARCHING IN THE DICTIONARY. the simple solution for this problem is russian accented text (with stress marks) which has translations for difficult words on the side. is that too much to ask? how come the only book ever published in this format (inostranka a russian reader) is out of print? I've searched the net and foud a few places which give you text with translation like learnrussian.com or etext.virginia.cyrillic-mandelstam. but they dont give stress marks! to shame! one exeption is: sussex.ac.uk/units/russian/ruslang whitch give text with audio (it's not the main text look for audio on the side) and literal translations for 4 stories. another good site is: russianmentor.net they have vocabulary modules (no stress marks boohoo! ) but get a look at the "reading and listening" library here's a chance to listen and understand news reports.
IF ANYONE KNOWS A WAY TO READ WITHOUT A DICTIONARY I BEG YOU TO SAVE ME!

Oh, Ram, you remind me of myself a couple years ago. Don't worry, dear, there's a lot of books like that! Living out here in Las Cruces, New Mexico, I found two books which have accented text and translations(and none of them are the one you mentioned). And I noticed another one in the second-hand bookstore which I'll probably snap up when I'm finished reading what I have. Anyhow, the books I have are "From Pushkin to Pasternak" and "Russian Stories", both of which give a short passage from a famous author, vocabulary, and questions. "Russian Stories" is a bit interesting, it has an English translation on the other page(although I got lazy with this and ended up just reading the English all the time). "From Pushkin to Pasternak" is more of a traditional reader and it simply has the passage up top and vocabulary on the bottom, with some difficult constructions explained afterwards. I'm sure there are plenty more like them. Just go to amazon.com and search for "Russian readers."

But anyhow, everyone goes through the same problem - reading things and having to flip through dictionaries constantly. Eventually you'll remember enough vocabulary and you'll notice words that repeat. But the best advice is to try to read things as a whole and not get hung up on every word you don't recognize. Try to guess at the meaning of the sentence as a whole. In this way you'll eventually notice words which keep cropping up again and again, and every time your guess at the meaning of it and how it influences the sentence will be more correct.

thank you very much! but I do disagree with your "understanding from context" orthodox method. I'm a beginner in russian but I'm quite advanced in english (I'm from Israel). I have a friend who swalloes books in english. but never looks in dictionaries. till last year I had red a few books but had a pretty basic vocabulary. (not including: whimsical ostentatious nibble thronged etc.) you know all these words you dont realy need in order to undrstand a book. my friend on the other hand had a much bigger vocabulary, from reading a few shelves of books. now the test begins: what's more afficient, understanding from context or intensive vocabulary study? during only half a year I've read 10 books. in each of them I translated all the unfamiliar words. plus, I wrote them down and tried to memories them. today I'm practicly at the same vocabulary level as my friend.
the problem with "anderstanding from the context" is primarily to know how to pronounce the word: is it O-sten-ta-tios? o-STEN-ta-tious? am I to guess that this o is the kind that rhymes with law? so, if the russian text doesn't have stress marks (which is the only thing missing thank god, it's not as bad as english or hebrew) you won't escape the dictionary. second, many many words are impossible to understand from context. ostentatious is one of them, my friend didn't know its meaning.

Well, hold on, so it took you more work just to get to the same level as your friend(who I presume was using the "understanding from context orthodox method)? At any rate, read the way you want to. However, that is pretty much the only way to read without a dictionary(as you had asked), short of having a Russian sit next to you and explain every word you don't recognize(good luck finding someone like that )

About pronouncing the word, you are right there, but in the experience of many people it's hard enough to memorize where the stress is even if you look it up in the dictionary. I would highly recommend that beginners look up lots of words in the dictionary as opposed to reading from context. But when you're at a higher level reading from context is really much easier. In my experience it really helped me understand Russian coming in at a fast rate - take what is important, don't get stuck on the words you don't recognize - which in turn helped my listening comprehension. I would even propose that once you get to an extremely advanced level(that I'm not at yet, sadly) you'll be able to guess the stress consistently.

i'm a native english speaker, i took advanced courses in high school and college and got good grades, and if you asked me what ostentatious means, i honestly couldn't tell you!! the word looks familiar, and it might mean something negative? but no one really uses it unless they're writing a book and they want to sound smart...don't worry about it, those words you listed are used by maybe 5% of americans. your english is perfect.