Thread: French man in love with Russian language and people

Zdrasvouitie,

I would like to meet russian or ukrainian friends. It can be everyone, I don't want to limitate. I will also be very happy to help people from here with french.
My name is Stephane, I'm a French man and I had the luck to travel and to work in Crimea last year. My job is writer, for children and adults but in Crimea I was kind of french teacher for children and also for adults in a Language Center. So, I fell in love with russian people, language and culture, I made it a second homeland in my heart. The friends who invited me made me live among their family and I lived some of the very best and unforgettable moments of my life. Since then, I keep on learning russian, slowly but regularly and always keep connected with everything russian. My dream is to come back there, speaking and understanding if not fluently, at least correctly, so I can give as much as I received last year . My level is now somewhere beetween beginner and intermediate, say the statistic and some people, but I personnaly think I'm only at the very first steps. I don't have yet cyriilic keyboard but I can read, so I visited this place during hours and hours and learned a lot from you (and even had one of the most exploding laughs of my life, thanks to Pravit mocking the fake car accident of a lazy student ). In fact, MasterRussian.net is exactly the place I was looking for. I also can and will help you with pleasure in French if you need. So you are very welcome in my mail if you want. Ya jdou vas.
Paka !

Stephane.

By the way, about my nicname. I never write russian in roman letters, so what I meant is "the shadow of the trees", I hope without nieprastitiel'naya achibka

hello ! welcome !

About your name... It is sort of mispelled... "Shadow" in russian is 'Тень', Not Тель (which is almost "body").

But i think it's it's not a big deal.

Good luck with russian and ukrainian... You should pick one over the other though... If you are just starting out, because they really are pretty much 2 diffrent langauges. But if u learn the basics of one, the other should be pretty easy to pick up.

Oh, you're pretty right, I made a stupid typo it looks almost like "tielo", I'll try to fix that, thanks.

Well, I choosed russian over ukrainian, mainly because my friends are russian-speaking. But, what I could sense of ukrainian culture and language attracted me too. I remember, I was in a family, and the mother worked as teacher/translator. And when she had to translate ukrainian-only parts of documents, she sometimes had to ask her daughter (13 years) to help her, because the girl knew ukrainian better than her (because of the school).

Thanks for the welcome, Dogboy.
Stephane.

Shadow of the trees- Тень деревьев

It is good you choose Russian instead of Ukrainian. Ukrainian doesn't have much use, only in Ukraine and even there some people don't know it. Russian is spoken in many Eastern European countries like Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Beloruse. It will be more useful. But once you know one of them, if you chose to learn the other, it won't be as difficult. Though the alphabets are slightly different, and other things are too. Good luck with your studies!
Evgenia

Thanks a lot, Evguenia. Yes, I noticed somes differences, like the "i" used in Ukrainian spelling. I've heard that in the west, in cities like Lviv, ukrainian language is more widely spoken. in Crimea where I was, Russian was far ahead.
It's funny, sometimes I dream in Russian, of course with simple sentences because of my modest level, but i find it completely fascinating, hearing or speaking Russian in my own dreams . It probably means that the language has reached a deep subconscious level in my mind and not only the surface. I like that.
It's funny because I don't dream in english, which I know better than russian and like very much too.

Merci, thanks for your support, Evguenia. This site, MasterRussian is a major discovery for me.
Do vstretchi.

Stephane

Я хочу говорить по french.

tiel'_ot_dyerev'yev: Were you born in in Crimea? If so, how old were you when you moved? Did you know any Russian?

And Dogboy:

honer student

???

No no, Kamion, I guessed I messed up my message once again, I'm sorry, I should register first to an english language forum

I'm French, I was born in France. I have Crimean friends and worked in Crimea, in a language center.
For the moment, I know simple russian, more or less like a child of below 8 years, I guess.
My russian will be correct in just a few decades, I can read some things, for example, in this forum, someone posted a short story in russian about a guy who loved very much girls and he was standing on his perron to watch them but watching was not enough for him so he adressed a girl, shouting anc invited her to have tea at home, etc... but, well, t was a simple story, simple vocabulary, simple phrase constructions, so my one year-level could manage to catch it all. I also write some simple short stories (very simple and with a lot of work) in russian (I'm a writer, in french, for children and adults), and I even started a kind of fairy tale, just for fun, I called it "slovar douchi"

But, in no way I can pretend being born in Crimea, sorry for the misunderstanding.

ps : about Dogboy's signature, ""honher student" if spelled with an additional "h" is a kind of accordion.
(by the way Dogboy, if you want to speak pa-french, feel free to do so with me).

http://www.windjammermusic.co.uk/eBay/H ... nerAcc.htm

(I don't know if Hohner Student III is the grandson of Hohner Student I

Greetings to Sverige.

Salut Stephane,

Tu parles en anglais vraiment bien. Malheureusement je ne peux pas dire le meme de mon francais. Quand j'etais en la lycee, je l'ai appris pour quatre ans, mais, comme tu vois, je fais beaucoup de fautes Je suis maintenenant a l'uni donc je ne peux pas ecrire les accents etc.

OK, I give up trying to write in French Welcome! You seem rather interesting and I'm very glad you know how to write posts of substantial length with proper spelling and punctuation It's also rather funny that you happened upon my argument with Ankit, I'm glad you enjoyed it

You know, I would really like to go to Ukraine or Russia this summer and perhaps I will go to the Crimea too. Right now I'm unsure of it though. I've been learning Russian for five years alone and hope to continue improving it, although lately I haven't had as much time to concentrate on it. I also know a bit of Ukrainian(I have to get a lot of help from Lingvo when I write, though) and maybe I'll pick up some more when I go to Ukraine.

About Cyrillic keyboard you can set up your regular keyboard to type in Cyrillic, you don't need to buy a new one. You can find the process for this on my website: http://www.freewebs.com/pravit/

MR was also a rather nice discovery for me. Hope you'll stay. BTW, how are you learning Russian, anyway? With books, classes, etc.?

With Lingvo how many languages can you use with it?

As many as you want. You can install new dictionaries from the net at LingvoDA.ru, and maybe there's other sites.

MAN ! everyone keeps asking me "What's an honor student" ?


OK TIME TO CLEAR UP MY SIG.

In America, The classes where they put the kids (like pravit) who are "smarter" than the other kids, and need more work / harder work. It's called "honors classes". And, usually when kids get into honors courses, the school gives the 'proud' parents (of a compelte dork ) a bumper sticker to put on their car that says "PROUD PARENT OF AN HONOR STUDENT AT 'ABC123' SCHOOL"...

Then, people were like "wow that's gay, who cares" and they started making bumper stickers that say "My kid beat up your honor student".

And that's the first part.

Часть B. Goes like...

I was at like "albashra.com" or some stupid fanatical islam site the other day, just because i was bored, and i was seeing what kind of crap the muslim media feeds their people... Anyways, it was saying stuff like

"American evils bomb school in 'town' 47 children killed"

"Yankees bomb hospital in 'town' 22 people killed, 14 children, 56 wounded"... Whatever...

And it's so OBVIOUS that it's Bullsh*t... And I got so f*cking tired of those pieces of sh*t bringing children into this. They don't deserve it. So If they must, i have to say... Our kids can beat up your kids anyday.

Originally Posted by Dogboy182

And, usually when kids get into honors courses, the school gives the 'proud' parents (of a compelte dork ) a bumper sticker to put on their car that says "PROUD PARENT OF AN HONOR STUDENT AT 'ABC123' SCHOOL"...

Isn't it an idiocy?

And, tell me, by the way, do you have the same stupid educational system where you have to memorize everything and everywhere without actually developing thinking and creative abilities of your brain?

I don't know ? Sounds more like japan to me.

Salut Pravit,


In fact you only have a few minor mistakes in your french. And they are mainly due to literal translation of englidh constructions, like "je ne peux dire le meme"- 'i can't say the same", the french sentence would add the word "chose", like "i can't say the same thing". And as "chose" is a feminine word, it's "la meme chose". And last, "je ne peux" it's what you can call an anti-mistake I mean, it's high level of language, like in ancient plays or poetry. Current level of language would be "je ne peux pas".
And you have only a single mistake in your spelling ('maintenant'), and we all know that french spelling is challenging. ("eau"- water, is voiced like a single "o", that's crazy when you think about it
I call these mistakes minor ones, because a)the sense of what you mean is perfectly clear, b)all verbs are correctly conjugated, with two consecutive and different past tenses perfectly used and linked to each other in a sinfle sentence. c) you perfectly master the progression of what you want to express, it's not 4 sentences packed together by chance, just wondering why they are going together to the same party, but it's a full construction, and a coherent one. d) other reasons, but I don't want to get boring,

I've been learning russian seriouly on my own for one year, but of course my stay in Crimea helped me a lot and my russian friends were wonderful living eercice books. I also listen to radio stations almost everyday like our "fsio budet karacho" friends from Russkoe Radio,, I read and listen to the news at the euronews site, I handwrite russian I decided to find and join a russian language forum just two days ago, because of a letter : one of my friends one day wrote me a letter in russian and said with a smile "one day, you will perfectly be able to read it". At this time, I just understood nothing and it sounded like a kind of joke. And two days ago, I picked up the letter again and... that was it ! I could fully understand it, and needed my slovar just for one word. This one an unforgettable sensation. Once a opaque mystery, this letter was crystal clear for me. An as the letter was not a too basic one, but one with real constructions, some complexities...I felts like I had translated my Rosetta Stone like Champollion in Egypt Well, anyway, from when I was about 10 to my mid-20s I already had some polish, ukrainian and russian friends, so I was prepared very early to cross that line later in my life.

Well, if I have an advice to give you, Pravit : if you can, go to Crimea. There are lot of students in the capital, Simferopol. In Crimea, somstimes you think that you are in ancient Greece, other times in Russia, other times in a Muslim place. There i've seen written Russian, Ukrainian, Arabic, Hebrew, Tatar (related to Turkish). The landscapes are often breathaking , you can enter a mosque, an orthodox church, see the russian fleet in Sebastopol, Livadia where Putin and others presidents meet after Stalin, Chrchill and Roosevelt did, and also this staircase with 1000 degrees which can lead you from the mountain to the sea, see this famous fountain in Bakhsisaray where Pushkin wrote his poem about, climb to the Eagle's Nest, the... Well, I wanted to talk also about Kersones but I shut up, but I could work at the Tourist Office

Thanks for your advice about Cyrililic keyboard, I'll follow it when I change my computerausorus.

A bientot, Pravit, bonne journee.

Stephane.

My goodness! I can't believe I forgot "pas"! And French slowly crumbles through my fingers... At any rate, it's good I was understandable.

Thanks for your advice about Crimea, and it was certainly interesting to hear how you are learning Russian.