10 steps to get a kick-ass Russian accent

Russia Beyond ^ | 01/08/2018 | Tommy O'Callaghan

[hanamizu]

Oddly, the Cyrillic alphabet was the only easy thing for me during my disastrous 2 semesters of Russian in college. I still use it to write out Christmas gift ideas for my wife. Drives her nuts. The toughest sound for me was ы which doesn't exist in English, is a vowel and has been described as the sound you make right before you are very sick. Russian grammar, for me, was a nightmare.

[oldvirginian]

I worked with a Hungarian who absolutely hates the Russians and everything about them.

He was forced to learn and speak Russian as it was the official language of the Soviet Union. When he came to the US he worked very hard at losing his accent because most Americans thought he was Russian.
Real nice guy unless someone brought up Russia/Russians.
As an added bonus he’s as conservative as anyone here.

[livius]

European Spanish speakers and Russian speakers put their voices in the same places, and some of the vowels are similar.

Latin American Spanish, like American English, Has different vowels from those of the mother country. It is thought that current English and Spanish vowels in the New World were those dominant in these countries in the 16th and 17th centuries. Over time, European pronunciation shifted up a bit, becoming more distinctive, while North and South American pronunciation of their respective vowels shifted down more to what is called a schwa sound, a kind of neutral.

But in any case, the accent of a foreign language speaker tells you something about your own language, and peninsular Spanish accents and Russian accents in English have a lot in common.

Why? Who knows?

[SERKIT]

I am practicing to call Adam SCIF and spoof him into thinking I have nekked peekchurs of Trrump.

[lizma2]

LOL! Boris!

My Grandfather went thru the Russian Revolution as a teenage. The only Russian word I remember is peeva but my Russian accent isn’t bad.

[Right Wing Assault]

Artists drawr pictures in New York. A twenty-five cent coin is a kwahta.

[Right Wing Assault]

Mooose un squddle.

[GnuThere]

Exactly. My Czech friend is a small businessman and staunchly conservative.

[Carriage Hill]

Boris & Natasha were so good. Heh.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Your Czech friend no doubt was required to take Russian in school while walking past Red Army tanks on pedestals.

My Polish priest speaks English as a third language. I get an askance look when I speak Russian to him; their enmity goes back centuries.

Worked for a few weeks in Slovakia immediately after the wall came down.

EVERY paper or sign or map or library display or poster or even the movie marques was written in three languages: Slovak - because that is what the people spoke.
Russian - Because the Russians coming in and running things did not trust the Slovaks to translate anything for them.
German. Because the East German Army was at the border ready to re-invade and kill any rebellion coming up. And the East German army did not want to trust any Slovak translators either!

[GnuThere]

You made it one more semester than I did!
I also enjoyed the alphabet.

[Jamestown1630]

I worked with a Hungarian who absolutely hates the Russians and everything about them.

I used to know old Koreans, who felt the same way about the Japanese. But their children wound up retaining respect for some Japanese influences.

I once met Sergei Tolstoy, great-grandson of Leo. He was a very debonair, cultured man. When I was introduced to him - (my young self suitably impressed) - he smiled at me and said, "I didn't write the books".

He was a very happy-go-lucky man - probably too much so, to his detriment. (He had too much love for the racetrack horses, and squandered his money :-)

It's not useful to view other people merely as 'nationals' and project our politics onto them. Everyone on Earth is an *individual*, and individuals are always sort of contrary, inside - often open to change.

[jmacusa]

Ovah dere, ovah hea!* ''Over there, over here!'' Make it sound kind of a sing songy accent on the second and forth word. Accenting the first word in two syllables and the second and fourth in one. Like da-da DA da-da DA.

[Telepathic Intruder]

It’s all so confusing... Just like why can’t all foreigners can’t just speak American? Even the English. They can’t say “chips”, they have to say “crisps” instead? Ridiculous.

[Jamestown1630]

LOL!

[Bommer]

When I worked in NYC years ago I noticed very quickly New Yorkers tended to say that a lot. Putting ‘’what’’ at the end of a question. Instead of asking, “What are you, crazy?’’. They’d say “Are youse crazy or what?’’.

It’s a secret evil Canadian plot to start talking like them. For example:
NYer “ Eh! What’s wrong with you?”
Canadian “ What’s wrong with you eh?”

[Does so]

Interestink...

[Cecily]

They do say chips, but those are french fries. So they need another word for potato chips.

[Jamestown1630]

And that word is ‘crisps’.

(Pretty descriptive.)

[kaehurowing]

When I was a kid, one of my best friends was from Taiwan. He learned to speak English by watching American cartoons. The only hard part was he talked like a cartoon character, which got him some ridiculing by other kids. For example, he thought the plural of mouse was “meeses.” Or he would say something like “I eats my spinach (substitute other food here).”