Blog moved to a new address

The Russian blog is now available at the new address:

http://masterrussian.com/blog/

Russian Video Phrases (tm)

We are witnessing that learning languages online becomes more interactive and effective process. With the new video phrasebook and language community from Speakado, you have access to native speakers 24x7.

Check it for the Russian language:
http://www.speakado.com/index.php?lang_id=95

or simply navigate to their homepage:
Speakado.com




Я скучаю по тебе.
I miss you.

Language/Travel Channel from YouTube

Google/YouTube now lets anybody create a topical channel and build it into your website. I started my quest by spending an hour to figure out what it is about and here's what I've got so far:

http://masterrussian.com/video.shtml

The video collection of the channel is automatically generated by Google using the keywords that I entered. I set it up to show Travel videos. The relevance of videos may not be perfect but it is improving. I hope that adds a little bit more spice to learning "великий и могучий" Russian language :)

myspace + MasterRussian = myspace.com/masterrussian :-)

Yep, we've got the myspace page... looking for new friends
http://myspace.com/masterrussian

Russian alphabet

Learning the alphabet is the first step to learning Russian. You will find it relatively easy to get started with the Russian alphabet because many letters remind those in English by look and pronunciation.

• Six Russian letters look and sound like their English counterparts
  
  
• Sixteen Russian letters do not exist in English but have familiar pronunciation
  
  
  
• Eight Russian letters look like their English counterparts or digits but have different pronunciation
  
  
• Three Russian letters do not exist in English and make new or no sounds
  
  

The table below will give you an idea of how Russian letters are pronounced and spelled using Latin characters.

Letter		Pronounced as	Symbol
a		a in car; u in cut	ah
б		b in bit	b
в		v in vine	v
г		g in go	g
д		d in do	d
e		ye in yet	yeh
ё		yo in yolk	yo
ж		s in measure	zh
з		z in zoo	z
и		ee in see	ee
й		y in boy	y
к		k in kiss	k
л		l in lady	l
м		m in mist	m
н		n in not	n
o		o in folk	o
п		p in pipe	p
р		trilled r in rrroll	r
с		s in soft	s
т		t in tie	t
y		oo in root	oo
ф		f in farm	f
х		ch in Scottish loch	kh
ц		ts in lists	ts
ч		ch in chapter	ch
ш		sh in shut	sh
щ		sh in sheep	shch
ь		is used to make the preceding consonant soft	'
ы		i in ill	i
ъ		is used to separate two parts of the word	'
э		e in net	eh
ю		u in use	yoo
я		ya in yard	yah

*parts of this text came from.... MasterRussian.com - Helping you to master Russian! ....as well as from LanguageDaily.com - The free community for teaching yourself a foreign language

A new Wiki for learning languages -- LanguageDAILY.com

Thanks for all your support, dear MR-щики! With 90% of you voting in favor of the idea of a language wiki, I will give it a try. The address of wiki is LanguageDaily.com This wiki is hosted at a separate address. It's totally independent and should not dissolve the focus of MasterRussian on the Russian language as some of you might have been concerned. I am still exploring the wiki phenomenon and I am sure many of you will need to "get a taste" of what wiki really is. All in all, it is a poweful means of collaboration and communication. I guess there is a lot that can be done with wiki as a tool for learning languages and language exchange. For now, please simply visit the site and try to get the idea, perhaps edit something... improve, not erase though! Only the Russian section there is developed to the level of intial acceptance. The sections for other languages should follow, as well as languages that are not listed there yet. We'll live and see how it goes...

MR stuff for your Google/Yahoo homepage

If you like the idea of personalized Google or Yahoo homepage then you'll like the new RSS feature I added recently. Simply go to MasterRusian.com and search for "My yahoo" or "Add to google" buttons on the right. Click on any of them and follow the instructions.

If everything goes well then your google or yahoo homepage will regularly update with featured MasterRussian lessons and articles. It should look something like this on Google:

... or like this on Yahoo:

A google toolbar button has the same RSS feed functionality but looks a little bit different (notice red MR letters).

If you want to receive the latest thread titles form the masterrussian.NET forum then you can do so from the forum page (here) by clicking on the "My yahoo" button in the forum header.

Free Language Learning Portal

http://www.languagesense.com