Learning Russian - A Reflection

Today, my formal Russian language education at the Vaganova Academy came to an end. In our final class session, I completed the second part of our end-of-year exam and returned the last of the books I'd borrowed. In the remaining few weeks before my studies in Saint Petersburg finish, I'll continue to learn and practice Russian as I go through my day-to-day life, but now feels like an appropriate time to pause and reflect on this experience and on where I am now.

I am still far from fluent in Russian, but I've also come a long way from where I was when I arrived in September of 2013. I had already learned the alphabet and had a vocabulary that I estimate comprised of somewhere between 150 and 200 simple Russian words. Some of these words were body parts, and others, pieces of conversational phrases I'd memorized. I knew the words for cockroach and butterfly, and how to ask if a food contains meat. Two summers prior, a friend had managed to teach me the words for tomato and cucumber, and I somehow still managed to remember them.

In ballet class, I was lost and confused. I could usually tell what body part my teacher was talking about, but wouldn't know what we were supposed to be fixing. Acting class was horribly confusing, as the teacher spent much of the time talking and explaining. Eventually he learned that I knew more French than Russian, and, since he spoke more French than English, spoke to me primarily in French until well into the second semester. My other teachers would speak in a mix of English and Russian, going out of their way to help me and the other new international students as best as they could, though I frequently still found myself without any idea what I was supposed to be doing. Communicating with my classmates frequently involved a bizarre mix of English, Russian, sound effects, and improvised pantomime.

In the beginning, I learned a lot through trial and error. Unable to read the packaging, I bought a box of tea that I later realized was loose leaf instead of bagged. A classmate and I missed our first acting class because we were unable to read the schedule. It was several weeks before I realized that I had been washing my colored garments with detergent that was specifically meant for white clothing.

However stressful this all might have been at the time, I got through all of these mixups and mistakes and everything turned out no worse in spite of them. I am proud to say that I never again failed to show up at a class because I couldn't read the schedule, the only other times I purchased loose-leaf tea were intentional, and I now know how to tell the difference between laundry detergent for colored and white clothing.

Despite my non-fluency, I am comfortable enough with Russian that getting around the city and going through the various parts of my normal life here is no longer stressful. I understand nearly everything that my teacher says during ballet class. Just this weekend, I took a solo adventure to a park on an island a bit north of the central part of Saint Petersburg, where I had never been before. There was an open-air theater festival there that had been recommended to me, and, with the help of an announcement in a local newspaper and the park's official website (both in Russian), as well as the Google Maps app on my phone, I got myself there and back without any problems. I understand the play on words that's printed on the inside flap of the package of tea I just bought (it incorporates the word for tea into the Russian equivalent of bon apetit). I'm able to use the self-checkout machines that have been installed at a few of the nearby grocery stores, and I can communicate with all of my classmates now - not just those who speak English.

What I've learned goes beyond just language skills. Understanding unfamiliar words is often an exercise in problem solving - figuring out what words sound similar or have the same root, and using context to figure out what meaning might actually make sense - as is discerning the meaning of an unfamiliar grammatical construction. I'm far more comfortable than ever before with being in an experience where there is something that I don't understand. Even if I don't know every word in a sentence, I frequently can determine the general meaning of it, and if I can't figure out what the sentence means, I just have to ask for a clarification or perhaps look up a definition or two. Either way, in the end, everything is fine. What could be treated as a stressful situation transforms into an opportunity to learn something.

I intend for this to be not the end, but rather the beginning of a new chapter in my Russian-learning experience. I have learned the basics and spent nearly two years immersed in a Russian-speaking environment, and now it is time for me to take my learning into my own hands. I have collected several workbooks that I hope to use to deepen my understanding of Russian grammar. I'm still slowly working my way through a copy of the Russian-language version of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Hardest of all, but probably most important, I'll try my best to communicate in Russian whenever I have the opportunity to do so.

Words that Confuse Me

As my vocabulary has gradually expanded, I have come across certain Russian words that I have trouble keeping track of because they are extremely close in spelling and pronunciation to other words that mean completely different things. Conversations with my companions have revealed that I am far from being alone in my tendency to mix these words up. As such, I decided that I ought to compile a list of some of the words that I have (and sometimes still do) mix up. I've been working on this post for a couple weeks, adding new words when I think of them... or when I mix something up and don't say what I intended to... Making mistakes is a part of learning a language, and figuring out how to learn from your mistakes and laugh off any embarrassment they may have brought upon you are the best ways to keep progressing forwards. Enjoy.

Ряд - Row (ryat)

Рядом - Next (as preposition or adverb) (ryadam)

Рад - Glad (rat)

I'm going to admit now that it took me multiple months to actually figure out that these words were all distinct and separate from one another and not the same word being used in multiple different contexts or sentence structures. To further complicate matters, nouns, like ряд, have different endings depending upon what preposition they are preceded by, so there ends up actually being six different variations for each noun (plus six more for that same noun when it is plural). It just so happens that ряд, when preceded by certain prepositions, must be spelled exactly like рядом, which, when used as a preposition or adverb, is an entirely different word.

Цвет - Color (tsvet)

Цветок - Flower (tsvetok)

Свет - Light (svet)

I know for sure that I've been mixing these three up, as any attempt to use them in conversation invariably ends with me being corrected by the person I'm talking to. I bought you some colors. Will you please turn off the flowers? That shirt is my favorite light.

To further confuse matters, there are a selection of related adjectives that are also extremely similar, both to each other and to the nouns I always mix up. I usually encounter these in a written format, and proceed through a brief moment of confusion (Brightly lit Easter?) before I figure out which word I'm actually reading (Right... Holy Easter...).

Святой - Holy (svyetoy)

Цветной - (Multi)colored (tsvetnoy)

Светлый - Bright (svetliy)

Корица - Cinnamon (karitsa)

Курица - Chicken (kuritsa)

The distinction between these words is important in two scenarios: 1) When determining if a food contains meat or not (I'm a vegetarian), and 2) When purchasing spices. If you don't read the packages carefully, you might end up purchasing a packet of chicken seasoning instead of ground cinnamon, and I doubt that the chicken seasoning would taste very nice with your oatmeal.

Чеснок - Garlic (chesnok)

Честно - Honestly (chesno)

Чисто - Clean(ly) (chista)

I learned the words for clean and garlic before learning the word for honestly. When it came up one day in my Russian language class, I spent a moment trying to figure out if the word could possibly have something to do with garlic or cleanliness (neither one realy worked well in context) before I learned that it really hadn't got anything to do with either one.

Лес - Forrest (less)

Лестница - Staircase (lestinitsa)

Seeing as the word for forest is nothing like the word for tree (see the next paragraph for more about the word for tree), I tend to completely forget about it, ending up wondering if лес is somehow an abbreviation for staircase before eventually figuring out that I'm totally wrong. Hopefully now that I have written this out, I'll stop forgetting.

Now, imagine my confusion when I was told by a friend that we would be going to visit their summerhouse in the "word that sounds almost exactly like tree." As it turns out, this word actually means village or country, which cleared things up, but that most certainly was not the last time I mixed those two words up.

Деревня - Village/Country (noun) (derevnya)

Дерево - Tree (dereva)

Деревянный - Wooden (derevyani)

Деревенский Country, rural (derevenski)

The adjectives meaning wooden and rural are very similar to the words for tree and village, which makes sense, but also makes me likely to mix them up as well.

I need to precede these next few words with an brief explanation of a bit of Russian grammar. Though Russian has just three verb tenses (English has sixteen), verb-related grammar still ends up being complicated and confusing. Most verbs come in pairs - one for the perfective aspect, used to indicate defined actions (like reading and finishing a book), and the other for the imperfective aspect, used to indicate ongoing or habitual actions (like usually reading after dinner). (Of course there are exceptions and verbs that don't have a perfective counterpart, too, but that's the exception rather than the rule).

I simply want point out that I have not included in this list all of the verbs that are confusingly similar to their perfective/inperfective counterpart; the majority are minimally different in spelling and I am constantly mixing them up, but it would have been impossible to list them all. The only verb pairs that I have included are the ones below, and I have included them because these particular two pairs of verbs sound almost exactly the same, and all four words are commonly used in ballet class. 

Поднимать - To lift (imperfect) (podnimat)

Понимать - To understand (imperfect) (ponimat)

Поднять - To lift (perfect) (podnyat)

Понять - To understand (perfect) (ponyat)

It took me a good long time before I realized that half of the time I had heard a word and understood it as some form of to understand, I had, in fact, misunderstood.

Стороны - Sides (storaniy)

Страницы - Pages (stranitsiy)

It's possible that you may now be wondering just why I have so much trouble telling all of these words apart. But remember what I said earlier on about having six different endings for each noun, plus six more for each noun when it is plural... Sometimes, depending on the spelling of a word and the ending that is being added, the middle of the word will also gain or loose a vowel to make the pronunciation more comfortable, and then there are certain words that change completely when they are placed in particular grammatical constructions. This can make it quite difficult to tell what word you're reading or hearing, and the potential for mixing up similar words is great.

This story is last because it's my favorite one...

Пицца - Pizza (like pizza but with a ts sound in place of the zz)

Птица - Bird (pteetsa)

A classmate, also an international student, once walked up to me, giggling uncontrollably. I asked what was going on, and so she told me about how she'd just gone to speak to a teacher about what dances she was rehearsing, and, meaning to say that she was rehearsing the Blue Bird pas de deux from the Sleeping Beauty, had instead said that she was rehearsing the pas de duex of the Blue Pizza.

Today I Went to the Theater...

If I had written a post about each and every ballet I have watched since I started blogging, then this blog would now be the most boring and repetitive blog in existence. That is not to say that I haven't written about this at all; I was excited to tell about my first visit to the Mariinsky theater (here), and about when I saw La Bayadere for the first time in my entire life (here), and the time when my friends and I were able to sit in actual seats instead of having to stand through the entire show (here). I just decided that nobody really wants to hear about all four of the times I have gone to see Don Quixote, especially since the lead roles were danced by the same people in three of those four performances. While I am a student at the Vaganova Academy, I am able to get free standing-room tickets to almost any Mariinsky Theater performance, and this is a gift and privlidge that I appreciate and which I try not to waste. I simply try to limit my blogging on the subject to the most interesting and eventful of the shows that I attend. The show that I just attended qualifies as being sufficiently interesting and eventful.

Soon after I arrived in Saint Petersburg, I decided that I would very much like to see Uliana Lopatkina, one of the Mariinsky's best and most famous principal dancers, perform in Swan Lake, my favorite ballet ever. Soon enough, a show was coming in which she was to dance the lead in that ballet, so I went and got myself a ticket. All was well until I learned that I would have a rehearsal on the evening of the performance. Determined to see at least some of it, I hurried to the theater as soon as I had finished, arriving (wearing sweatpants and carrying a bag of dance shoes and a plastic grocery sack with a very sad  practice tutu rolled up inside) in time to see the last third of the ballet (and then I wrote a blog post about it). Glad that I'd seen at least that, I was still determined to see more and asked for tickets when I saw that Uliana Lopatkina would be dancing in another upcoming performance of Swan Lake. Things proceeded to play out like a bad comedy, and, again, I found out just days before the performance that I would have a rehearsal on the evening I was planning to go to the theater. Again, I rushed to the theater after finishing my rehearsal, arrived in a similar state of disarray, and this time managed to see about half of the performance. When I got tickets for the next time Uliana Lopatkina would be dancing in Swan Lake, again a rehearsal was scheduled for that very evening. This time I gave up and handed the ticket off to a friend.

Though there is a ballet or two performed nearly every single evening, the Mariinsky repertoire is massive and they have a lot of different dancers who perform each role. It would be very unusual for the same ballet to be performed each day for more than about three days in a row; you could easily go to the theater every day for a week and end up seeing five different ballets and an opera or two. Thus, the only way to know what shows are scheduled and who will be performing in them is to carefully check the schedule posted on the Mariinsky Theater's website, and then you have to ask for tickets to the performance before they're all gone. The principal dancers must be given sufficient time between each of their performances, so the biggest stars tend to perform, at most, a couple times each month.

My roommate is an enthusiastic admirer of Uliana Lopatkina, and thus the two of us have spent all year carefully searching the Mariinsky's website for her upcoming shows. When I saw that Lopatkina would be performing Swan Lake on April 11, I was ecstatic. My roommate asked for tickets, and I spent the next three weeks hoping that we wouldn't have a rehearsal scheduled for that day. By some miracle, we didn't. I was thrilled.

I'm not entirely sure what my reaction would have been if we'd had a rehearsal scheduled. We have them frequently enough that it would not be an unexpected thing, but that rationality most certainly would not have lessened my disappointment. It's possible, though unlikely, that Uliana Lipatkina will perform in Swan Lake again before the end of June, when I will depart from Russia. I would have been quite upset if I had to leave after having this opportunity slip through my fingers so many times.

I've been waiting impatiently for this night all week long. I've been trying to see this ballet performed by Uliana Lopatkina since sometime last November, so I had a lot of pent-up anticipation, along with a little nagging voice in the back of my head telling me that most certainly we were going to have a rehearsal scheduled at the last minute. That didn't happen, and so I found myself in the theater, buying a paper copy of the program and cracking it open to read the name of the performer written at the top of the list just to make sure I wasn't imagining things.

The performance was everything I could have ever wanted. Uliana Lopatkina has a magnetic energy that pulls the attention of the entire audience towards her. When she came on stage, there was not a single shuffle or cough to be heard from the people watching; it was so silent, it's as if everyone had forgotten to breathe. 

The corps de ballet was nearly as flawless as Lopatkina herself. There is a good reason why the Mariisnky Ballet is known for its corps de ballet and renowned for performances of ballets like La Bayadere and Swan Lake that rely heavily on a strong corps de ballet, and this performance was exemplary of that. The Vaganova Academy, where most of the Mariinsky Ballet's dancers received their training, is responsible for nurturing dancers who may some day be ready to dance in Lopatkina's place, but also for readying the students for the many years that they will likely spend standing in the orderly lines of the corps de ballet. One of the required classes in the final year of study is a corps de ballet repertoire class, which involves learning several corps de ballet parts from classical ballets and then performing them in an exam for which grades are assigned. Everyone can debate as they wish about what ballet company is the best in the world, but it would be extremely difficult to argue that there's a company with a better corps de ballet than the Mariinsky's.

Thank you for listening to me go on and on about another visit to the theater. I just  felt that this was a story worthy of being told.