Finally, immersing

Having listened to German internet radio stations, day in day out, in 2013, I finally made it to the Russian internet radio stations.

I am not quite sure, if I a listening to a Russian mass right now. ?!?

I enjoy decoding what I hear (I switched from the rather strange station to a news station):

Listening to a foreign language that you hardly unterstand is to me like solving difficult crosswords. In the beginning you have absolutely no clue. Over time it becomes less and less obscure and you start to recognise single words.

In the beginning you will probably hear mostly a melody and understand only a few words. My "puzzle" today included journey, friends, tomorrow, listen, lesson, speak, wish, many, twenty, riot, street, now, good, question, surely, eighteen. And no racism. It gets ... funny - ok, probably more ... embarrassing, when you realise, you have interpreted a word SOOO wrong for the whole past hour while they were talking about ... ! Want an example? Take racism. They did not say racism. Not a single time. All they said was Россия, Russia, which  - pronounced Russian - sounds a lot like "racism", especially when you are new to Russian.

It can get very, very annoying when you hear a word have learned half a year ago, but you can't remember the meaning. Lets take четверг. четверг. четверг. Come on, четверг. Arrgh. Thursday. Yes, of course!
I did not find it in my brains but went searching online. "four", forty, forth ... this one did not take too long. Wikipedia is a great source. One leads to you the other, Thursday leads to Friday and you learn that the oil on canvas is butter in Russian. Ok, you probably have to have a love for human languages to enjoy games like these.

I assume you like the sound of the language you are learning. Why else would you learn it? Listening to internet radio stations delivers the joy of listening to that unique melody that defines the foreign language.

In case you are trying to learn German and wish to immerse (I have to admit, I have no clue, how many people enjoy listening to the German "melody") I highly recommend the 3 DEUTSCHLAND RADIO stations: DRadio Wissen, Deutschlandfunk, Deutschlandradio Kultur, available right here.

Good news: 2014 I will take extra good care of you, my dear readers, having Raymond Murphy at my side. Thank you for being patient with me. Punctuation and tenses call me!

 

Happy listening!
Paula