Well, if you've stumbled across this site, chances are you might be interested in attending the NOFSN Beginner's Russian class. As a fellow Russophile, let me just say RIGHT ON BRATAN. Before you hop on the next slow train to Novosibirsk, however, maybe we should address a few key objectives of this class.
WHY LEARN RUSSIAN IN NEW ORLEANS?
Shouldn't we be learning French? What about Spanish? Is there any reason to learn such a complicated language in a region where it is hardly spoken? Of course!
1. TRAVEL - Over 300 million people speak Russian as either a primary or secondary language worldwide. It is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Now, this may not seem important to your average bike-riding, garden-tending, crawfish-slurping NOLA resident, but anyone with ambitions to go abroad would do well to learn a few introductory phrases in Russian and, more importantly, how to read the Cyrillic alphabet. Every major city from Berlin to Beijing has at least some linguistic tie to the Motherland, thanks to the indomitable efforts of centuries of imperialist rulers. So learn a little, and maybe the street signs in Minsk won't seem so daunting.
2. COGNATES, DOG - Committing to a basic Russian vocabulary will prove useful in learning a ton of other Slavic-based languages. Polish, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croat, Slovenian, Bosnian, Czech, Slovak, Macedonian - all these languages (though belonging to distinct branches of the Slavonic tree) share similar phonetic and grammatical structure to Russian. Look to the ancient Turkic languages of the Uzbeks, Tajiks, Turkmenis, Afghanis, Armenians, Georgians, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz for distant influences of their Russian neighbors.
3. TONGUE WRESTLING - Learning to speak a new language is great exercise for your mouth. Russian contains a variety of vowel and consonant sounds not found in our own language, alien sounds that demand a patient tongue and a discerning ear. Once mastered, these phonetic skills can only benefit as you venture on to newer and more exciting languages.
4. ART, LITERATURE, AND SEDUCTION - There is no denying that Russian literature in translation has impacted most of out lives at least once. Have you ever wondered what the words of Tolstoy or Nabokov might sound like exactly as they wrote them? Learning to read Cyrillic is the first step. Most students of Russian in the U.S. are at some point compelled to honor the rich history of Russian art by memorizing a poem or giving a short lecture - this class will be no different. And just try whispering a few lines in your sweetie's ear. Yeah, your welcome.
5. IT'S POLITICAL - Even if the language is of little use to you, the politics of the Russian Federation damn well should be. For nearly a century, the USSR rivalled our own status as a world superpower. But long before that, the seat of power in Eurasia was never very far from the Volga River. Geographically, the Russian Federation spans more than 6.5 million square miles of the globe and is home to more than 170 distinct ethnic groups. So, whether you want to know more about the inner workings of the Duma, the biodiversity of Lake Baikal, the secrets of the KGB, or how to pronounce Dmitry Medvedev's name at parties without spitting, learning a little Russian is key.
Хорошая идея? Я думаю да!
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