I will learn how to read and write very basic Russian by the end of the summer.

This does not exactly mean that I will know how to speak it. Then again, I can always go to livemocha.com to actually hear how it's supposed to be pronounced.

So far, I'm still struggling with learning and memorizing Cyrillic letterings and argh.

...

[pets her grammar book]

Yeah. Just thought I'd mention this since I've been learning words like kápтa (karta -> map), пáспорт (pasport -> passport), бaнáн (banan -> banana), and the like. It's actually pretty fun! Sob. I'm such a dork. I love the beginning processes of learning to read and write in other languages. Especially when I see words like чáй (chay (? something I read says that aй makes the long i sound. so like chai.) -> tea) and go, "Oh, oh! That reminds me of another language I know!"

I'm definitely going to have dork posts like this with me going, "OH I GET IT!" the same way I did with French and Spanish. Sob.


EDIT: ... vowels of a language prove to still be the harder part of them. Stupid vowels.
.