Learning Cyrillic In Manhattan

I was going to write here about Russian visa applications, but then I realised I was boring myself to sleep, so I'll spare anyone else who's reading this. Suffice to say that there's one final disagreement between the producers of the bureaucratic paperwork and the consumers of the bureaucratic paperwork and I've mailed them both to see if the application of yet more cash can't resolve this. I'm getting a business visa because... no... it doesn't matter. It'll probably be fine. Zzz. In triplicate.

What's much more exciting (at least if you're me) is learning a new language. Russian! I tend to play with languages a bit anyway, getting distracted by new words in French or Irish or whatever, or making Joel wait outside a Syrian restaurant for five minutes while I puzzle out that its name is "Restaurant... of Syrian Food. Oh right." If you enjoy learning a bit of a language, I heartily recommend the Michel Thomas Method. It's a very conversational approach and I like that you don't need to sit down and get your formal learning brain on; you can pass time pleasantly while walking or cleaning your house or whatever.

I've had good results with the Michel Thomas introductory courses before, so I've grabbed the Russian Introduction on audible. This one's a bit harder than, say, Spanish because every word is at least five syllables long and doesn't sound like any words I already know. However, it sinks in after a while, and I now can walk up to a stranger on the street and stammer out "I understand that the cafe is nearby but I don't know where it is and I am hungry" over about five minutes and not have a notion what she says to me in response. Is there any way in which this will be more useful than my previous skill of knowing how to say "cafe?" in a slightly desperate tone and having the same stranger sense the caffeine deprivation and point me in the right direction? It's unclear.

The other part of learning Russian is, of course, getting your head around the alphabet. I love this stuff. Solving substitution ciphers is the sort of I did for fun when I was a nerdy kid, and I'm enjoying figuring out that B means V and H means N and K means K. I found this great site that has a list of English words written in Cyrillic with hints beside each one. You work through the list, translating each word and building up the number of characters you can read without having to look them up. Before you know it, you have an entire alphabet. At least, I assume so. So far I'd say I have three quarters of an alphabet. With luck, I'll get a visa so I can actually use it.

18 days.