Wednesday, September 24, 2008
How do you say that in Russian?
I am in search of a Russian/English English/Russian dictionary. I've heard to find one that has the Russian in cyrillic - but I've also heard that there are dictionaries that actually help you sound out the Russian - so you can read it to them instead of pointing out the word/phrase to them. Does anyone know of a dictionary like that?
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6 comments:
The "sound out" ones are pretty useless. They are so limited in what they offer - and even then, we slaugtered the pronunciations so bad that people couldn't understand us anyway. Your best best is just to go to Barnes and Noble or Borders or someplace like that and pick up a Russian travel dictionary. If you know the region you're going to and know they speak Russian, this will do. All the people we met didn't mind at all us just pointing to the word. At least they understood and appreciated our effort to communicate. However, we ended up in tim-buck-three western Ukraine where they only speak Ukrainian. Our Russian dictionary was useless outside of Kiev.
While you're looking for books, I hightly recommend picking up a couple of them on attachment. Building the bonds of attachment is a good one (saved my adoption, actually!) Parenting the hurt child is a good one as well. Or, there are others that are good as well. I haven't read it myself, but I've heard "toddler adoption: the weaver's craft" is also really good. Take a couple of these books with you! They take on a whole different meaning and perspective once you've met your child.
Jill yes, we knew it was our Ella when we saw her picture. God was definately walking with us!
The books: We used a Ukrainian and Russian translation book by Fred Des Chenes. He has an audio tape that helps you pronounce the words/phrases. We found it EXTREMELY useful and still use it to communicate with Ella.
We've got the Des Chenes set and it has lots of good vocabulary to communicate with a new child. They are VERY native speakers, a couple of times I couldn't understand their English pronunciation. But I also am going to buy the dictionary in Cyrillic print and sounds like I need to look for a Ukrainian one also. You might be able to find them at your library if you need to.
I had a red book called "Easy Russian Phrasebook & Dictionary" and liked it a lot. I also bought a Russian/English dictionary at B&N (blue paperback). Both were very helpful.
Don't forget to download the Russian Talk for Children PDF file on the RR group site. (if you have trouble I can email it to you) It is fifteen pages with sound-it-out (Transliteration) and cyrillic. We found this the most helpful in talking with our son. We too only carried a pocket travel dictionary and phrase book and did fine with it.
We used Rosetta Stone, Before you Know It and this:
http://internet.cybermesa.com/~fdd/ua_main_new.html I thought it was the best one by far, but all three really helped us, and I would learn some Ukrainian too.
Kris
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