снег, снег, снег, снег!

Had my first Russian lesson this week, and feeling a bit pathetic at how bad I am. But found out something important, that has been confusing me. Much of what I read about the Russian language says that it is easy because letters do not change how they sound in different word contexts (unlike English where pronunciation is all over the place).

But, now I am here, this is clearly not true. Milk, for example, is spelt молоко or moloko, but pronounced malako (with the emphasis on the last syllable.) And snow...snow is written снег or SNEG (I know, sweet!) but is actually pronounced SNEK.  So, now I know that it is only the syllable which is emphasised in a word, which is pronounced correctly. Well I am also finding out that some letters are always pronounced the same; and that others are 'paired' so that one changes to the other when at the end of a word (as in г/к but also в which becomes ф or F when at the end of a word.).

So that must have made it all a lot clearer!

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Handy hints for travelers 1: alphabet

Everyone I talked to before I got here says that the most important thing is to learn the Cyrillic alphabet. They are right. Russian letters are phonetic and only pronounced one way (unlike English) so it is pretty simple. Feel a real fool though, as I painstaking spell out each word, especially as they are often very like the English or French equivalent, for example, стоп stop and старт start.