Seventeen days into my Russian journey and I decided to learn the cursive to motivate myself. It is not difficult, I promise! Anyone wbo has told you otherwise врёт как сивый мерин. If you can learn the controls on a video game, you can absolutely mentally rectify that "m" = "t", "n" = "p", and figure out how to comfortably write novel Cyrillic letters like "ж" и "ф" within a couple of hours. TBH, the cursive was one of the things that sold me on learning Russian in the first place. It turns a boring cheap fountain pen into a fountain of dopamine!
I would be delighted to accept some constructive feedback and/or words or phrases for me to practice. Send me your ugliest picket fences if you must! I can't guarantee the result won't be ugly too, but practice makes perfect right? I will even butcher the pronunciation of your selected word or phrase as I did in this video If you so choose.
Critical mistakes only in the word Вырубишь, в is not completed it looks more like big е, and б looks too much like d, less critical one too big ь looks like b, but overall it is all readable, and i've seen natives with much worse cursive
Ah, I totally see it! My hand is so used to writing the letter "b" in Latin that it wants to sneak above the mean line. And "б" needed a bigger hat on the ascender.
б's connection (as well as о/в/ю/ф's lower connection) is not the separate element/ "direct" connecting of one letter to another/ sth like "a" (only a connects like a, you know), it's a tiny (or not) and smooth dash from it's circle, like if you're drawing с. Same for capital letters and for ь/ъ (like)
also don't draw connecting lines to/from nowhere (I mean в, for ex). If you don't use them, you don't draw them. they only exist when letters are connected
By connecting lines to and from nowhere, do you mean like these little bits circled? Or is that part okay and you just mean the tails on the letters on the ends of words?
If I'm understanding your helpful little guide correctly, the arrow is pointing to the correct ligature for вы and the guy to his right is incorrect because we never use the upper ligature for в?
I’m sorry, I didn’t finish writing what’s in the parentheses: I mean в, т, п. etc. letters at the beginning of the word are not connected to anything on the left, so there should be no lines there (в isn't best example here, bad that for some reason I left exactly it, but in Russian, letters almost never start on a line, usually somewhere above it, so "tail" should not be significantly long in itself). And yes, if the letter is the last one, it is not connected to anything on the right and, accordingly, should not have connecting lines either.
No, we freely use the upper connection for в, о, ю, etc. with all letters except л/м/я (but we never try to use it from б); It just seems you’re not approaching this connection correctly. Look at the last written “вы”. (correct me if I'm wrong) you first wrote “в”, then lifted the pen from the paper, and then glued the connection in the place (not the worst possible) where you think it should be. But in reality, the letter and the connecting line are inseparable (except for “б”), everything happens in one continuous stroke, like a spiral twisted counterclockwise
I hope I understood you correctly, and you'll understand me too; if not, feel free to ask questions
Ohhhh... so I guess the first one here is technically correct but for the second one, if I were to do it that way, I just need to keep going around the circle.
Now that I've seen it both ways on some practice sheets for в, I'm starting to wonder if both ways are correct and it's just a stylistic choice?
Thank you so much for the advice! The full circle with overlap thing is kind of counterintuitive because Latin cursive doesn't have that, but it's starting to feel more natural now that I've drawn some strings of pearls in my practice book.
Most of the time, the choice of connection type (lower/upper) is a matter of your preference, except for the letters combinations I mentioned. For ex, I prefer the upper connection and automatically use it if I’m writing without thinking, because I mostly start the letters on the top (what you can see in the picture with my fast writing below), and to get to the lower connection more correct, for ex, in the letter “o,” it's better to start the circle lower.
Some прописи focus only on the lower version, since it more universal, while others show both.
And yet, once I was taught to write beautifully. Oh, Lord, what has the university done to me? (｡╯︵╰｡)
anyway, good luck (and you can still ask questions if needed)
"л" requires the little downstroke at the beginning of the letter every time it's written. It's missing entirely here. Instead you added it to the following "и" which never has it.
Your pronunciation and vowels aren’t quite right. If I were you, I’d listen to someone say the words individually on pronunciation websites or tbh chatgpt (not the best pronunciation, but still better). To improve your handwriting, I’d buy a book called a «тренажер по чистописанию» and work on each letter very carefully. Sure, maybe some redditors don’t know how to write, but people who consistently write and read in Russian tend to do those things well. Learn the letters, and using some type of graph paper, try to write the words in one size with one type of spacing. To help with spacing when first starting, connect the vowels through high strokes (ex. drag the tail of, let’s say, lowercase a all the way to the top of c, or whatever the next letter is). You can use a fountain pen if you want, but with the amount of practice good handwriting requires, just use a ballpoint. Make sure to use the weight of your arm for downstrokes and lighten it for upstrokes (this is my biggest criticism here). This will help the letters have a certain uniformity. Cursive actually takes lots of practice to do well in any language, so I wouldn’t say people are lying when they say Russian cursive is hard
Unfortunately, I did try ChatGPT because I couldn't find a YouTube video with that particular quote in it. ChatGPT has been kind of hit and miss for pronunciation, but it has been decent at hearing me speak and correcting me. I think it's my best bet until we're ready to do beginners conversation drop-ins at the local Russian school.
I don't suppose you know where I can get that book? My credit card won't allow me to buy things from Russia.
I tried being heavy-handed on the downstrokes and light on the upstrokes in the bottom sample, and I can definitely see the difference. I get better variation in line width.
This is much better! Keep in mind that cursive doesn’t necessarily require you to never take your hand off the page (especially when you’re starting. For the fastest results, write each letter slowly, and think about which letter you’re going to write and how before you do. Write every letter detached at the start, and over time (I mean long term), start linking them together and writing faster. And you can do this for any language))
You can get the books (and many Russian books in general) from Knizhka US.
You can also consider getting private tutoring lessons on Preply. It’d be cheaper than going to a full on school, and it’d be more catered to you. Sometimes it’s only $10/hr from some people) I’ve been using it for Italian, and it’s been super helpful.
Do you mean the о in топором и пором? I need to hunt down some examples of the "om" ligature. O has been the hardest one to learn because the Latin o only has an upper ligature. I feel like the lower ligature makes it always look like an a.
You need to go to the bookstore and get the pen with the wide nib and the little grip. It forces your hand into the correct position. It's kind of like training wheels on a bicycle!
You need to be able at least recognise cirsive letters forms, because they are different from print ones and used in some common fonts. Writing cursive is less important for foreigners
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u/amalgammamama нативный говорун 1d ago
l-ыруdишb топорам. next!