Late day at work...
May. 1st, 2001 10:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpI had a couple of items to translate into Russian today. Surprisingly, I did fairly well with them, and though my abilities in written Russian still fall far short of my skill in English, the daily exposure and the typing practice are beginning to pay off.
I have always been what I call a "physical" learner. That is, I have to know what it feels like to do something in order to learn how to do it. (I know that sounds off the wall, but it works.)
I remember learning to touch-type in Russian in college, on an old manual typewriter. My prof (who was also chairman of the department) was smitten with the idea of building a world-class Slavic Cultural Center in Port Jefferson, NY, and to that end he had invested his life's savings to purchase an old Moose lodge and had enlisted a small group of students to help out in the project.
The typewriter came in handy for typing the several hundred letters that he sent out asking for people to purchase memberships in the Center. As we were trying to make everything look as professional as possible, no photocopies were allowed, so each letter had to be typed individually.
I soon understood that hunt-and-peck was just not going to work; I had to produce more than a letter every hour, so I spent a lot of time learning to touch-type on a Cyrillic keyboard. (Well, calling what I was after "touch-typing" may be stretching it a bit. While I touch-type today, in both English and Russian, in those heady days, my typing - in English - was about 30-wpm using two fingers on each hand and a thumb on the spacebar. My goal was to achieve the same facility with the Russian machine, but I digress...)
I found the key to learning the keyboard was to be deliberate about it and to alternate between looking at the keyboard for the pesky keys ("Where'd they put the hard sign?") and then not looking and concentrating on having the muscles find the keys I did know.
In the end, I actually did learn to touch-type in Russian (fingers on the home keys, etc...the whole bit), but without much conviction. My speed was dismal, but better than one word per minute, which is about what I had started out with. (The one good result of the whole exercise was that touch-typing in Russian eventually led me to follow suit in English, long after I'd graduated and stopped/forgotten how to type in Russian.)
After many years away from the Cyrillic keyboard, I again started to learn to type in Russian when it became practical to do so on computers several years ago. It was hellish, as everyone and his kid sister who used Windows seemed to have adopted a so-called "phonetic" layout that was implemented by installing widely pirated third-party software (surprisingly enough, the Microsoft keyboard layout that I soon unearthed was not phonetic, but "standard," if you don't mind a handful of departures from what most people have come to expect from Russian typewriters, but again, I wander...) Once I had a standard - more or less - keyboard installed on my computer, I had to relearn the whole process.
It was easier this time, and I'd restored my former abilities in no time at all, but I'd gotten lots better with the English keyboard, since college. Today, when I type in English, I literally don't think about what my hands are doing. My fingers form the words I am thinking (albeit sometimes, they get confused, and I have to make corrections).
I am getting there, though with the Russian. Every day, it gets easier. Will it ever become as easy as typing in English? If reading is any indicator, no. After years of effort, I don't think I'll ever read as "fluently" in Russian as I do in English; but I get by.
That's all one can ask for, though. Isn't it?
Cheers...
I have always been what I call a "physical" learner. That is, I have to know what it feels like to do something in order to learn how to do it. (I know that sounds off the wall, but it works.)
I remember learning to touch-type in Russian in college, on an old manual typewriter. My prof (who was also chairman of the department) was smitten with the idea of building a world-class Slavic Cultural Center in Port Jefferson, NY, and to that end he had invested his life's savings to purchase an old Moose lodge and had enlisted a small group of students to help out in the project.
The typewriter came in handy for typing the several hundred letters that he sent out asking for people to purchase memberships in the Center. As we were trying to make everything look as professional as possible, no photocopies were allowed, so each letter had to be typed individually.
I soon understood that hunt-and-peck was just not going to work; I had to produce more than a letter every hour, so I spent a lot of time learning to touch-type on a Cyrillic keyboard. (Well, calling what I was after "touch-typing" may be stretching it a bit. While I touch-type today, in both English and Russian, in those heady days, my typing - in English - was about 30-wpm using two fingers on each hand and a thumb on the spacebar. My goal was to achieve the same facility with the Russian machine, but I digress...)
I found the key to learning the keyboard was to be deliberate about it and to alternate between looking at the keyboard for the pesky keys ("Where'd they put the hard sign?") and then not looking and concentrating on having the muscles find the keys I did know.
In the end, I actually did learn to touch-type in Russian (fingers on the home keys, etc...the whole bit), but without much conviction. My speed was dismal, but better than one word per minute, which is about what I had started out with. (The one good result of the whole exercise was that touch-typing in Russian eventually led me to follow suit in English, long after I'd graduated and stopped/forgotten how to type in Russian.)
After many years away from the Cyrillic keyboard, I again started to learn to type in Russian when it became practical to do so on computers several years ago. It was hellish, as everyone and his kid sister who used Windows seemed to have adopted a so-called "phonetic" layout that was implemented by installing widely pirated third-party software (surprisingly enough, the Microsoft keyboard layout that I soon unearthed was not phonetic, but "standard," if you don't mind a handful of departures from what most people have come to expect from Russian typewriters, but again, I wander...) Once I had a standard - more or less - keyboard installed on my computer, I had to relearn the whole process.
It was easier this time, and I'd restored my former abilities in no time at all, but I'd gotten lots better with the English keyboard, since college. Today, when I type in English, I literally don't think about what my hands are doing. My fingers form the words I am thinking (albeit sometimes, they get confused, and I have to make corrections).
I am getting there, though with the Russian. Every day, it gets easier. Will it ever become as easy as typing in English? If reading is any indicator, no. After years of effort, I don't think I'll ever read as "fluently" in Russian as I do in English; but I get by.
That's all one can ask for, though. Isn't it?
Cheers...
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no subject
Date: 2001-05-01 08:48 pm (UTC)One of the best things they did at my high school was offer us six weeks of "personal typing" - just enough to learn to touch type reasonably well. It made college papers bearable.
If Microsoft's Cyrillic keyboard layout is a bit off standard, so is their English keyboard layout. IBM had the world's best English typewriter keyboard layout with their Selectric, then they totally screwed it up when they did the PC keyboard. They fixed some of it (the tiny Return key, for example) but the layout became Microsoft standard. The Control and Caps Lock keys are still reversed from where they belong, but everybody gave up complaining about it a long time ago, and newbies don't know any different.
no subject
It was one of those old-timey houses that had servant's quarters and at least a half dozen bedrooms. You halfway expected the front door to open at any time and have the characters from "Life with Father" burst into the house. A spiral staircase led to a third floor "widow's watch," from where you had a panoramic view of Port Jeff harbor.
The prof had grand plans for a restaurant (or at least a cafe...that's what the former lodge's bar was going to become), a library, and a small theater. Most of those plans were actually realized, but the man had a penchant for attracting only the wildest, most far-out, and most controversial "culture" to the Center, and I think it went away after a few years.
I recall spending a lot of time there, helping with the renovation, but then, as now, my primary function was as wordsmith.
Cheers...
no subject
Date: 2001-05-01 09:58 pm (UTC)It's just an interesting language to me, and I've had some exposure to it in my Russian Sociology course this semester. I might look into learning more of it sometime.
Was it very difficult to learn from English? Has knowing it been very useful in the job market? Obviously your current job owes a large part to the knowledge, but did many employers see it as a plus?
It's hard
Date: 2001-05-02 06:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2001-05-02 07:46 am (UTC)Cheers...