Well, our nomadism at the beginning, probably some kind. I don't know, some other bullshit. I forgot how we work. A! Shirt! I need a shirt, I want to be handsome. Ah, damn it. I don't want to just be in a T-shirt. This will go to the bonus. Hi all! Hi all! I am Marina. And I'm Nikita. We are the hosts of the Easy Russian podcast. A podcast for those who learn Russian, no matter what. Yes, and today we have, in addition to the traditional attempts to speak more slowly in the podcast, the long-awa
ited column “Your Letters”. I remember that there was always such a story on Soviet television in my childhood: "Your letters", and they open envelopes and read touchingly. Do I even speak into my microphone? Yes, sorry. Now yes. And before that I said mine, it was just too far. And on the radio there was such a heading “Your Letters”. Yes, and the program "Morning Mail" with musical wishes, also sent by regular mail, it was so touching. Exactly. A rustling envelope from Saratov, for example, wi
th a request to include Alla Pugacheva. But today is not about that. Where do we start, Nikita? Well, we are unlikely to have time to read everything, but we will try to constantly return to this. And Marina offered to start, I decided to push all the responsibility onto you, from a message from our listener or listener, I'm not very sure, just, unfortunately, it's impossible to understand gender by name. Anyway, Joy is from China. With questions about attitudes towards China in Russia today, es
pecially after the war began. Well, all sorts of thoughts about Russian cinema. So, I'll quote here, I should, probably, a piece. So. Relations between Russia and China are always complex and constantly changing. I am terribly interested in how Russians now relate to China, especially during the Russian-Ukrainian war, and how often you can, for example, see a Chinese student or student in a Russian school. Interesting in general, actually, a question, by the way. I completely forgot about this p
art. I can start from the end, answer, because I would not undertake to talk about Russian-Chinese relations. It seems to me that this is not my profile a little. But I read something, but it's not that I'm an expert here. As for Chinese students, I can speak from my own experience. I studied journalism at Moscow State University. Deciphering the abbreviation in my head now. Thank you. And we had quite a lot of Chinese students there, students from China, but they always kept aloof. And sometime
s they went to our general lectures, but they always had separate seminars, and they had separate groups. And it turned out that there were a lot of these students, but it was completely impossible to interact or talk with them in any way. Sorry, I got distracted by the frame. Everything is fine? Oh, I thought there was something wrong with the camera. No, it's me with myself. Fine. Here, it was impossible to interact or talk with them, because they did not speak Russian and did not speak Englis
h very well. Or maybe they were just embarrassed to speak English. But in any case, there was very little interaction between us. Although they always looked very interesting, and I was personally curious to talk with them. And as if I made some attempts, but they were quite unsuccessful. Fine. I didn't have Chinese students at school when I was a kid. But I remember very well that by the time we were in high school, they began to convince us all that we must definitely start learning Chinese, a
nd this is the future. But here we must admit that, apparently, the teachers really understood something in their field. Because I remember myself very well as a teenager, and for me everything was English and America. A little more, perhaps Japan. because there were a lot of Japanese household appliances flooding into the market. And China seemed like some kind of very unexplored, strange territory, in which it was somehow even somehow strange to seriously put some of your efforts. Well, a teen
ager, I mean. Learning Chinese, I remember, was considered somehow very extravagant. And, it would seem, this is a huge country, gigantic, we have all the time ... Before my eyes was, I don’t know, Chinese technology, some kind of Chinese fashion, mostly Korean, but thanks to Aliexpress it's actually Chinese too. Aliexpress, after all, well, there are a lot of inventors. But, apparently, well, plus, as if Russia was often compared with China, especially in recent years due to the fact that the R
ussian state is trying to somehow limit, let's say, free access to the Internet. If I may say so. Well, like. This did not actually happen, but there was a lot of talk about the fact that a Russian firewall was being built. But no matter how he built it. For now, at least. Until built. Well, how would they build it, build it, but so far we do not see it working at full capacity. No, but if you want to say that Russia cosplays China, then again, like a chicken and an egg, here you need to determi
ne who cosplayed whom and in what order, because, of course, there was a lot in common between the Soviet Union and China in in all senses, and now it seems that this commonality is returning to some extent again. As it were. Oh, yes, I also wanted to tell that piece about what else China was for me in my childhood, after all, Marina and I have a little childhood in different periods, I have to remind, with regret, for me, for myself. In my childhood it was still clothing markets. Huge clothing
markets. These are even, rather, such hangars on the outskirts of Moscow, in which, it means, there were simply thousands of thousands of things. And we used to go there to buy a jacket, or jeans, or something else. And this abundance of Chinese speaking a language I don’t understand, so mysterious, mysterious, of course, it fascinated, but it was absolutely not clear why you really need to learn Chinese, because it seems to be pure exotic. As practice has shown, it soon became clear that yes, t
he prospect of learning Chinese was even for the most rational people, for the most practical, for the most profit-seeking people. Because yes, it turned out to be huge trade and cultural communications. And those who still went to learn from my peers then a long time ago the Chinese language, they had a great career. So here it is. Yes, by the way, it's the same with my friends. For example, when I worked for a major publication, I did several projects about China. In general, I made quite a lo
t of journalistic materials about China. So are you an expert? What are you? Well, no, I was the editor, but Misha, with whom we did this, he is really an expert, he is a Sinologist, a remarkably smart person in general. He no longer works as a journalist. Perhaps, just because he is very smart, he left this profession in time. Let's cut this part out. So. Nikita, don't cry. I'm not crying. I'm nervous. OK. So. Yes, I did it with my colleague who was an expert Sinologist. And we made a series of
projects about the Chinese army, about ... about what else was there, Lord? About the political system of China, about the regions of China. That is, in principle, I learned a lot about this country. And I also did a project about Chinese... about business with Chinese tourists in Russia. Shadow business. I won’t talk about all this now, because there are too many details, but just here are fanfacts from my memory. I wanted to tell you about the case, about our subscriber, when a few years ago,
our subscriber from China wrote to us in Moscow, who came for a short time on some business and wished to just meet and talk. However, this young man from China turned out to have such a brilliant Russian language and so much self-confidence that he delighted me terribly that he undertook to shoot an issue with us. And not just a release, but a street interview, a poll on the street as a presenter. And he himself approached people and asked what do you know about China and the Chinese? This rel
ease, by the way, is, I even put a link to it in the description. It turned out absolutely brilliant, and the fan fact is from there, that we, quite by accident, among other passers-by, recorded the great Russian journalist Ilya Barabanov, whom we met there, but it seems to me that he did not recognize me, and he does not know anything about the fact that he participated in Easy Russian. Here, just in case, I will give out this secret, so look, this is a very good release. The second part of our
question is about cinema. Yes. About how Russians watch movies. Well, before the war. to full scale intrusions. Yes. We watched movies in the same way as most Europeans, most likely. Netflix, of course. Well, and other paid services. And other paid services. But in Russia, unlike Europe, piracy was very widespread. Yes. And to be honest, I'm still... Falling back to the old tricks? I fall back on old tricks. I'm not sure you can pronounce it. How little . But no one knows what tricks. For examp
le, one of my tricks... Or who are you, right? Yes. One of my tricks used to be, then I got tired of starting 10 thousand mails. Netflix had a trial period of a month for each new mail. And at some point I had 10 different mails, 10 different e-mails. And 10 months. And 10 months of free Netflix. Wonderful. But this, it seems to me, is some kind of life hack. I can't call it infringement or piracy. This is a life hack, but the main thing is not to forget to cancel the subscription on time. Yeah.
Fine. So what happened now, Marina? And now there's Netflix. I think he was before, to be honest. No? No. Netflix... there used to be other sites that I won't name here. Yes. Because piracy is bad. Wait. Does Netflix directly refer to this Z, the military symbol? I think so. It says Z. And how would this service become popular, at least after the start of a full-scale war. Wars. I had never seen him before. I think I've heard of him before, but maybe I'm wrong. Or maybe I'm wrong. OK. And what
is this? Well, this is the same streaming service, only pirated. It's just pirated content from Netflix. Well, in general, it really is. You know what's funny? You can subscribe there. Paid. Paid subscription to a pirated service. Which will give you the opportunity to watch everything without ads, I suppose. There must be some point in the subscription, otherwise if everything is pirated, then what's the difference? Let's check. I think he's most likely... Netflix.com, he looks the same, he has
a Z badge. It's the same one. Red like Netflix. Here is the same chart. Unfortunately, I cannot enter from Latvia. And why do we advertise Zetflix at all, really. OK. But here it is necessary, probably, to explain that, in principle, paid subscriptions came to Russia officially quite late, whatever it was. For example, well, I remember that all my youth I downloaded music in mp3 from somewhere, from where I had to. And when, for example, the first paid music subscriptions appeared , well, like
Apple Music, which cost a lot of money, I basically started paying for them with great joy. There is Indiana Jones. Now let's watch. Let's finish the recording and rush to watch pirated services. But the fact is that after the start of the war, in principle, the Russians have no way either to use Netflix or any other paid services, or to pay for them. So, in general, in this sense, of course, Russia is rapidly starting to live its own mysterious life behind this conditional cinematic curtain. No
w there was news about how they are trying to organize screenings of "Barbie" in cinemas in Russia, somehow. Having stolen the licensed version, in my opinion, in Kazakhstan, or something. In general, there is some kind of complex super-scheme in order to show new movies in Russian cinemas. And I must say that in Russia in large cities there are a huge number of cinemas, which, it turns out, after the start of the war, and, accordingly, sanctions, in general, they have nothing to show. No matter
how hard the Russian film industry tries, it is not able to produce such a quantity, let alone the quality, of films that such a number of cinemas are designed for, and, accordingly, they are empty. So now all sorts of pirate tricks are being used , and I, in general, can’t advise anything in a decisive way. If we are talking about Russian cinema, there are only a few good observations. I found that Mosfilm and several other Russian film companies, Soviet in the past, have officially posted mos
t of the classic Soviet and Russian cinema on their YouTube channels. And you can watch it quite officially, not, so to speak, feeling like a violator of the law or a thief of someone's money. So for Russian cinema, it’s probably best to go to YouTube now, you can find a lot of things there. Or on Vimeo. Oh yes, yes, it's true. Let's discuss the second question. Come on second. What was our second one? Yadviga Ivanovna Albrecht, a teacher of the Russian language from Germany, writes to us, and s
he writes to us as follows. Dear channel editors, I listened with great interest to your podcast about how the Russian language has changed since the day Russia attacked Ukraine. It was, of course, a difficult Russian language, but on the other hand, on the anniversary of this war, you said everything that needed to be said. Thank you for your frank and correct words. I am sending you as an attachment a text that I wrote about a year ago. Unfortunately, it is still relevant today. The only thing
that has changed is that the Ukrainians who came to us from the east of the country as refugees began to speak Russian as rarely as possible. So one of the reasons to learn Russian is gradually disappearing. Maybe you will be interested in reading my text. Sincerely. Yadviga Ivanovna Albrecht. First, I'm impressed with the name. Yes. It's like... It's something straight out of the 20th century. From letters written by hand on paper. From the classics of teaching. You know, this is one of the cl
assics of Russian linguistics. Like Nora Gal. Yes, here's something... Well, here's Rosenthal. Yes. Something here is direct... Yes. And secondly, I read your letter, thank you for it. And I want to say that it is also relevant for me. It's still hard for me too. Everything that has happened over the past year and a half, and the war, and its consequences, and its consequences, including for the Russian language. And as we discussed a lot with Nikita in the podcast this year, I also rethought ..
. Probably, my approach to the language, in principle, to how I speak it, with whom I speak it, at what moment it is appropriate and inappropriate. So thank you for not losing faith in our beautiful language, no matter what. Because, it seems to me, it is important to recall that the language does not belong to the state, it does not belong to any country or territory, it first of all ... to specific people, it does not belong either ... It does not belong to specific people, yes, it belongs to
everyone who wants to study it, and to everyone who is interested, and it's not something that can somehow be distorted, mutilated and appropriated, so ... yes. I also know that in continuation of our listener Jadwiga, acquaintances, especially foreigners, teachers of the Russian language, often tell me that it’s a big problem now ... In general, it’s a big problem with motivation, much fewer people come to enroll in Russian language classes. And now it is very difficult to go anywhere, because
before, one of the most important tools for hobbies for those who learned Russian was to go on a joint trip with them for a week or two, see the sights, and speak this language in the territory of the language. Accordingly, it is dangerous to go to Russia, there is a war in Ukraine. Belarus is dangerous. In general, I understand that there are still some post-Soviet ... forgive me for this description, republics. Central Asian countries. No, there is also Georgia and Armenia, for example. That i
s, there are countries, former Soviet countries, now completely independent, where they still speak Russian. Therefore, just in case, I will remind you of some options. Yes, you can go to Kazakhstan, you can go to Kyrgyzstan, you can go to Armenia or Georgia. In Georgia, probably, Russian is spoken to the least extent among the above-mentioned countries, where it, as it were, disappears the fastest. In Armenia, for example, the Russian language is ubiquitous, so there are other countries where y
ou can, well, relatively calmly go and practice Russian. So if you are looking for such an option, pay attention to these countries. Our listener Kamil from Poland wrote to us that he passed the exam in Russian at B1, if I'm not mistaken. With which I congratulate you. Very cool. It's very cool, it always fascinates me. I'm not sure that I would pass Russian on B1 now. As a foreigner, at least. I would have given up. Krinzh. Krinzh. Kukozh. You know, a new word is spreading on the Internet? Whic
h? Kukozh. I don't even know which one is correct. What? Speaking of our past. Speaking of our last release. Which? I'm not sure how to properly emphasize, but, probably, if by analogy with kringe, then kUkozh. Why? What it is? But in general, cuckoo, I guess. And from the word "shrink". It's funny that I'm younger than Nikita, and he explains to me how to speak Zoomer. Well, I'm just watching lately. Like anyone who is young, I, therefore, actively follow. Well, it's a joke, of course, but it k
ind of caught on, by the way. That is, that we use the foreign word krinzh? Let's use, then, truly Russian kukozh, apparently, from the word shrink. Although I'm not sure about the etymology of the word shrink. I’ll explain right away, this means, well, in general, to dry. If in its pure form, yes, it usually shrinks something that dries up and, accordingly, from something straight it folds, decreases, shrinks. Well, how, I don’t know, like prunes, yes, if you put the cream in the sun, it is smo
oth at first, and then it, it means, dries in the sun and shrinks, it means, it becomes less and less, so wrinkled. That's it with this word cook, kukOzh, apparently, or kUkozh. So no one explained to me how to put emphasis here. It is proposed to replace the word krinzh. Well, in principle, it is clear. Because you hear something strange, unpleasant, and why are you all cringing like that. Firstly, I want to say that the same thing as with prunes happens to a person, so the word shrinks complet
ely and is very often applicable to people. I use it sometimes. But I do not agree that this is the same as kringe. It's not the same at all. Krinj is a Spanish shame. And shrinking is when you feel like this ... Well, this is an effect. They just called the phenomenon a symptom, it often happens. I propose to leave this discussion until our issue on Anglicisms. Agree. And I wanted to add one more thing to Kamil from Poland, because his last name is visible in the mail. Do I understand correctly
, Kamil, that you are a namesake, perhaps a relative of the great Polish writer Janusz Korczak. If so, it would be terribly interesting to hear your story. Well, in any case, I kind of say hello to Poland and the Poles with great respect and gratitude for this great wonderful writer, a man of a very difficult fate and heroic fate, and his "King Matt the First" so easily saved me from not only krinzha, but from a real kukOzha or kUkozha, which was very much in childhood. This is great, Nikit, I r
eally like this ending, really. Thank you. Dear friends, we, of course, did not have time to parse all your messages, there are quite a lot of them. There are many more messages that are very pleasant, where you just praise our podcast, and it’s very nice for us, it supports us a lot, but it’s like our awkwardness and modesty prevent us from reading these messages, because now let’s praise us for a long time, how wonderful we are . Yes. Scold us, by the way. No. And I'll be interested. Scold, cr
iticize, tell what you don't like. Nikit, you just don't read our YouTube comments. We are scolded and criticized. Scold? Everything is fine. Thank you Lord! And, yes, there, yes, for sure, we are endless traitors to the Motherland, yes, I completely forgot, there are a lot of such comments, by the way. Yes? Yes. And you don't read. Tin. I meant others. Exactly. And how could I forget? Of course, there was a comment that these people, and there the finger was clearly pointing at me, were ready,
which means they could sell anything just to keep their ass warm. And I will immediately say a very important thought, my friends. You are very mistaken if you think that my ass is warm. Neither literally nor figuratively, my ass is not at all warm. I live in a very cold country and in very difficult conditions. And thank you, of course, for that. But my ass endures certain tests so that I can maintain my own civic position. And the only thing that makes your ass warm is because of the fire it's
in all the time, because of the amount of your work. Burning ass and warms me. So I wouldn't wish you repeat the path of my ass. Believe me. In total, we have today ... This, by the way, is a bonus, I think. In total, we have two expressions of the week. The second is a "burning ass" or "ass on fire." Yes! Which means you miss all the deadlines, you're in a hurry, or you have an exam tomorrow and your ass is on fire. So fast you need to do something. Slang expression. My ass is on fire all the
time. But, perhaps, finally, my vacation will give a long-awaited respite to this most important organ of my body. So, it was a very long run, which will go into a bonus. Dear friends, we will return to reading your messages, because we can’t manage to sort them all out in one issue. So keep emailing us at podcast@easyrussian.org and keep recording audio messages for us at easyrussian.fm. And then we will be able to include fragments of your audio, your voices in our releases like this. Yes. Con
tact us at podcast@easyrussian.org. And see you again! Bye! See you! Bye!
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