I'm willing to trade time teaching either Hebrew or Yiddish in return for lessons in Russian.

If anyone is interested, please let me know.

Thank you.

Your modern hebrew is fluent?

Sure is.

I think you should ask inty. His hebrew sucks.

why do you want it so badly? just curious.

i don't have time to teach and wouldn't even know how to, but maybe we could have a subforum or a thread ofr that and then a few people will be trying to help you?

JMHO, language instruction works best face-to-face, where you can hear proper pronunciation and interact with and ask questions of your tutor. With Russian though, he could at least pick up the basics from teaching materials, and then find someone(s) to discourse with in order to polish it (try doing that with yiddish, and see what happens ).




(I would've suggested you too, but figured you were busy. But anyways )

of course, one-on-one is irreplacable, but maybe it would be at least the beginning/something...

to you, too

The pronunciation is going to be really hard at first, with the vowel reduction, palatalisation, and the dreaded ы. Wikipedia has a lot of audio files that are helpful for beginners. Good luck.

Yeah, tell me about it *shudder*. I'm never going to get that one right. (One night I was practicing with a friend for hours to get the word Gribы right...)

Maybe just ask if there's anyone interested in tutoring you in Russian, and then you can work on figuring out what's a fair exchange. Finding someone who's able and willing to tutor AND is in need of and interested in your lessons in Hebrew/Yiddish is only stacking the odds against you.

I realize that, but I don't have much else to offer.

Your undying gratitude?

Doesn't buy much nowadays, but it helps to make a list of everything you're good at, then see if it's something you could offer in exchange. Examples would be drawing (art lessons), cooking (lessons or actual food/meals), web or graphic design, familiarity with certain school subjects or computer programs, etc. When I started out with web design, I did a lot of bartering through CL in order to build my portfolio and get something back at the same time; it usually works well as long as both parties understand exactly what the exchange is, going into it.

Probably the best way to practise ы is to do so in front of a mirror. It's a vowel so all you have to do is pay attention to the lips (you want them to be unrounded, and how wide the mouth is when you make it. The best way to think of it is like an [i], just a little bit farther back.

okay thanks. but I still need someone there that knows what its supposed to sound like.

I already told you, look around on wikipedia. There are good external links as well as plenty of internal ones:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm.../RU-alfavit.ogg (the whole alphabet)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Mysz.ogg (Yes, I know this is Polish, but Polish y is the same as ы)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...unded_vowel.ogg (the vowel in isolation)