FULL LESSON: http://ruskyed.com/GEO/geo01a.html TRANSCRIPT: -------------------- Rusky Ed here with a challenge. Can you list the five largest cities in Russia? See how many you can come up before the end of the intro song, after which we'll get to the lesson! Most people are likely to realize that Moscow is the largest city in Russia. In fact, it has a population of about fifteen million people, making it about the same size as Los Angeles. The second largest city in Russia is Saint Petersburg and it has a population of about five million. The next three largest cities all have a population of over a million people and they are: Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, and Nizhny Novgorod. Other cities that you might have thought of include: Vladivostok, Irkutsk, Omsk, Volgograd, and Sochi, to name just a few. We begin this lesson with a blank map of Russia which looks a little something like this. As you can see, no cities, no geographical features, and not much information at all actually is shown on the map. All we see is the basic outline of a country which stretches from the Pacific Ocean to Europe. In terms of land area Russia is the largest country in the world. However, in terms of population it is only the ninth largest country. So, Russia has a lot of land, but a relatively low population density. In this lesson we will place six items on our blank map. Listed in Russian these items include: 1. Москва (Moscow) 2. Новосибирск (Novosibirsk) 3. Владивосток (Vladivostok) 4. Уральские горы (Ural Mountains) 5. Тихий океан (Pacific Ocean) 6. Озеро Байкал (Lake Baikal) And here are these places on the map. From west to east we see Moscow, the Ural Range, Novosibirsk, Lake Baikal, Vladivostok, and the Pacific Ocean in English and Москва, Уральские горы, Новосибирск, Озеро Байкал, Владивосток, and Тихий океан in Russian. As already mentioned Moscow is the largest city in Russia, but it is also interesting to point out that Lake Baikal is the largest freshwater lake on the planet and that it contains one-fifth of the world's fresh water. Further, although for the most part the English and Russian forms of the names for these places sound similar, that is not the case for the Pacific Ocean and Тихий океан, oddly enough. And now for two sample sentences: First up we have, Владивосток расположен на восточном побережье России. (Vladivostok is located on the east coast of Russia.) Key words in this sentence include: расположение - location, placement, arrangement восточный - east, eastern побережье - coast, shore, seaboard With these definitions in mind and using the proper grammatical forms of these words, we can see that: Владивосток расположен на восточном побережье России. (Vladivostok is located on the east coast of Russia.) The next sentence goes like this: Мы посетили Уральские горы в течение недели. (We visited the Ural Mountains for a week.) First of all, it should be noted that while the word mountains is capitalized in English when we write Ural Mountains, the word горы is not capitalized in Russian when we write Уральские горы. Also of special  interest are the words: посетить - to visit течение - current, flow в течение - through the course of неделя - week Keeping these definitions in mind and using the appropriate forms of these words, it is apparent that: Мы посетили Уральские горы в течение недели. (We visited the Ural Mountains for a week.) By way of quick review, here are a few words and a couple sentences: 1. ещё (more) 2. вопрос (question) 3. один (one) 4. яблоко (apple) 5. красный (red) 6. большой (big) And now for the sentences: У меня ещё один вопрос. (I have one more question.) У меня большая красное яблоко. (I have a big red apple.)

• published: 01 Mar 2014
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