Stochelo Rosenberg playing Django’s “I’ll See You In My Dreams” on a replica guitar. Great!
Glorious note for note recreation. They are wonders! The hours they put in really show at moments like these.
The Ambiguous Jambusters - our five-man Bluegrass band at the British Columbia Bluegrass Workshop last week. Hot Club with tenor banjo also happened here and there. Jim, Terry , John, Alan and Dave ( your humble scribe ).
I found it really helpful!
I also agree - it is important to learn the literal translations of constructs. It is what I have done from the start, simply because I felt it more appropriate to translate that way. My teacher always gave me hell for it, assuming I didn’t know how to translate into proper English.
Pronunciation and Cyrillic alphabet crucial
My experience for my first time in Russia was that correct pronunciation and knowing the alphabet were key. I knew about three hundred core vocabulary words and some essential day to day expressions. But I hand’t put in any time learning the alphabet. If I could do it again, that is what I would do differently. In one month my spoken Russian improved dramatically, but my ability to sight read simple words stood more or less still. You need to learn to read the handwritten characters, too. They’re everywhere.
