Spanish / Russian: Progressive course of general vocabulary - free course from Stepik, training 23 lessons, Date November 30, 2023.

About the course

The course is devoted to common words that exist between the Spanish and Russian languages. This is a huge array of vocabulary, and in this course it is covered as fully as possible. We are talking about hundreds of words and word forms! You will learn about those words that were borrowed into our languages ​​through different sources, and about others that were common initially, thanks to a single ancient origin. You will not only get acquainted with this vocabulary, but also learn about how borrowing occurs, according to what laws words change, and how to easily recognize them in text or by ear. And most importantly, you can use them in practice, making sure that the laws of linguistics work.

But this course is not just a story about words, it is a journey through time and space. In it you will find both an acquaintance with linguistic processes and many different cultural and historical facts.

What's in the know:

First module: General vocabulary with Romance languages ​​and Latin

You will remember well-known terms and discover new borrowings from Spanish in Russian. Also in this block you will get acquainted with the basic laws of word formation in Romance languages, and see how you can transform words you already know from other languages ​​into Spanish (or vice versa into Russian).
An important part of the first block is borrowings from Latin. Latin gave the Romance languages ​​a huge heritage of vocabulary, you will learn to see and understand it. In the last lesson we'll talk about Spanish's close relatives - French and Italian.

Second module: Greek roots
Everyone knows about borrowings from Latin, but few people remember Greek. But this language gave our languages ​​many roots that we use every day. In fact, Spanish and Greek even sound extremely similar, and you'll find out why that is. And how tightly the language of Hellas has entered our speech.

Third module: Vocabulary of German languages ​​(and other languages)
This module contains words from the well-known English language (which ultimately turn out to be more interesting than they seem), and exotic: from Gothic to Japanese, from Celtic to language Aztecs. A fascinating block that introduces you to the most unexpected words, cultures and phenomena.

Module four: Basics of the Indo-European substrate
The most difficult and interesting thing. The lessons in this module will, on the one hand, introduce you to complex linguistic processes, and on the other hand, appeal to your linguistic intuition. Feel like a language researcher, arm yourself with knowledge, instinct, and go with us to four thousand years ago, when languages ​​were just being formed and there was no Spanish or Russian yet.

What you will learn:

• Learn hundreds of new words and manage their use.
• See the internal form of a word, understand its meaning and the structure of language as a whole;
• Recognize borrowed terms in Spanish and understand their meaning;
• Transform familiar lexemes from other languages ​​into Spanish;
• Create words yourself, focusing on the proposed schemes;
• Don't be afraid of new things in the language you are learning;
• To navigate the morphology, phonetics and accents of the Spanish language.
• Intuitively sense the origin of the word.

What you will learn:

• What layers of borrowed vocabulary unite Russian and Spanish;
• What internal processes occurred during borrowing and how this will help in learning the language;
• Lots of interesting facts about the history of countries and their speech.
• Which cultures and peoples had the greatest influence on the languages ​​of our countries.
• Several hundred new words that you can recognize in the text and easily translate them.

What about practice?

Of course, you want to use new vocabulary right away and apply the laws in practice. To do this, the course has more than 180 tasks. These are not just mechanical training simulators, each task in the course is a short story, which will help you feel the vocabulary, see it within the thematic group, and understand the shades meanings. And sometimes even smile.

Don't be afraid to make mistakes, most tasks have comments that will help you navigate the task. In this course, a mistake is not a failure, but a way to learn something new.

Learning a language is not an easy task and our practice is specially designed to keep you from getting bored. You will find references to culture, books, music, films and even memes, of course (where would we be without them).

Join the course and share the joy of exploration with us. I think we can easily understand each other, because we speak the same language ;)

Linguist, polyglot, musician. Teaching experience: 12 years. Work at the UNIC Institute, Casa del Sol school, language courses Hola, Español. Top teacher of the repetit-center website. I study phonetics and historical linguistics.