Daily Vocabulary. Cannibal Words

Dear friends,

I would like to start this post with intorducing to you a character who is really popular among Russians. This is Эллочка-людоедка, or Ellochka-the Cannibal from a satirical novel "The Twelve Chairs by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeni Petrov. Why the cannibal?

This is how Ellochka is famously described (I am not citing the book, but transalting an episode from the movie, based on the novel).

William Shakespeare's vocabulary has been estimated by the experts at twelve thousand words. The vocabulary of a savage from the Mumbo Jumbo tribe amounts to three hundred words. Ellochka Shukina managed easily and fluently on thirty.

In the episode below you can see Ellochka uttering ho-ho.

More simply, the emotions could have been expressed by the following: This husband's smock can make a gorgeous dress for me, not worse than the one that miserable American is wearing.

Men will become excited when they see me like this. They will tremble. They will follow me to the edge of the world, hiccupping with love. But I shall be cold. 

And now meet Ellochka! If the video is not working, please, go here.

Why did I rememeber Ellochka? Because to actually start speaking, you needn't wait until you have a Shakespearean vocabulary. Even if you level is cannibal, you can enjoy communication and see, how much you can say by a such a short exclamation as ho-ho, for example :-)

Dmitry Petrov, the host of the Polyglot TV project, a professional simultaneous interpreteur and translator, a language teacher and a polyglot, says that according to statistics 90% of all the vocabulary of any person from any part of the world consists of 300-350 words. While the grammar consists of 5-15 level patterns, which are as comlicated as the multiplication table. That's why he is surprised not with the ability of people to learn the language basics within weeks, he is surprised by the years people can waste at schools and universities without being able to speak the language.

So my dear cannibals and savages, I hope you'll find this information inspirational and feel motivated to start or continue learning Russian ;-)

In the posts marked as 'Survival Vocabulary with Ellochka the Cannibal' I will be providing you with the essenatial vocabulary. Right, those 300-350 or, perhaps, 30? words you will need to survive. 

Thank you for reading this post and good luck to you with learning Russian!

PS: I desparately need at least a couple of words from you in the comments:-)