[la aurora]

fuuuu, it is so much easier to speak than type

Really?! U must be joking But frankly speaking I'm so much with U in this! Typing in two languages at the same time is kinda... *tries to find the word from 'normal' russian vocabulary*... hard. Add the fact that I need to use so much code (making letters bold) that this forum says me "are u mad? go and delete something or I'm not showing this shit!" from time to time lol! And the worst part is that I was born as the person with correct russian spelling. And when I try to write how it sounds, not looks... wooo... it hurts My fingers just refuse to type 'a' when I know 'o' should be written. So sorry if I do mistakes in transcription at times...

BTW, people aren't as bad as they seem to be, and it's also due to the fact that they are people

Can't dissagree, guy! But although this phrase can be interpretated right in the way U did, in my mind it means "ppl do mistakes not coz they are bad. it's just in human's nature" It's my life's motto. As well as "Дураки не дураки, просто они - не ты", "Если махнуть на всё рукой, то можно и не плевать" and "Ошибка в жизни - не беда, беда коль жизнь становится ошибкой"

Lux, U are welcome! I'm glad U enjoy all this *cough* as much as I do...

rachelc, well, I can't say I remember any special rules of russian stress. I'll try to do some research, but as far as I remember there's no exact rule here. U need to feel and to learn by heart (russians themselves do lots of mistake in this). Just can say that 'ё' is ALWAYS the stressed one. And 'я' in the middle of the word - quite often (not always, sorry).

As for Yulia's and Lena's names, they should be pronaunced this way:
Volkova Yul'iya Al'egavna
Kat'ina Yel'ena S'erg'eevna

I also added the way their short names sound (Yul'a, L'ena).
Then there's a form russian will use when asks for the attention of some person or just directs the sentence to him/her. (Yul', Len')
And finally the way Yulia often calls Lena (L'enok).
Huhu... I'm glad U asked as I hope nobody after reading this thread will ever call girls the way they did on those american TV-shows

http://www.geocities.com/nrg2002ru/tatunames.mp3

t.a.t.u. n1 fan, sry... I don't know I never had such a problem as I have russian version of Windows. So, better ask guys who solved this problem already.

V love V
ur russian teacher,
with the mess on her head
from the center of the storm (20-25 m/sec wind is quite annoying when it's so damn cold)