Shadowing Practice: Why is Russia So DAMN BIG? - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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This video was sponsored by Skillshare,
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which is a place where you can learn basically anything you want for less than $10 a month.
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Anyway, let's get to it.
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Russia.
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Here we go.
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Like, this page and this page.
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This is Russia.
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It's huge.
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It doesn't even fit on one of these pages.
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I ripped the page.
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Let's look at Russia.
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But wait, yes, this is Russia,
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but Russia is also this, and this, and this.
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This one country encompasses over 100 languages spread across 11 time zones.
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I mean, the place is freaking huge.
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Countries aren't really supposed to be this big.
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So how did this happen?
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How did Russia become so damn big?
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Countries come in all shapes and sizes.
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You have really small countries like here in Europe,
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the country of Monaco is tiny.
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It's literally two square kilometers,
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like smaller than most cities.
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Now that's obviously an outlier.
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So let's look at a more average size country like Belgium.
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More like 11,000 square kilometers.
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Then you have even bigger countries like France with like 550,000 square kilometers.
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Over here in the United States where everything is apparently bigger,
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you have states that are bigger than France.
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Like the state of Texas is 695,000 square kilometers.
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All 48 of these continental United States are huge by European standards at least.
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This whole continental United States is 8 million square kilometers.
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So you have all these different sizes of countries.
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The The average sort of looks like this.
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And then you have the second largest country on Earth,
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which is Canada, huge.
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But now take a look at the size of the largest country on Earth.
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Russia is huge.
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It is more than double the size of the continental United States.
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17 million square kilometers.
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Makes up one eighth of the total habitable area on Earth and it's almost double the next biggest country on this list.
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I mean, it's mind-blowing.
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Russia is a part of Europe.
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It also shares a beach line with Turkey,
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but then you go all the way over here and it has an extensive border with China and North Korea.
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Keep going and it stretches all the way up here to where you could literally swim from Russia to the United States,
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assuming you can swim, you know,
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like two and a half miles.
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So yeah, Russia is huge.
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It's giant.
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But not that long ago, Russia wasn't huge.
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In fact, relative to empires and their borders,
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Russia was kind of a small fish.
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That's the story I want to tell you.
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A thousand years ago, Russia looked like this.
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A loose group of Slavic peoples who were a growing
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and prosperous society here in Eastern Europe but they had a pretty big weakness.
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And that weakness looked like this.
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These are flat grasslands, which are very easy to cross if you're an army looking to pillage land.
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And that's exactly what a group of horse riding warriors did.
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These guys were the Mongols.
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And they basically used this path of flat grasslands to traverse across Asia and expand their empire.
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40,000 of these Mongol guys on horses with bows and arrows,
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eventually made it all the way here to the Slavic peoples of Russia.
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Here's an image of them invading the cities and burning them down, conquering these people.
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Look how scared these people look.
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I mean, I would be too if 40,000 Mongols on horseback rode into my city.
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Anyway, so the Mongols take over this little block of Slavic people,
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and it really weakens their society.
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It breaks up all the cities that were sort of collaborating with each other.
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And now they're paying taxes to the Mongols,
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like this empire that was from super far away,
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like on the other side of the world.
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But there was one city in this area that was particularly ready to fight back.
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They were quietly getting more powerful.
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This city was called Muskovi or Moscow eventually.
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And it became the regional epicenter for trading fur,
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which is a thing that was becoming all the rage in Europe.
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Moscow was also learning how to use gunpowder and guns and technology from Europe.
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And before long, they were able to punch back against the Mongols,
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whose big-ass empire was getting really big and hard to maintain,
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and it sort of starting to crack.
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And Moscow was there to take advantage of this.
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I mean, let's be honest,
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there's only so long you can keep an empire that looks like this together.
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Way too big.
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I mean, this is the biggest land empire in history,
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but it didn't last long,
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even though they had these badass warriors on horseback.
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Anyway, so yeah, Moscow started punching back.
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They had fur money and they had gunpowder and they were having success pushing the Mongols out and moving east.
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One thing's for sure, said Moscow,
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which was soon becoming the Russian empire,
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we're not gonna let anyone sneak up on us again like the Mongols did.
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And everyone over here sort of chuckled in European and said,
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don't you realize that the only way to keep people out is to have like mountains and water to protect you?
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And the Russians were like,
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oh yeah, you mean like these?
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And the Europeans were like, nice.
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So Moscow, which was just a city,
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but is now becoming the Russian empire,
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starts expanding towards these mountains.
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And soon they have like a nice empire sized set of borders,
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some mountains for protection.
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They have an economy of fur,
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They have technology and commerce.
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They're getting rich.
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Things are looking good for Russia.
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But wait a minute.
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Can we overlay that green layer on the map that shows the super highway of grasslands that the Mongols used to invade?
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Yeah, that one, that one.
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Ugh, look, there's a flaw in the plan.
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Nice try, Russia, but you see that this natural border,
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which is great, has a huge gap of flat grasslands that people can easily pass directly on their way to Moscow.
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So it's the middle of the 1500s.
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Moscow has beat back the Mongols, is expanding east.
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They're doing their fur thing.
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They find kind of a natural border,
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but it doesn't really work.
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So they're still looking for a natural border or water or something to buffer their country to the east.
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And then this terrible guy comes into power.
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His name was literally Ivan the Terrible.
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And he had some pretty big ambitions for expanding Russia.
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He's like, dude, we don't need to stop at these mountains.
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Let's see how far we can push this thing east,
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way past the mountains.
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What he finds on the other side of these mountains is a very sparsely populated land of ice called Siberia.
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There wasn't a lot of people here and the people that were there weren't super resistant to this Russian takeover.
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The main thing that the Russians had to fight against was the cold,
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but with cold comes furry animals who have thick coats of fur,
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which again was incredibly valuable in European markets and that helped fuel this race to just keep going east.
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Is it just me or are they sort of overcompensating?
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Like, yeah, we get it.
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You got invaded by the Mongols and you wanna make sure it doesn't happen again,
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but settle down.
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They just kept moving east eventually they reached the pacific ocean the edge of the world
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but they didn't stop there they just kept going i mean listen this is
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so far away from the original starting point of moscow
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and it started to get to the point where the government
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back in moscow was sort of sending out expeditions not really sure what they were doing
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and what they were taking over
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because they couldn't really like stay in touch with them they were just sort of of hoping for the best.
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After one Russian dude went out on an expedition and conquered some remote city in the Far East,
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a government official back in Moscow said,
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nobody really knows why he did that and to what end.
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There is however, something erotic taking place in the borders of our empire.
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Erotic, I guess that's one way to talk about it.
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But here's the most interesting part to me about this Russian imperialism
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that is very different than most imperialism that I've looked into.
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When the Russians would find a tribe or a people
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or a culture that was very different than theirs because they were so far from home,
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they first tried to negotiate with them and convince them to join the Russian empire.
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If people resisted, it got very predictable imperialism very quickly,
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but a lot of tribes didn't resist and they found it beneficial to be a part of this growing empire.
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So this empire grew without a lot of conflict
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and in the process enveloping a lot of cultures that sort of kept their identity,
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their language, their culture, far, far away from Moscow.
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Because of this, Russia today is,
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yes, this huge land mass,
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but perhaps a better way to look at it is this.
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Russia today is divided into 85 territories.
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22 of these territories are actually called republics.
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They have their own official language,
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their own legislature, and basically are totally independent from Russia,
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except for in international affairs.
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It's like 22 countries within a country,
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all with their own unique style.
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So yeah, while Russia is this,
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there's also other versions of Russia,
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and I wanna show you some of those.
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Stop one, let's look at the Republic of Sakha.
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It's located way in the east and it's huge.
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3.1 million square kilometers.
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Massive.
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This place is in a time zone six hours ahead of Moscow.
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The people here don't look like Putin at all.
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Their ancestors are not from the original Moscow-Russia area.
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And they speak their own Northern Siberian Turkic language as well.
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The capital of this Russian Republic is way up here.
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It's called Yakutsk.
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It's the coldest large city on earth with an average temperature of minus eight degrees centigrade.
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And this whole region is full of these giant holes.
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In these holes, they're looking for diamonds.
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25% of the world's diamonds are mined in this Republic.
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So yeah, this is Russia.
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Next stop down here is Dagestan,
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which borders the countries of Azerbaijan and Georgia.
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The climate here is so different than what I think of when I think of Russia.
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It is hot and dry,
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and people here speak 13 different official languages besides Russian.
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Plus, there's a bunch of unofficial languages.
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And 83% of the people here identify as Muslim,
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which again, like, I don't think of Muslims in Russia,
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but this is Russia.
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It's right next to Chechnya,
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which is another part of Russia,
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which is politically and culturally very much doing its own thing.
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The people here declared independence in the 90s,
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which caused rebel groups to militarize.
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And then there was war and terrorist attacks and people died.
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And Putin may
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or may not have planned a bombing to frame Chechnyan terrorists to then go to war with them
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so he could get approval ratings,
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so he could take over the country and become a full return.
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No, no, no, wait, no,
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I'm not going down the freaking rabbit hole.
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I'm doing one of those fun geography videos where we talk about cultural diversity
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and and like borders and history
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and not this stuff come on just this once can i
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just go into a video without having to talk about the fact
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that some people are really terrible anyway
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so daga stan down here has all these different languages
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and people so different than what i think about
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when i think of russia plus i mean look at this fashion culture okay
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so there's a republic here right on these mountains these these mountains
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that we talked about that were sort of a good natural border,
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but had a big hole in them, the Ural Mountains.
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This is the Komi Republic.
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The main thing about this Republic is it doesn't look like the sort of ice swept Moscow streets
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that I'm used to of Russia.
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This place is known for its natural beauty,
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beautiful landscapes, and where the gulags were,
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the brutal Russian prisons during the Soviet times where they would do terrible things.
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Anyway, there's these beautiful rock formations that are super unique,
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and people aren't supposed to climb on them because there's some legend and it's bad luck,
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but of course foreigners show up and do stupid things,
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and they couldn't resist, and here they are.
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Anyway, this is Russia.
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Okay, a couple more.
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You have this Republic of Kalmykia.
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You just need to look at this place and its people to know
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that this feels very different than what you think of as Russia.
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And yet, this is Russia.
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Mother Russia has been sort of brutal to these people over the years,
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trying to erase their culture.
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But even still, they persist.
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The last one I want to talk about is called Tuva.
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It's down here.
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Here's Putin visiting Tuva a while back.
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This is another place where Russian ethnicity and language is a minority.
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The people here are more related to the Mongols,
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and they speak a Turkic language called Tuvan, which sounds like this.
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So yeah, the upside here is that this is Russia,
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but so is this, and this, and this, and this.
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Russia got really big as they were searching for a border and for fur,
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and they just kept expanding their empire,
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enveloping all of the people and cultures that came with it.
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Okay, let me just be clear about something.
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Russia is giant.
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This video is not 15 hours long,
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and so I was able to give a very brief overview of the history.
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The history is so much more mind-bendingly complicated.
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It's like Game of Thrones on steroids.
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Not to mention, today's Russia is also so much more diverse,
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like a mosaic of cultures and languages,
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that I was able to give a little overview for.
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But I know that a lot of you watching are thinking,
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why isn't he mentioning fill in the blank?
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I want to hear from you.
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What are the parts of Russia that you know about
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that I didn't mention here that are the most interesting or the most surprising,
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that are more different from the Russia that we sort of think of.
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Let me know in the comments.
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I got fascinated with Russia as we did the Navalny video a while back,
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and I'm now becoming deeper and deeper into this place and where it came from and what it looks like today.
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I've never visited and I want to,
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so maybe I can't though because I did that Navalny video and they'll be angry at me if I go there.
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Anyway, hadn't thought about that.
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I'm also a major believer that you can acquire so many skills on your own outside of a formal environment.
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Thank you all for being here and watching.
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Thanks to my patrons for like being such great supporters and lots more videos to come soon.
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So I'll see you all in the next one.
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Bye-bye.
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Why practice speaking with this video?
Engaging with the video titled "Why is Russia So DAMN BIG?" provides a fantastic opportunity to practice speaking English in a dynamic context. The speaker discusses the extraordinary size of Russia compared to other countries, which can help learners understand how to articulate ideas about geography and scale effectively. By watching and repeating the speaker's phrases, you can enhance your fluency and confidence in discussing complex topics.
Moreover, using visuals from the video—like maps and comparisons—can aid memory retention and vocabulary building, making this a rich resource for IELTS speaking practice. You can apply your vocabulary in your own conversations, honing your English speaking practice skills while engaging with the content through a method called shadowspeak, where you mimic the speaker's intonation and rhythm.
Grammar & Expressions in Context
The speaker incorporates several essential grammatical structures and phrases that can enhance your own speaking abilities:
- Descriptive Comparisons: Phrases like "more than double the size" and "smaller than most cities" reinforce how to effectively compare sizes or quantities. Practice using similar structures with other subjects!
- Quantifiers: The use of "over 100 languages" and "one eighth of the total habitable area" are excellent for learning to express quantities precisely. Incorporating such quantifiers into your discussions can elevate the sophistication of your speech.
- Conversational Casualness: The speaker often employs casual interjections and colloquialisms like "I mean" and "you know," inviting you to adopt a more natural speaking style. This can improve your ability to sound friendly and approachable in English.
Common Pronunciation Traps
When practicing with this video, you may encounter some challenging pronunciation patterns:
- “Encompasses”: This word can trip up learners unfamiliar with the syllable structure. Focus on breaking it into segments, such as "en-com-pass-es," to pronounce it correctly.
- “Freaking”: The intensity of this expression can be tricky; the 'r' sound may be difficult for non-native speakers. Practice saying “freaking” slowly, focusing on the transition to the “-king” part.
- Time Zones: When discussing geography, pronunciation of “time zones” can often be flubbed. Make sure to articulate the ‘s’ sound at the end for clarity.
By focusing on these areas while using the video as a resource, you can effectively enhance your pronunciation and speaking confidence in English, making your practice sessions enjoyable and enriching.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
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