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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Tomohiro Octoglot Newbie Japan Joined 4332 days ago 20 posts - 41 votes Speaks: Japanese*, Korean, Galician, GermanC2, SpanishC2, Portuguese, Mandarin, English Studies: Russian, Old English, Armenian | Message 1 of 10 17 February 2015 at 2:21pm | IP Logged |
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How to learn Russian language?
I want to start a new journey learning one more language. This time I’d like to challenge myself with Russian. Here are the resources I expect to be delivered within a short period of time: On resources Assimil, Hugo in 3 months, Oxford take off in Russian, Pimsleur Russian and The New Penguin Russian Course A Complete Course for Beginners. It doesn’t mean that I will necessarily use all of them since I have exchanged language resources with someone who was leaving my country. I have just taken a look at the Pushkin team (Russian 15’ TAC) and also some logs of the current members and they seem to have used one of the resources above, among many others. Assimil seems to be one of the best resources for beginners (at least it seemed to be a good material and it comes with an audio). Penguin’s also seem to be pretty popular with many pros as I have read in Russian TAC’s members logs; however, it has a con that is the fact that the material doesn’t provide any audio. As for me, even if I focus on passive skills, it is very important to have this listening input as I have successfully managed to improve my skills and reach the basic fluency of some languages because of my listening input, among other factors. Aside from the materials listed above, would you recommend me any other better materials? Has anyone here used Russianpod101.com? On Russian pronunciation I have just started trying to grasp the phonetics of the Russian letters just to know which letter correspond to each sound (or sounds if it is applicable), but I cannot differentiate the letters Ш and Щ. In this case what would you recommend me? Would you ignore this fact because I am just a beginner (and therefore it would be a waste of time at the initial steps)? Oral production will be important at mid and long term because I am willing to visit Russia and Russian speaking countries. I also have a friend who is Russian and I am willing to try to send some recordings as part of my future language exchange (we are going to settle a schedule for language exchange soon). Actually she recorded many words containing the letters Ш and Щ, and she said that they are clearly different (clearly only for her ears, haha). И, Ы and Й sound very similar to me as well. I also have heard contexts in which Ж sounds like Ш. I mean, Ж sounded voiceless... Edited by Tomohiro on 18 February 2015 at 1:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jbadg76421 Groupie United States Joined 4377 days ago 51 posts - 92 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, French, Esperanto | Message 2 of 10 17 February 2015 at 5:38pm | IP Logged |
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I'm really enjoying Assimil Russian so far...I think that this course coupled with a good grammar (save it for after you've worked through most of Assimil) will get you off to a good start. For me, the KISS philosophy (Keep It Simple, Stupid) of language courses has worked best...too many and I wind up not finishing any of them. You have to find your own rhythm though.
That's great that you have a Russian language partner, I just found one today. Rather by accident actually...I tried to tell him that I've only been learning Russian for about three weeks, but he didn't seem to be deterred, and it was really fun! And definitely a big help for pronunciation...I've also been starting add Russian-dubbed versions of my favorite TV shows to my daily routine. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4628 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 3 of 10 17 February 2015 at 5:52pm | IP Logged |
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I recommend that you to pay a lot of attention to the pronunciation and make a real effort to distinguish between Ш and Щ, И, Ы and Й. It can actually be crucial for understanding and being understood. To give you just one example: бить means "to hit", "to punch" while быть means to be, so e.g. in the past tense the difference in meaning is only expressed by the opposition between И and Ы.
I don't know in which context you have heard that Ж sounds like Ш, but remember that voiced consontants are always pronounced as voiceless at the end of a word, so муж is pronounced as if it was written *муш. Good look with your Russian studies. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6586 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 4 of 10 17 February 2015 at 6:41pm | IP Logged |
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ш and ж work similarly to s in European Portuguese. it does remain voiced before voiced consonants (муж был), much like the s in Lisboa. the main difficulty is that in Russian this happens to all pairs of consonants.
Same with palatalization. you have n/nh, l/lh, we do this to almost every consonant (though чь, шь and a couple others are just spelling conventions that are not pronounced differently). I think this is basically the difference between ш and щ too. edit: also, English-based explanations of the pronunciation are generally crap. some Portuguese or maybe Spanish-based ones should help? :) Edited by Serpent on 17 February 2015 at 7:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Tomohiro Octoglot Newbie Japan Joined 4332 days ago 20 posts - 41 votes Speaks: Japanese*, Korean, Galician, GermanC2, SpanishC2, Portuguese, Mandarin, English Studies: Russian, Old English, Armenian | Message 5 of 10 18 February 2015 at 12:00am | IP Logged |
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@jbadg76421
Yes, a friend of mine wanted me to exchange language and it will be a great help to me especially in terms of pronunciation. @Ogrim Yes, I have heard words with Ж at the end and it sounded like Ш. Good to know that there is a rule (consonants at the end of a word are voiceless). I am aware that as any language there might be exception to the rules (not necessarily the one you explained to me), but it is a relief that there are rules to help my brain adapt to Russian. @Serpent муж был was a good example. I won’t forget about it. Yes, indeed we have n/nh, l/lh palatalization. So, if I understood what you meant, ш is (hard) and щ (soft) as in the first one is non-palatalized and the second one is palatalized. Yes, any examples in other languages (I know) will help me aside from English. For instance, I have just seen this on Wikipedia: щ “sheer (sometimes instead pronounced as in fresh-cheese)”. I don’t think this example helped me at all. )) Edited by Tomohiro on 18 February 2015 at 1:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4696 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 6 of 10 18 February 2015 at 2:48am | IP Logged |
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The English explanations of the pronunciation are terrible. I don't use them.
3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7145 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 7 of 10 18 February 2015 at 3:25am | IP Logged |
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As to the difference between ш and щ definitely ignore the "advice" that the latter is like 'shch'. Pronounce it that way and you'll sound Ukrainian rather than Russian. See vonPeterhof's post.
I've liked using "Oxford Take off in Russian" and "New Penguin Russian Course". The former has dialogues that make up a rather funny running story/soap-opera. Explanations of grammar are better in the latter but it's a bit of a mystery to me how the author could genuinely think that users could gain that much from the course (especially if trying to learn to speak or listen) when there's no audio. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6898 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 10 18 February 2015 at 7:16pm | IP Logged |
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Believe it or not, but a pinyin chart explained Russian phonology better than any confusing shch/sjtj transliteration I'd seen.
ш - sh щ - x 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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