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Russian for Dummies

  Tags: Textbooks | Russian
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19 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3  Next >>
Lakkhamu
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Turkey
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63 posts - 65 votes 
Speaks: English, Turkish*
Studies: Latin, German, Russian

 
 Message 1 of 19
17 July 2010 at 4:09pm | IP Logged 
Hello all! I've been learning Latin for 4 months by "Latin for Dummies" which served me pretty well, and I'm curious if the book "Russian for Dummies" can help me learn Russian. For those who have read it, how is it? I can only order books through Amazon, so it'd be really helpful if you gave me the name of a book (preferably one with audio) and perhaps a dictionary with listed stresses. Thank you!
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dagojr
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 Message 2 of 19
18 July 2010 at 7:05am | IP Logged 
I have not used "Russian for Dummies," but I would recommend skipping it. I have read from several sources that "Russian for Dummies" doesn't even use the Cyrillic alphabet, which to be honest is completely senseless. You obviously need to know the Cyrillic alphabet to read Russian, so why the writers of this book decided to skip it is beyond me.

As for a book with audio, I will let someone else help you with that, since I don't know all of the resources out there well enough to give you a recommendation.

Edited by dagojr on 18 July 2010 at 7:13am

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Lakkhamu
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Speaks: English, Turkish*
Studies: Latin, German, Russian

 
 Message 3 of 19
18 July 2010 at 10:16am | IP Logged 
I learned that my father has the complete edition of Pimsleur Russian. They say it's pretty good, but I'm skeptical about full audio files, as it may impede my ability to read and write in Cyrillic. Is that so? And are there PDF files of the audio so that I can also follow it from there?
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delta910
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 Message 4 of 19
18 July 2010 at 4:18pm | IP Logged 
If you are wanting a different recourse I can recommend Living Language Ultimate Russian Beginner- Intermediate.
I have looked through the course a bit, though I have yet to study Russian. It's a good book to learn from. It uses
the Cyrillic alphabet unlike Russian for Dummies. The audio quality for this series is very good.

Another may be Teach Yourself Russian. It is a cheap resource and also uses the Cyrillic alphabet. I don't know
about the quality of the audio though. I have a Arabic one and it has a lot of English on it, which I don't like, so the
Russian one may be the same.

An online resource, a good one, would be the FSI Russian Course. Link:http://fsi-language-
courses.org/Content.php

If you are in need of an online dictionary I highly recommend word reference. Link:http://www.wordreference.com/
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Lakkhamu
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Speaks: English, Turkish*
Studies: Latin, German, Russian

 
 Message 5 of 19
18 July 2010 at 6:33pm | IP Logged 
And can you say anything about Pimsleur?
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delta910
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 Message 6 of 19
19 July 2010 at 1:39am | IP Logged 
I'm sorry to say that I have never tried the program at all. It's out of my price range actually. If you can get it for a
cheap or reasonable price and feel it will help you then yeah, try it out. I can't see it not helping you.
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whipback
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 Message 7 of 19
29 July 2010 at 9:10pm | IP Logged 
Russian for Dummies is not a terrible book, but it is not the best. The good things about it are: hearing the native Russians on the CD, it explains aspects of the Russian culture, it gives some good words I would have never thought to learn, it was the first book to teach my about aspiration and how Russian has none, and it is a little entertaining.
Bad things about the book are: everything is in the Latin alphabet which is completely stupid, some grammar aspects are explained wrong, and it costs too much for what it gives you (luckily I got it very cheap).

I like my dictionary Russian-English English-Russian dictionary by Kenneth Katzner. It has gotten complaints that it falls apart easily. Some people say they take care of their books really well and after six months the book is falling apart. I have had this dictionary for two more than two years, I do not take care of my books well, and my book is still in great condition. Another complaint is it doesn't have some important words like internet, and I have sometimes looked up words that aren't in the dictionary, but I still think it is a very good dictionary. Plus internet is a beautiful cognate.
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oneplus
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South Africa
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Speaks: Russian*, English

 
 Message 8 of 19
09 September 2010 at 2:55pm | IP Logged 
Living Language is a really good Beginner- Intermediate resource


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