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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Siberiano Tetraglot Senior Member Russian Federation one-giant-leap.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6499 days ago 465 posts - 696 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English, ItalianC1, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Serbian | Message 9 of 17 18 February 2007 at 5:28pm | IP Logged |
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I've seen a link to the Princeton's course of Russian and of curiosity took a glance at it. It seemed quite brief for me: a rule and very few excercises. Isn't that too little? Does it require additional material? Maybe it is just not for self-learning?
P.S. Do I overestimate the difficulties in learning Russian? :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| PeDePano Triglot Newbie United States Joined 6488 days ago 23 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Turkish, Russian, Italian | Message 10 of 17 06 March 2007 at 12:09pm | IP Logged |
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Im starting up Russian and my mouth doesnt seem to want to pronounce these words!
Im using the Pimsleur tapes and Im having serious trouble with the pronunciation. I guess I just have to keep practicing! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6709 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 11 of 17 06 March 2007 at 5:14pm | IP Logged |
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I will be using a grammar to learn the rules of Russian and a two-way dictionary to learn the words, and when - and only when - I have enough words to get something out of authentic texts I will start reading profusely. I have already heard quite a lot of spoken Russian without paying much attention, but I will only start to listen, think and speak the language when I already can read a bit of Russian, and the details of the pronunciation will also have to wait.
This may be different from the recommended order of things, but I did it the same way when I began learning Italian and Spanish long ago, and I survived. Besides I haven't found a textbook that I liked, and the thought of following a standard course with a teacher and other pupils to distract me gives me the creeps. Edited by Iversen on 06 March 2007 at 5:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| EllenMarcus Newbie Great Britain Joined 6466 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: Russian | Message 12 of 17 10 April 2007 at 2:46am | IP Logged |
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Hi, I studied with www.greenowl.ru. They have free materials on grammar and lietrature texts on their website. So I can recommend it. When I wrote them last time they told they are going to place some special tables on russian grammar so they are enlarging.
I didn't hear 'WET' consonants before I came to Russia. It reminded me of when I studied Estonian - there were short, long and superlong vowels - and only after a month in Estonia you start to hear them - from time to time. So my general recommendation is - visit the target country and find local friends! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6443 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 13 of 17 13 April 2007 at 3:04pm | IP Logged |
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The alphabet isn't bad. I've never studied Russian and I still learned the Russian alphabet just because I thought it looked cool :) Haha I'm a nerd.
Seriously tho, as someone else said, once you learn the alphabet, it will become second nature to you and this will be a big confidence booster. I like the suggestion of "reading" a newspaper article. I did this with Korean, too. I had no idea what I was reading, but I was still "reading" it out loud. And one of my books had the Korean script along side English transliteration, and English transliteration of Korean is horrible (there are a few ways to do it, and they're all horrible), so once I learned to read Korean I could ignore all the English stuff, and it boosted my confidence, too. Plus it's fun to practice writing. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| MarkTime Newbie United States Joined 6425 days ago 30 posts - 29 votes Studies: Russian | Message 14 of 17 30 April 2007 at 2:38pm | IP Logged |
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I cannot wait for the website owner to announce he's mastered Russian! I want to finally hear from someone who has mastered it, rather than people just starting. And from someone who didn't move to Russia first to learn. Because for those of us without the option to go to Russia...and want to master it, some guidance would go a long way. I have studied Russian for the past 5 years. Admittedly the first 4 years I didn't put in a big effort, and that wasn't my fault, the market is flooded with books about learn in 21 days, or some such. Let me tell you learning Cyrillic was super easy, so learn it, be done with it, forget about it...if you are stuck at that point, you are stuck at the very first step of a marathon journey. Everyone once in a while I test my vocabulary. I know about 5000 words now. I took 4 years to learn the first 1000, and the last year I learned the last 4000...again, finally realizing I needed to learn more. I can speak commands. I cannot form any complex sentence. I can understand if you use my 5000 words, but most likely, I cannot understand you (fluent speaker) at all. Since everyone is offering their own guesses, my latest guess is you need to know about 10000 words, probably 20000, then you know enough to start grasping the grammar rules. It's hard to pick up rules on words that you don't know...I have bought an extensive collection of DVD's (about 50)...only one of the DVD houses does Russian subtitles, but they have a lot of films...but for me reading has become the best source of new words. Eralash is a children's comedy tha that has simpler words...I can now pick out some of the jokes, again, if I know those words.
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| MarkTime Newbie United States Joined 6425 days ago 30 posts - 29 votes Studies: Russian | Message 15 of 17 30 April 2007 at 2:43pm | IP Logged |
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Guys, I also want to tell you the Voice of Russia is putting out lessons as part of the Internation Year of the Russian Language 2007, effort. Go to ruvr.ru and the bottom corner of the website, you'll find the link. Even though I know about 5000 words, even the first lesson, some of the words were new to me. And, another thing I like, is they make you memorize Pushkin. Nevermind that you need to learn Russian...you may also have a desire to understand the Russian experience. Pushkin is memorized by 1st graders in Russia, so if you memorize the same poem, true, you did it as an adult, but its still a shared experience. Finally...let me say, that I have memorized several poems so far, and in my reading I run across the same words...its a great way to learn words and start moving beyond the 'command' phase of speaking.
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| Jerrod Senior Member United States Joined 6509 days ago 168 posts - 176 votes Studies: Russian, Spanish | Message 16 of 17 01 May 2007 at 6:34am | IP Logged |
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MarkTime, I basically have/had the same problem. Starting with Russian and working at it are very hard. Only when I came to Russia was I able to really begin to master the language.
I once read that you can only get to the 2+ level without living in the environment. This sadly is a fact. Only once in the environment will the language start to become second nature. I do not agree with you about grammar. I only know about 5,000 words myself and my grammar is excellent (though again this only happened in Russia). There is a method called the "10,000 sentences method" (I think). This is probably the best way to build vocabulary and learn the grammar rules. I hear a lot of people say that you only need about 2,500 words to survive. I actually agree with this. However, and it is a BIG however, in order to be able to operate those 2,500 words correctly, and understand them spoken by any native, one must have at least learned 15,000 words. For example I can listen to a native speak and know every word, but I do not know what they mean. This takes years. Lot's of people think I am crazy, but I do believe Russian can not be mastered in less than 15-20 years (I believe Ardaschir said it took him 5 or 6 years to learn Russian) with at least 5 spent in Russia. Russian is a very emotional and rich language, I can think of 15 ways to say "rabbit." (all of which you will hear). I have had many people ask me how I would relearn Russian, and I can't really offer an answer on how to properly "tackle" this beast. I would not recommend Russian as your first foreign language though. If you only know English, probably the best path to learn Russian would be to study German and French. Just my thoughts. Jerrod 1 person has voted this message useful |
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