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Cordelia’s RUSSIAN | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5840 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes  Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 1 of 19 05 August 2009 at 12:45am | IP Logged |
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I plan to learn the "logging techniques" from experienced log-keepers like Iversen, Fasulye, Lizzern, Tricoteuse and Jiwon. But here is the first entry to avoid procrastination.
--------------------------------------------------------- For a brief period in school I studied Russian, but I dropped it for being too hard. Frankly, this is a sad trend with me. But now I'm making a comeback! This time I will not quit and I do not care if I am the slowest dumbest learner in the world, or on this forum. I will hang in there no matter what. I plan to stick with it for at least a year, then realistically assess my progress. My immediate goal is to be able to understand a simple article in a popular magazine and watch a Russian comedy film without subtitles. At some point I'd also like to take a (long) holiday in Russia Among other places I'ld like to visit are Vyborg in Russian Karelia, Viktor Tsoj's grave, Jaroslavl, Vladimir, Kalmykia's "City Chess" and a traditional Russian sanatorium. Other Russian-speaking destinations that have always fascinated me are Samarkand, Bokhara and Alma-Ata in Central Asia. Luckily an old friend of mine is also interested in Russia and willing to come along although she does not want to learn the language. This trip will be the first real test of my skills. One day I'd like to be able to put "Russian" as a spoken language on my CV but I realise this is a distant goal. Every journey starts with the first step. * I have entered 500 words into "Anki", including sounds and pictures where needed. * My iPod is loaded with Russian podcasts, courses and music. * I've purchased the standard Swedish secondary school course in Russian with CD and excercies books. * Am just about to order a grammar book. I have no experience of studying a language on my own, without daily exposure to the language. I'll be grateful for advice and support. What scares me the most about Russian is the grammar: Verbs and adjectives. Other perhaps more manageable challenges include confusing word order and tongue twisting consonant-sequences. But this time I do not need to worry about my grade average, crazy teachers, exams or any of the other things that have put me off language learning in the past. I plan to (mostly) enjoy this. Edited by cordelia0507 on 14 August 2009 at 12:19pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5840 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 2 of 19 05 August 2009 at 12:58pm | IP Logged |
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Anki is an awesome tool and the guy who's written it is a real hero of the language-learning world. I'm finding it incredibly helpful. It becomes almost like a race to get through the cards. I am using Anki's website to synch between my laptop and home PC.
Spelling in Russian is not as easy as one might first be fooled into thinking. For instance: Sometimes a "Я" appears where I was expecting an "e" or an "и". I often can't remember whether to use "Ы" or "и". Some consonants aren't what they sound like they ought to be either. (This problem, I've found, occurs if you learn the word by hearing it before spelling it.) I'm still not fully clear of how soft / hard sign really works. Although I am beginning to know where to "expect" it, I often don't hear any difference in pronouciation at all. Edited by cordelia0507 on 05 August 2009 at 1:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6472 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 3 of 19 05 August 2009 at 5:29pm | IP Logged |
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When you get to learning Esperanto, be sure to download the "Esperanto 101" shared Anki deck. I created it based on the most basic words a beginner should learn, sorted roughly into categories, and I compared my list to the magazine Kontakto's list of recommended word roots for texts in easy Esperanto. That way I'm sure I didn't forget anything really basic. The file includes related words and sample sentences for every entry.
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| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5840 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 4 of 19 06 August 2009 at 2:25am | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the tip Sprachprofi! It's amazing that you made the deck because I had actually already found it! But I did not know that you had created it!
On a long boring train journey I scoured the net for the best Esperanto resources and this deck was my best find apart from Lernu of course. It's a small net, lol! I'll work my way through it and keep updating the log. I haven't started yet, but the deck is a perfect complement to Lernu. ------------------------------------------------------------ ------- THe trouble with my language learning ambitions is that RUSSIAN IS A MONSTER of a language. I had no idea! It's so complicated that it makes it hard to work on anything else... I really ought to study German too (more on this later). But Russian "eats up the time". And what about Esperanto, this lovely language? How am I going to fit that in? RUSSIAN CULTURE: Below, Viktor Tsoj who was an amazing singer (and person) in the Russian group Kino --- link to his last hit ever, Kokoschka. He died in an accident in 1991 and this song was released by the band after he died. I need to update my knowledge of Russian music but in the meantime I've loaded my iPod with old Kino, DDT and Nautilus hits and I still love them. If you have any contemporary Russian music tips, please tell me! 
Edited by cordelia0507 on 06 August 2009 at 10:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Jiwon Triglot Moderator Korea, South Joined 6438 days ago 1417 posts - 1500 votes Speaks: EnglishC2, Korean*, GermanC1 Studies: Hindi, Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 19 06 August 2009 at 7:10am | IP Logged |
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I'm pleasantly surprised to find you have started a log, and even more surprised to find my name along with other great polyglots of this forum. Gee, I'm really flattered.. *blush*
May I ask, why did you decide to study Esperanto? I'm just a bit curious, because I also studied Esperanto for a while and then gave it a break (which is still on-going, thanks to my laziness). Surely enough, it's a lovely language with harmless intentions and amazing community, but I'm trapped deeply in this trap of German that I don't have much time for any other language. :( PS - I would be delighted to see how your German journey is going.. :) Jiwon 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5911 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 6 of 19 06 August 2009 at 9:39pm | IP Logged |
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I am both flattered and surprised to have been mentioned here... Cue blushing and mandatory Jante Law talk. All the best with your Russian, Cordelia - one morning in the less-distant-than-you-think future you will wake up knowing you speak absolutely fabulous Russian. Enjoy yourself on the way there :-)
Liz 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5840 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 7 of 19 06 August 2009 at 10:24pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks Jiwon! Great that you stopped by! I'll get back to the topic of German soon..
To summarise the situation: It's frankly almost embarrassing for a Scandinavian person not to be able to speak German. Almost all well educated Swedes can speak it to some level. I have always liked the sound of German, Quite a lot of it is completely intelligeable to a Swedish person. However I never studied it at school (big mistake). In order for my existing knowledge of German to become useful I must learn German grammar which glues the speech together. That's where I'm lacking (seriously). More soon on Esperanto... ! ----------------------------------------------------------- RUSSIAN: I did +-50 words on Anki. Trying to build up a vocabulary of nouns and verbs. I wish I could get the graphing/reporting functionality to work in Anki so that I could see how much work I'm actually doing. At the moment I am just trying to get through my 500 currently loaded words as fast as possible. I also visited Tricoteuse's blog at http://littlang.blogspot.com and listened to her Russian mini-podcast. She sounds great and she is an inspiration to me. On my iPod I listend to Tatiana Lyon's "Easy Russian" podcast. She interviews people about everyday things and tries to keep it simple and uncomplicated. She explains everything that's been said and speaks clearly and slowly. Her podcasts are at: http://www.russian.mypodcast.com/ GERMAN: Nothing :-( ESPERANTO: Nothing.... Edited by cordelia0507 on 06 August 2009 at 10:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5840 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 8 of 19 07 August 2009 at 8:14pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the encouragement Lizzern! :-) I'm stopping by your log later to see how it's going..
------------------------------------------------------------ - RUSSIAN: My almost 1.5 hour commute is very handy for studying, the problem is finding energy after a stressful day. However I am leaving this job very soon, so not much longer.... 40 new words in Anki today, and my biggest challenge is spelling. I keep having to re-do the words because I can't remember the spelling. I was listening to a course called "Pimsleur Russian" but it is sooooooo slow. Even after 30 lessons or so, they are still exchanging greetings and saying where they come from. Whereas I wish they'd drop that and do a lesson on the concepts of Russian grammar. The Swedish course on the other hand is on speed... After three lessons they are discussing university courses and the traffic situation in Moscow. STUDY TECHNIQUES: I have no CLEAR approach to how to study yet. I am trying my wings and checking different approaches (but with a strong focus on Anki and listening to Russian on my iPod) These methods are portable and require only minimal brainpower... Later on it would be nice to follow some kind of methodology. I've been skimming through the techniques discussed at Iversen's Multiconfused log and they are very interesting. Whatever he's doing is surely worth trying. When I have more time I'll read the whole thing properly. Iversen mentioned a handwriting exercise involing multiple columns and colourful pens. At school I used a multi-column approach whereby I typed the new words in INK, then practiced with PEN in the adjoining column. That way I could erase the words I got wrong and carry on until the whole column came out right. I recall this being quite a killer method. quite efficient for a very lazy teenager like me because it didn't take long to memorise new words at all. Another thing I tried a few times was mindmaps. It's FANTASTICALLY efficient, you practically never forget things from a mindmap. However they are also very distracting, and it takes quite a long time to make one compared with slugging through a sheet with columns. But in the high-tech computerised world these manual methods seem outdated. Tonight I'll go for a long walk and listen to some more Russkij on my iPod. This is a random picture from "City Chess" in Kalmykia in Russia. I really want to go there... It's like a Chess theme park.  Edited by cordelia0507 on 07 August 2009 at 8:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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