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Russian for Dummies

  Tags: Textbooks | Russian
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19 messages over 3 pages: 13  Next >>
justberta
Diglot
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5366 days ago

140 posts - 170 votes 
Speaks: English, Norwegian*
Studies: Indonesian, German, Spanish, Russian

 
 Message 9 of 19
09 September 2010 at 11:00pm | IP Logged 
Russian for Dummies isn't comprehensive enough and doesn't use the Cyrillic Alphabet. I
have it but ordered another book instead (Penguin).
Pimsleur is good, I use a transcript I found at masterrussian.net which uses English AND
Cyrillic letters. I also write down the text in my notebook. A good way to memorize the
alphabet.
2 persons have voted this message useful



SeanOB
Newbie
Ireland
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4 posts - 9 votes
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 10 of 19
13 January 2011 at 4:42pm | IP Logged 
Lakkhamu wrote:
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?


Maybe it's too late now, but transcriptions of the three Pimsleur levels are available here: http://masterrussian.net/f21/

Seán
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polyglHot
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Senior Member
Norway
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Studies: Russian

 
 Message 11 of 19
13 January 2011 at 10:15pm | IP Logged 
It is now 4 months since my post as "Justberta" I must say I didn't use Pimsleur much, I
just did a few lessons and gave up. (Not on Russian, just that method.)
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Solfrid Cristin
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Winner TAC 2011 & 2012
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Norway
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4143 posts - 8864 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 12 of 19
13 January 2011 at 11:17pm | IP Logged 
Do the rest of you have a different "Russian for Dummies" than I have? Because mine uses the Cyrillic script for most of what is written in Russian. Oh.Of course. I'm being an idiot. I have the French version. Different sort of dummies :)
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jdmoncada
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Senior Member
United States
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Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish
Studies: Russian, Japanese

 
 Message 13 of 19
20 February 2011 at 5:27am | IP Logged 
I avoided a lot of the Russian books because they did not have Cyrillic. Because I know how to read it, I would rather have the real thing. (Now Japanese, I'm content to use Romaji for now...)

Anyhow, a book I found to remind myself of beginner skills is the Berlitz Essential Russian. It has a good CD with native speakers, and it does have the script and some information on writing. It's a solid resource, in my opinion, and I am glad to have it. I do wonder, however, how well it could be used by a complete beginner as opposed to myself who is refreshing old knowledge.

Edited by jdmoncada on 20 February 2011 at 5:32am

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Dreadslinger
Newbie
United States
Joined 4674 days ago

18 posts - 30 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 14 of 19
03 July 2011 at 7:36am | IP Logged 
To be honest, I'm very new to Russian. I only really started studying it about six months ago and, due to time constraints (I'm a single father looking for employment), unfortunately I can only study infrequently at best.
However, I've been having considerable success with a combination of "The New Penguin Russian Course" by Nicholas J. Brown, and the website www.learningrussian.net . The former has examples of both printed and handwritten Cyrillic and a lesson structure that definitely appeals to my personal learning style.
As far as the website is concerned, there are numerous recorded examples of greetings, conversations, etc. which have helped my pronunciation tremendously, despite having zero native Russian speakers with whom to converse. It is, of course, no substitute for immersion study, but it is definitely helping me build a solid foundation for my future studies.
Hope this helps! :)
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Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
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2096 posts - 2972 votes 
Speaks: Russian*

 
 Message 15 of 19
03 July 2011 at 8:30am | IP Logged 
jdmoncada wrote:
I avoided a lot of the Russian books because they did not have
Cyrillic.

That's terrible. Imagine an English book without Latin alphabet (written in Cyrillic, for
example).
Another terrible thing is that many Russian books teach to pronounce soft consonants
as hard + y. So пя becomes pya as well as пья. пья (much rarer combination of letters) is
pronounced as pya, but пя is not.

Edited by Марк on 03 July 2011 at 8:32am

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5years
Diglot
Newbie
Tokelau
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7 posts - 16 votes
Speaks: English, Portuguese*
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 16 of 19
10 December 2011 at 7:15am | IP Logged 
Марк wrote:
jdmoncada wrote:
I avoided a lot of the Russian books because they did not have
Cyrillic.

That's terrible. Imagine an English book without Latin alphabet (written in Cyrillic, for
example).
Another terrible thing is that many Russian books teach to pronounce soft consonants
as hard + y. So пя becomes pya as well as пья. пья (much rarer combination of letters) is
pronounced as pya, but пя is not.


Do you know of any books/courses that don't do this? I have been using the Princeton Russian Course (+ random resources and podcasts I find online), and I'm worried that I might be learning it the wrong way without noticing. Thanks!

P.S.: I find it really strange that the Russian for Dummies book in French is different from the English version! I wonder why that is, that's bizarre. Or maybe it's just a more recent or older version? The one I had access to one or two years ago is in English and I agree with everyone else - I'd stay away from it if you want something more in-depth.


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