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senorsmile 2012 TAC Team Sputnik log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| senor_smile Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6384 days ago 110 posts - 115 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Russian | Message 1 of 9 28 December 2011 at 8:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am so excited to kick start my Russian that I've already begun a full force learning
routine. Introduction- My name is Shaun. I go by senor_smile here. I have been fascinated with all things foreign for as long as I can remember. I first picked up a russian book when I was around 8. This is also when I learned to say and write the Greek alphabet. I thought that everyone learned the Greek alphabet when they were little, so I tried having contests with adults to see how could say it the quickest. I soon found out that no one actually new the whole thing. I started learning Latin at 10, using a book I checked out from the library. I ended up losing that book, paying for it, then finding it behind my bed or something. I started Spanish at 12, when I met this crazy kid who barely spoke English whose family recently relocated from Mexico for a job. Su casa literally became mi casa as I spent most of my time there. Many novelas and random conversations later, I suddenly could converse fluidly and without thinking about it. I continued trying to learn Latin without any real success throughout my teen years. I discovered Pimsleur and checked out everything I could from libraries and even found a few harder to locate ones on the internet. I began French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, Modern Hebrew among others. At some point I found this forum, and was sold on the solid grounding and effectiveness of the Assimil series. I can now count which full Assimil courses I don't have on one hand. The problem is that I have mostly only browsed through them all. I seriously studied the Dutch and Japanese ones, but didn't follow through with these skills to maintain and allow them to flourish. 2012 Language Learning Goals- This brings me to where I am now. I have several friends whom I see all the time who are either native Russian speakers, or are native Ukrainian speakers who speak Russian as a second language. I began passively picking up Russian last March, 2011. My efforts were like an ebb and flow of the tide; no real consistency. I plan to go through the entirety of the following as my foundation: 1958 Assimil "Le Russe Sans Peine" 1971 Assimil "Le Russe Sans Peine" 1995 Assimil "El Nuevo Ruso Sin Esfuerzo" 2008 Assimil "Le Russe" Princeton Russian course 101 and 105. I recently perused the New Penguin Russian Course - A Complete Course for Beginners. I went through the first several chapters in about an hour. The way they explain the rules of sound change and conjugation seems so much easier than the Princeton course. And Assimil of course gives it to you very gradually, making you hunger for it. Once I have really mastered the material and audio for these courses, it should be time to move on to some real reading and watching. I want to try to amass a small collection of books that I have/can find English counterparts to. I also want to find some sort of movies/shows that would interest me that I can watch. Preferably these would be movies or shows that I've already seen and love and are simply dubbed into Russian. However, I do want some native Russian programs as well. I am excited to finally stop dabbling in a dozen languages at a time and to start really learning languages, to be able to speak, listen, read and write with fluency! Edited by senor_smile on 28 December 2011 at 9:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 2 of 9 28 December 2011 at 9:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You seem to have a real gift for languages, it will be a pleasure to be one of your co travellers on this journey to the mastering of the Russian language!
A1 to C1 in Russian in a year is ambitous, but I am sure it is doable, particularly if you have people you can practise with. I am also using "Assimil: Le Russe". What is the difference between that and the other French Assimil versions? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| senor_smile Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6384 days ago 110 posts - 115 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Russian | Message 3 of 9 28 December 2011 at 9:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
Honestly they're not that different. You can see a sort of content continuum from the 50's to the 2008 version. The 1995 edition (which I have in Spanish) really diverged and rewrote quite a bit of the content. I really like the older courses, so far, for their mixture of colloquial and literary content. The 2008 edition clearly has more modern sayings and vocabulary. They all seem to complement each other quite well. It's probably a little silly that I'm doing all four, but hey, I bought them all, right? I think that A1 to C1 is more than doable in a year's time. The Assimil Le Russe claims to take a newbie to B2, and it shouldn't take more than 6 months (I hope). I guess we shall see. By the way, I am transcribing the entire Russian text of "Assimil Le Russe" with my own little notes and English translations. It's much easier for me to backwards translate to Russian using English at this point. This also gives me plenty of practice to type in Russian, and correct my spelling errors along the way. These are probably not resources that I can share due to copyright, but it sure would be cool to be able to share. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5554 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 4 of 9 28 December 2011 at 10:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's the spirit...2012 is the year it's all going to happen (and hopefully not in any Mayan apocalyptic manner)! Just imagine how amazing you'll feel when you can finally enjoy films and leaf through novels in the original, orbiting your Russian resources from an impressive C1 altitude. :)
I can definitely relate to this... Edited by Teango on 29 December 2011 at 12:18am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| senor_smile Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6384 days ago 110 posts - 115 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Russian | Message 5 of 9 28 December 2011 at 11:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I just found an interesting grammar summary of Russian:
http://www.ielanguages.com/russian.html I like it because of how it organizes everything and has lists of stuff; e.g. different prepositions and how to use them. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| senor_smile Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6384 days ago 110 posts - 115 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Russian | Message 6 of 9 01 January 2012 at 1:14am | IP Logged | |||||
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So, in gearing up for the 2012 TAC challenge, I began doing a bit of Russian study.
In fact, it has sort of enveloped my life. When I'm not at my computer transcribing Russian lessons or on my phone shadowing Assimil Russian lessons, I'm reading the old 1958 Assimil Russian for fun. From what I understand this older course has a lot more direct literary links the further into the course you get. I started full force on Monday. My two main texts I have decided upon for the time being are the Assimil Russian 2008 course, and the Penguin "Russian Course". I started transcribing and shadowing each lesson on Monday. As of yesterday, Friday, I have the first 20 lessons transcribed and feel confident all the way up to lesson 16. I think that's mostly because that's where any new material is starting for me. As of Friday, I am nearly completed with lesson 6 of the Penguin Russian Course. I am really enjoying how easy the Penguin course is, particularly as it complements the Assimil course. I was digging around my Russian folder on my main data drive and found the audio to the first season of heroes in Russian. I also have a .srt subtitle file for both the English and the Russian. I have had episode 1 playing in the background just to create the environment. A funny line from episode 1 is when the character that plays Niki is talking to someone on the computer, you hear the text read: сука and niki responds извращенец. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Tecktight Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States Joined 4974 days ago 227 posts - 327 votes Speaks: English*, Serbian Studies: German, Russian, Estonian | Message 7 of 9 01 January 2012 at 4:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Ambitious goals, but certainly, I think, achievable!
I love how you have Heroes in Russian. What a fantastic idea. I myself am obsessed with the show, although I only began watching it a few weeks ago. I'm three episodes from the conclusion of Season 4, though! Anyway, welcome again to the team! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4795 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 8 of 9 02 January 2012 at 11:28am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm also a complete Russian beginner and have similar goals to yours in Russian. Plus I'm also doing
Japanese with the same outlook. I think if your heart is firmly set on it, you can do it. So have fun, and let's all cheer senor_smile on! Heroes was really literally sucking me in when I first started watching it, but after a while all these gruesome scenes somewhat numbed me, so I stopped. I'm sure it's still as gripping as ever, though :) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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