Learn Russian
Russian (русский язык) is a Slavic Indo-European language with some 285 million speakers around the world, making it the world's fourth most spoken language. Russian is the official language of Russia, an official language of the United Nations and NASA, and is widely spoken in all former Soviet countries stretching from the Ukraine to Kyrgyzstan as well as across the Russian diaspora spanning Canada to Israel to South Korea.
Learning Russian can be intimidating at first, but it's not as hard as you may think if you dedicate yourself to it.
Steps
- Learn the Cyrillic alphabet quickly by: Learning vowels, which are similar to Spanish vowels in sound, and listening to and repeating a recorded tape of all the possible syllables while reading them. * Learn Russian alphabet with videos
- Practice reading short, simple dialogues (like "What's this?" and "What's that?") where you can read and listen at the same time.
- Get a good book that explains grammar simply and study it. (Or, alternately, progress with simple dialogues, which allows you to learn the grammar naturally and intuitively and have it explained step by step in manageable amounts.)
- Find a quick reference fold-out chart for Russian grammar and consult it frequently.
- Learn nouns first. This will give you a base on which to learn more. Learn the rules in determining which gender it is: male, female, neuter.
- Always find where the emphasis is put in a word, as this will change the pronunciation, and often the meaning, of the word. (listen to lots of audio with text you can read.)
- Learn adjectives next, to describe the nouns. (As above, learn real and useful expressions in simple dialogues that show you how the language works.)
- Start learning verbs, in the original, infinitive, case:
- Ex: to run, to see ; Or, alternately, learn complete sentences: "What are you doing?" (Что ты делаешь?) "I'm reading a book." (Я читаю книгу.)
- Learn the 6 cases for nouns and adjectives. Memorize the patterns for changing words. (You might also prefer to learn them naturally in a dialogue, ex: "What's this?" (Что это?) "It's a book." (Это книга.) "What's he doing?" (Что он делает?) "He's reading a book." (Он читает книгу.) This might be confusing initially, but it more closely mirrors the way you learned your native language, as you begin to pick up those clues intuitively.) There IS in general an order to it. You may learn the cases in this order to make it easier:
- nominative (the original case)
- accusative (mostly direct objects)
- dative (from the Russian word "dat" meaning "to give," mainly carries the meaning "to": "to him it is cold," "give the book to me")
- genitive (often "of" as in "the book of Petr," and in other instances)
- prepositional (used with one of several prepositions, mainly to show location, ex: "in the house," "on the floor")
- instrumental (mainly the instrument, or method, by which something is done)
- Learn the present tense forms for verbs: 1st - 3rd person, singular and plural, 6 forms.
- Learn the past tense of verbs, which change according to gender and number.
- Practice verbs with nouns and adjectives.
- Try adverbs, which describe verbs. These are mostly adjectives with an "o" ending.
- Continue to learn vocabulary.
- Learn the future tense of verbs.
- Practice simple sentences when you are visiting the CIS or in a Russian store.
- Continue to speak and especially study the complex grammar. There is a pattern and it IS possible to learn.
- Continue to study the many other sentence parts. This how-to has covered the first steps.
- Find a good tutor. You can only go so far with a language on your own.
- Get skype, or another messenger service if you prefer, and seek out native speakers online who are learning English. They can be a great help as well.
Tips
- Try talking to someone who knows how to speak English and Russian.
- Learn Cyrillic first, do not use the inaccurate transliterations.
- Live or visit Russia, or any other Russian-speaking country.
- Practice writing in Russian - notes to yourself, minutes in a meeting - anything!
- If your conversation partner switches to English, continue speaking in Russian, eventually he or she will take the hint.
- Speak with natives.
- Check iTunes for a podcast on learning Russian.
- Get a book with recordings, not a listen-only CD.
- Get a Russian channel on your TV from a satellite dish network. Or find a Russian radio station on your radio or via the internet.
Warnings
- Major commercial products generally teach only a small fraction of the vocabulary and provide only a small amount of the practice you will need to be conversationally fluent in Russian. Writing, chatting, and speaking on a regular basis, are necessary to build fluency.
- Some letters are spoken differently when spoken unemphasised. For example, 'o' becomes 'a' without an accent over the o (Note: accents are not usually written in common usage), 'v' becomes 'f'.
- You will not learn Russian well by just listening to CDs without anything written.
- About advertisements that state a product is used by employees of the State Department or CIA. Like you, these employees are free to purchase any product they wish, and in some cases they may be eligible for reimbursement for purchased educational products. Do not read into these advertisements that the CIA or State Department endorses these products, or expects fluency to result from using these products.
- Relationships generally are built around a single language. A married couple, for example, that speaks English in the home, does not switch later to Russian. Adoptive parents, that want to preserve their child's native language, which they themselves don't speak in the home, do not preserve that language. Languages are not co-equal, one usually forms a dominance. Because of the popularity of 'language exchange' websites, its important to understand the implications of this phenomena. If you and your language partner become true friends, you will eventually settle upon a preferred language, which you will use exclusively. If your language partner is learning English, his goal, and expectation, is that the language will become English. Your goal, should be to make that language Russian.
Things You'll Need
- Russian-English Dictionary
- A book that simplifies grammar
- A fold-out reference chart
- Patience with the grammar
- A sympathetic person with whom to speak
- A skype pal who you can communicate with once you get to a certain level of your language mastery
