I'm Not Progressing in Russian

[improperlyhuman]

I study foreign languages without linguistic translation, meaning that I never looking up the English equivalent of words, but rely on pictures and learning from context until my vocabulary is sophisticated enough to move on to a monolingual dictionary.

This has worked well with other languages, but I'm hitting a brick wall with Russian. I've been studying for quite some time now, and I can still barely understand a single word of the definitions in Russian dictionaries. It seems like even the simplest words are defined in complex terms. I also bought some books that are supposedly for children ages 4 -7. I was shocked to find that I couldn't read them!

To give some idea of my level, I can read the first story of unit 5 on this site, having to look up just a few words:

http://speak-russian.cie.ru/time_new/rus/library/index.php/

I'm going through the third level of Rosetta Stone Russian and a monolingual children's dictionary, but I feel like I'm just amassing useless words because I rarely come across the vocabulary that I'm learning. As I move past basic nouns and adjectives, I'm barely learning anything new because I don't understand anything in the general Russian dictionary.

Does anyone else have this problem? Can anyone recommend some monolingual learning materials I can try or something.

Comments

I would not recommend reading that

[lion-casserole.livejournal.com]

.
One of the world-known scientists used the Bible to learn languages.


I would like to mention some short stories in Russian instead. I hope you could find some useful texts digging down there:

http://www.planetaskazok.ru/vsuteevskz/palochkavyruchalochkasuteev

http://www.planetaskazok.ru/vdragunsky/deniskinyrasskazyanglichaninpavlja

http://www.planetaskazok.ru/kiplingr/mauglikipling

[oryx_and_crake]

I've heard that Rosetta Stone is not the best course, specifically with regard to studying Russian. Here are a few discussions that happened in this community.
http://blogs.yandex.ru/search.xml?text=rosetta+stone&ft=blog%2Ccomments%2Cmicro&server=livejournal.com&journal=learn_russian&holdres=mark

go over them, it might give you a few ideas

[orie.livejournal.com]

It is extremely hard to find courses without translation. Close to impossible.

If you ever decide that you can skip this requirement, I would recommend Duolingo and Memrise.

Your other option is lessons with a teacher, e.g. Skype teacher

[medvedkinskaja.livejournal.com]

Russian children books can have lots of cultural references that make them hard to understand even for modern childre. You could try a Russian translation of some famous fairy-tale so that you do not need to struggle with the context. Good luck!

[solitary-summer.livejournal.com]

I've had a similar experience. I never really bothered studying vocabulary as such when learning a language, just sort of picked up the words along the way, and this is how I started with Russian.

Now I'm not saying it didn't work, I was reading fantasy after three years and understood at least enough to get the plot, so it's not as if there was no progress at all. But two years ago, when I changed teachers and my new teacher actually made me learn words and checked my progress, I started studying vocabulary on my own too (as in, look up words in the books I read, make lists with translations, print them out, and learn them), and I wish I'd done that a lot earlier. Not only did my vocabulary expand faster, I also got a much better grip of the language, noticed how words were derived from the same root, got a better understanding of how the prefixes worked... Essentially, unless you live in a Russian speaking country, at one point you'll probably have to sit down and learn vocabulary. Translation might not be ideal, but I think in this case it can be helpful.

[scolar.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't suggest children books: they often contain archaic words, they also have a lot of diminutives, which in Russian are constructed with suffixes inserted between root and ending of the word, so dictionary lookup becomes even harder.

[mithrilian.livejournal.com]

Were the other languages you'd studied of Roman or German families? If yes, that would partially explain your present troubles.

Start with some instructions to medicine or popular science or popular philosophy. Or any texts where you might expect to find lots of words that came to English from Latin and Greek. Science, medicine, Philosophy. Russian language has all that terminology in easily recognizable forms, because Russian got those words from Latin and Greek as well, via French and German, so the roots are the same.

Or you might like to take a translation to Russian of some simple and pleasant English text such as Sherlock Holmes' adventures that you might dimly remember or at least know what the book is about. Or vice versa take a Russian classic that you've read in translation before. I don't mean side by side.
"
And no, not children books, at least not randomly selected.

Update. I've read texts to the Unit 5. There is one huge error there.

"Честно говоря, Марио никогда не был футбольный фанат"

"Не был" is not used with the Nominative case, it requires the Instrumental case. Positive "был" is used with both, but it is not so with "не был". So,
"Марио никогда не был футбольным фанатом".

I hope you won't be disappointed reading our responses that don't give you the info you'd asked for, but I hardly ever read Russian monolingual dictionaries. I read some articles in the encyclopedias in my youth, but Wikipedia is getting better and much more relevant to the modern life and the questions I might have. I didn't use monolingual dictionaries when I was studying English, either.

Update 2. There is another huge erro in the text for Unit 10.

"«На здоровье» выражает, во-первых, благодарность, это вариант слова «спасибо». "

NO! It's one of the forms of "you are welcome" used solely in response to "спасибо" (thank you) for the eaten food. Thank you - you're welcome. Cпасибо - на здоровье.

[solitary-summer.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if this is helpful since I've no idea if they're even available in the US, but I was working with the ПОЕХАЛИ! textbooks (parts I, 2.I, and 2.2) for the first two or three years. It still doesn't solve your dictionary problem, but the textbooks themselves are exclusively in Russian, iirc (I've given them away a couple of years ago, so I'm not a hundred percent sure).

ETA re. the dictionary problem: the problem is that you probably won't be able to work with a monolingual dictionary (or any Russian text that isn't simplified for beginners) before you have a good grasp of grammar, especially the cases (including prepositions and knowing which verb is used with which case) and verb conjugation, aspects and prefixes. Personally, I'd seriously consider compromising in this regard.

[improperlyhuman]

I DO study vocabulary. If I can't figure out a word from context, I look in my dictionary (it is a very good visual dictionary with example sentences); if I can't find it there I put it into an image search and try online dictionaries like gramota.ru or ru.wiktionary.com. I used spaced repetition to memorize the vocabulary.

[improperlyhuman]

I was using the monolingual textbook Наше Время, but I was quite bored with the grammar lessons and knew most of the material. Maybe the next volume will teach me more of what I need to know, but I doubt that it will be of much help if I simply don't know the words in the dictionary to begin with. I can already recognize words in their various cases, and in my experience thus far, prepositions usually aren't crucial to grasping the meaning of a phrase or sentence.

I also have the huge tome Russian Grammar in Pictures. It's not really helpful so far.

[solitary-summer.livejournal.com]

How long have you been studying? Because unless you're a genius when it comes to languages or live in the country and are immersed in the language 24/7, Russian does take time, especially if you're doing it all by yourself, without a teacher...

[improperlyhuman]

I don't know. It's been on-and-off due to my unstable living situations. Less than two years, I'd say.

[solitary-summer.livejournal.com]

Hm, I don't know what to tell you. I always had regular lessons once a week, for the most part either alone or in small groups, and I've almost since the beginning done a lot on my own that I wouldn't strictly define as studying, like listen to music, or audiobooks even at a time when I barely understood a word. It still took 1 1/2 - 2 years before things started to come together somewhat and a complete picture began to emerge, and I didn't feel almost completely at a loss any longer. I started reading at around three years, Lukianenko as well es bilingual texts, Bulgakow anc Chechov a bit later, but at the time I was happy to be able to somehow muddle through the text and understand enough of the plot to know what's happening, never mind memorising unfamiliar words, of which there were way too many.

I've been learning for 6 1/2 years now, I've come to a point where I feel comparatively comfortable talking without having to stop and think about the correct cases all the time, I've read Crime and Punishment and War and Peace over the last year, but when I (re-)started Doctor Shivago this spring, it was still frustratingly difficult because the prose is so tense with all those unexpected metaphors that often make it difficult to guess the meaning of words.

I still have problems following TV-shows and films when people talk fast and/or talk in dialect or slang. The frustration never quite ceases, or at least it hasn't ceased yet, for me. The more I learn, the more I become aware of how much I don't know. One the one hand, when I started I never thought I'd get to this point this fast, which in hindsight I guess helped, on the other hand... one does need to bee patient. It takes time.

[pusets.livejournal.com]

"Честно говоря, Марио никогда не был футбольный фанат"

Russian literature knows options :)

"Второй Чадаев, мой Евгений,
Боясь ревнивых осуждений,
В своей одежде был педант
И то, что мы назвали франт."

Of course, it's a little bit old fashioned but it's possible.