learn_russian | Complete beginner!

naamah-dust.livejournal.com posting in

Hi,

I have decided to learn Russian after years of enjoying C19th Russian literature and music, as well as a fantastic trip to Moscow and St Petersberg a few years back.

But! Although I am generally a quick learner in other aspects I have never been very proficient at languages!

I have a self-teach course to start with and I have enrolled on an intensive course in Russia itself in September - in the meantine I wonder if anyone could offer some advice :-

1) As a linguistic dumbo, should I start with written or spoken Russian?

2) Are there any UK resident here? I live in central London and have seen newsagents nearby that sell Russian magazines and papers - does anyone know of any Russian communities in London that would welcome a learner?

3) To complicate things further, at the moment I actually live in Belgium (a town called Hasselt) where I will be for another 3 months - I don't suppose anyone knows of any Russian communities there (a long shot I know!)

Many thanks!

Nim

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com

1) As a linguistic dumbo, should I start with written or spoken Russian?

You should start with both. Learn Cyrillic and how it represents the sounds of Russian. The correspondence isn't always 1:1, but it's much closer than in English. That way, when you learn a new word, you can understand both how it's pronounced and how it's written.

I would recommend not starting by studying Latin transliterations of words, as it will just make reading and writing Russian harder in the long run.

How you study should depend on how you learn. I find it easier to learn by reading and writing; others find it easier to learn by listening and speaking. If you don't know how you learn, experiment until you find something that fits right.

From:

naamah-dust.livejournal.com

I did teach myself the basics before my visit to Russia a few years back, so that at the very least I could understand signs for things like "station" and "exit".

I do love the look of written Cyrillic as well and have a feeling I will find reading a lot easier than speech.

From:

alektoeumenides.livejournal.com

I used to live in London but am not aware of any serious concentrations of Russian communities. Of course they are there, but not as obviously as other groups might be.

One pointer seems to be west london. This seems to be a prime spot for eastern eurpeans in general (my mother is Polish so I am aware of links in that respect) and I remember that I found a few bizzare things in Queensway. Goto Queensway Tube station and when you get out, turn left. Go until you get to a bit that's actually a sort of indoor market (damned if I can remember the name of it, sorry, just keep your eyes open - it's actually technically a lane and has a name, but you wouldn't know to look at it). Amongst all the Turkish/Middle eastern stuff, there's a small Russian grocery store (yum, kefir!), a Russian cafe, a Russian souvenir shop AND a Russian video/video rental store (which sells a few cds on the side too!). Plus there seems to be a message/information board which may well be useful. There's also the Intourist office near the consulate in Notting Hill, which stocks free copies of ex-pat (Russian) papers, which likewise might provide information for you.

Good luck!

valya

From:

naamah-dust.livejournal.com

This is very handy information - I live about 5 minitues walk from Queensway station!
I haven't seen the places you mention before but shall be exploring ASAP - and it explains why the newsagent nearby sells Russian papers as the owner is not Russia.
Thanks!

From:

bhv.livejournal.com

I'm a very big fan of the Pimsleur CD's for learning Russian. They make it fun to learn. Language is speech. If you start by reading you guarantee that you will end up with a bad foreign accent. Obviously you need to learn to read but don't start by reading.

From:

naamah-dust.livejournal.com

I will see if I can get hold of this.... thank you for the suggestion.

I am resigned to not having the most authentic accent in the world as I am already teased for my English accent which is a combination of Welsh, cockney and various places in South England that I have lived!

From:

squodge.livejournal.com

Hello!

I started learning Russian back in September and I used Sybervision's "Speak, Read & Think Essential Russian", which is a Level 1 Pimsleur course. I bought this off ebay from some chap in the US for £60, and it was the best £60 I ever spent.

The course has 30 units, each of 30 minutes. You do just one unit a day, and the idea is to complete it in a minimum of one month. It actually took me 3 months, but only because I had my degree to compelte (Linguistics and Music) and I was also learning beginner's Korean. The course is roughly 90% audio, 10% reading.

However, the particular course I have comes with a booklet that teaches you to read Cyrillic. It starts you off on the 'easy' letters - the ones that look and behave more or less like Roman letters. As you do each unit, they add a couple more letters. I was surprised that it took only two weeks for me to read Cyrillic efficiently. But it doesn't mean I can understand written Russian lol ;-)

Also, the course is great because it introduces you very gently to very important grammar and pronunciation points (in the booklet and in the audio course), such as the word for 'his' is 'yevo', which is actually spelled 'yego'.

My girlfriend tells me there's a 'little Russian' somewhere in Hackney. I've not been there yet, and we meant to go there quite a long time back, but just ended up going everywhere else instead!

Good luck with learning Russian ^__^

~ squodge ~

From:

naamah-dust.livejournal.com

My girlfriend tells me there's a 'little Russian' somewhere in Hackney.

Does this refer to a person or a place??!!

Thanks for the good luck message!

From:

wolk-off.livejournal.com

>As a linguistic dumbo, should I start with written or spoken Russian?

Both. Those two are not "separable". And why try to separate them? I knew an Arab guy who used to live in Sweden. During all his college years, his roommate was a Russian guy,s o the Arab guy spoke pretty fluent Russian as a result, but he was unable to read, and he could only write in Latin letters, making thousands of weird mistakes because he never knew how this or that word was spelled. He liked to write e-mails in Russian to his Russian friends, but those e-mails were mostly indecypherable.

From:

naamah-dust.livejournal.com

I do intend to learn both written and spoken however when I have tried to learn languages in the past I have always managed to pick up the reading / writing fairly quickly but I have little spoken skills and almost no ability to understand it spoken.

I did not want to get myself stuck in the same rut I have before by picking up the written language quicker that the spoken if it was going to be detrimental to do so? I have been living in Flanders for 3 months and despite being surrounded by the spoken language all day and night can still only understand a few words.

Does anyone have any tips for learning to understand spoken Russian? Should I deliberately keep my written skills at the same level as my spoken skills or is to OK to excel more at the written language in the meantime?

From:

mesh007.livejournal.com

There are four different parts in brain for reading, writing, understanding spoken language and speaking. I can read and understand spoken English good but my writing and speaking skills are poor. That because when I've started to learn English my goal was read books and understand movies. Now my goal have changed and I try to improve writing and speaking skills.

For understanding spoken language I listen to radio and watch movies in English. First I watched movies with subtitles in Russian, then with subtitles in English and now I watch movies without them.

At one forum I've found method to learn language with help audio books. I don't know is it really good method or not. I try to use it for learning German but I've only started.
--------------------------------------------------------
This is the way we do it:

If you want to learn a language quickly you'll need:
1. a recording performed by actors or narrators ( but good actors or narrators ) in the language you want to learn
2. the original text (of the recording)
3. a translation into your own language or a language you understand
4. the text should be long, novels are the best

You may wonder: why long texts? Because of the idiolect of the author, it manifests itself fully in the first ten – twenty pages, it is very important in learning quickly without cramming.

The key factor in learning a language is EXPOSITION, that is how much text you will be able to perceive in a unit of time. There is a physical limit here, you can understand not faster than the text reaches your brain. That is why you ought to read the translation and listen to the original recording SIMULTANEOUSLY, the exposition is the fastest then.

You should ENJOY the text you're going to listen to.
Texts for beginners should be long - the longer the better, up to fifty hours (e.g. The Lord of the Ring, Harry Potter, Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Catch-22).
You might say it is not possible, I can assure you it is, you should see twelve-year-olds listening to Harry Potter.

The translation:
a) interlinear (for beginners) -
b) literary, but following the original text as closely as possible
The original text and the literary translation should be placed in parallel vertical columns side by side.
If the texts are placed side by side, you can check almost instantly whether you understand or not.

The order ought to be EXACTLY as follows:
What you do:
1. you read the translation
because you only remember well what you understand and what you feel is "yours" psychologically

2. you listen to the recording and look at the written text at the same time,
because the speech flow has no boundaries between words and the written text has so you will be able to separate each word in the speech flow
and you will get used to the speed of native speakers, at first it seems incredibly fast

3. you look at the translation and listen to the text at the same time, from the beginning to the end of a story, usually three times is enough to understand almost everything
This is the most important thing in our method, it is just here that the proper learning takes place.

4. now you can concentrate on speaking: you repeat after the recording, you do it as many times as necessary to become fluent
Of course you have to know how to pronounce the sounds of the language you're learning first. How to teach yourself the correct pronunciation is a different matter, here I will only mention the importance of it.

5. you translate the text from your own language into the language you're learning
you can do the translation both orally and in writing, that's why the written text should be placed in vertical columns side by side, you can cover one side and check using the other one.