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I'd like to learn Russian, both speaking and reading but honestly reading/writing is more important to me.
I already know Spanish fairly well and a bit of German. Obviously this won't help me directly with Russian but it does help in the sense that I've had some success learning languages before and am comfortable learning new syntax and grammar and things (everybody says the first new language you learn is the hardest and it just gets easier after that-- I definitely had that experience when I started to learn German after knowing Spanish).
Anyway, what's the best way to do this short of moving to Moscow? I learned Spanish and German in classroom settings and, while it was good to have regular interaction in the language, I felt the classes moved slower than I would've liked. I could hire a private tutor but I'm a cheapskate and would prefer something cheaper if I'm not giving up too much. I found a thread in EDF from a while back by private joker asking about learning Chinese (
here ) and there's some good general advice there but I thought I'd see if anybody has any other suggestions.
I've kind of started on my own and just learning the cyrillic alphabet is really really hard.... I haven't learned an alphabet in like 27 years [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]
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I took three years of intensive russian in college, and i would not have considered myself a particuarly proficient speaker. it is a very difficult language with a pretty complex grammar (especially compared to english and spanish). My professor wrote what is apparently the leading textbook for introductory Russian (its called Golosa, fwiw) and I dont see how I could have done it without him. i think it would be difficult to learn a language like that w/o at least some kind of instructor to give you feedback.