Learning Russian

[Peter Harris]

I found the conversational russian i picked up in Moscow pretty fine to get started on. It's a whole new alphabet to get used to, but it is that, it's not like learning ideographic or syllabic scripts.

So you should get a feel for writing, reading and speaking quite well, and as ever, listening is the hardest. Just getting books/CDs like Rosetta Stone (fwiw i've never used it), Berlitz etc. or taking evening classes should do you fine.

Also, it's a good idea to learn Russian since if the cold war restarts and this time Putin gets the win, we'll all be saying Na Zdarovye as we sink our vodkas and eat pirogi. Maybe Mandarin is another you should consider...

[corsakh]

Oh boy. Ohhhh boy. Godspeed.

ps Alphabet and reading is by far the easiest part. We read exactly the way its written, no tricks or missing sounds (like "th" or "oo" or "e" at the end in English). Speaking on a "I understands u, u understands me, ve is fiends" level not a big problem either. But gramma, spelling and writing - we spend 10 years studying the language at school and still almost noone can write correctly. Understanding the oral I guess may be a problem too due to a big number of dialects and slang.

[supafrey]

ya ne dumayu eta tak slozhna

[eBo]

[ QUOTE ]
ya ne dumayu eta tak slozhna

[/ QUOTE ]

te ne dumayesh pravelna

[React1oN]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
ya ne dumayu eta tak slozhna

[/ QUOTE ]

te ne dumayesh pravelna

[/ QUOTE ]stalin politburo trotsky putin neit, ya?

[Kirg]

Rosetta Stone

Best software out there to learn languages. Used by the US diplomatic corps for example.

Pretty sure it's mentioned in the Chinese thread as well.

[Jim14Qc]

My friend checked out Russian a year ago (just a bit) and he says the alphabet is pretty easy since it's all phonetic.

Also, French would be easier. Arabic and Chinese, not so much.

I'm bilingual (French/English) and tried to learn German. Event hough German is a harder language than English to begin with, I still find the fact that it's my 3rd to make it harder than the second. Maybe that's because it's much easier to get immeresed in English. Or maybe that's because English words will pop in my mind when I try to think of the German one. Either way, good luck.

Grats on trying, I still have my 3rd language-learning thing on hold.

[eviljeff]

sightless picked up a girl on the subway because he speaks Russian. true story.

[Ghazban]

[ QUOTE ]
Rosetta Stone

Best software out there to learn languages. Used by the US diplomatic corps for example.

Pretty sure it's mentioned in the Chinese thread as well.

[/ QUOTE ]

I've looked at that software and it's pretty pricey. I think somebody in the Chinese thread panned it as being weak on vocabulary (or maybe I read that somewhere else). Have you (or anyone else) actually used it? It seems most posts about it have been second-hand.

[CIncyHR]

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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]

[/ QUOTE ]

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.