Learning Russian

[Hrolf Kraki]

I have decided (after being convinced by a good friend from the Ukraine) that I should try and learn some Russian. I'm fairly decent at learning the basics of new languages, but I have always stuck with Germanic ones. Since Russian is much different being a Slavic language and using the Cyrillic alphabet rather than the Latin alphabet, I'm a bit intimidated. Can anyone give me any advice or pointers? Thanks. :)

[Yon]

See if your local library has the Pimsleur language cds. I thought the Russian Basic one was pretty good.

[Hrolf Kraki]

See if your local library has the Pimsleur language cds. I thought the Russian Basic one was pretty good.

I take it Pimsleur is the publishing company? I'll check this out.

[Hakluyt]

I've listened to the Pimsleur Russian Basic as well and second it. There are torrents for it if you don't find it at the library. I'm planning to study Russian in the summer myself.

[Алекс]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_ALJrIw2sU

[Hrolf Kraki]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_ALJrIw2sU

WTF!?!? :rofl:

She's pretty damn hot though. :D

[Macrobius]

I have decided (after being convinced by a good friend from the Ukraine) that I should try and learn some Russian. I'm fairly decent at learning the basics of new languages, but I have always stuck with Germanic ones. Since Russian is much different being a Slavic language and using the Cyrillic alphabet rather than the Latin alphabet, I'm a bit intimidated. Can anyone give me any advice or pointers? Thanks. :)

I don't know Russian (I only studied it for a few months way back when) but here's a pep talk on the alphabet --

Very, very soon it will not be your problem. You will read the letters and words fine. Your problem will be that it is still a language you don't know -- but in principle no harder than French, Italian, or German.

This is because, believe it or not, it is the very same alphabet as the Roman or Greek (especially the latter). In fact, it might help to get a book or article that sets the three side by side for comparison. Sure, there are a few special letters that are unique to Russian, but essentially all the rest are just like the Greek alphabet (not unlike our Roman/Italic font distinction). And the Greek and Roman alphabets are, at bottom, the same letter forms in the same order, though you have to have someone show you how they relate, or use your imagination.

Don't expect to read faster than you can comprehend -- in the end, oral proficiency and idiom are the hardest part of any language, but the physical task of visual parsing and your 'reading' will keep easy pace with whatever proficiency you attain, once you get past the first couple weeks of unfamiliarity (admittedly, disorienting for most people).

There was a time when you had to learn that an italic g was actually the same as a g (think the kind with two circles connected by a hook) and that both were the small form of a G, but you don't even think of that now when you read -- after a few weeks, you won't be conscious of the 'cyrillicness' of the font either. You will be entirely concerned with the 'russianness' of it.

[Petyr Baelish]

I have decided (after being convinced by a good friend from the Ukraine) that I should try and learn some Russian. I'm fairly decent at learning the basics of new languages, but I have always stuck with Germanic ones. Since Russian is much different being a Slavic language and using the Cyrillic alphabet rather than the Latin alphabet, I'm a bit intimidated. Can anyone give me any advice or pointers? Thanks. :)

My advice is to not even bother with it. In the amount of time that it would take you to learn fairly rudimentary conversational Russian you can become damn near fluent in French or Spanish.

[Hrolf Kraki]

My advice is to not even bother with it. In the amount of time that it would take you to learn fairly rudimentary conversational Russian you can become damn near fluent in French or Spanish.

Russian > French & Spanish

[Petyr Baelish]

Russian > French & Spanish

I agree with that, but it doesn't change the inherent difficulties that a native English speak faces when attempting to learn it. You could learn Afrikaans in a couple of months and Dutch in a marginally longer period of time. Russian, on the other hand, is far, far more grammatically complex than English (to say nothing of the phoenetics, etc...). This isn't a language you can simply learn on a whim (like Latin or Afrikaans). If you don't have a strong motivation, you will quit after several semesters, and the entire project will have been a waste of your time and money.

[Hrolf Kraki]

I agree with that, but it doesn't change the inherent difficulties that a native English speak faces when attempting to learn it. You could learn Afrikaans in a couple of months and Dutch in a marginally longer period of time. Russian, on the other hand, is far, far more grammatically complex than English (to say nothing of the phoenetics, etc...). This isn't a language you can simply learn on a whim (like Latin or Afrikaans). If you don't have a strong motivation, you will quit after several semesters, and the entire project will have been a waste of your time and money.

I don't know anyone around here that speaks French, Spanish, Afrikaans, or Dutch fluently. One of my good friends speaks Russian so he has offered to help me. It's easier to learn a language when you have someone to talk to who knows it.

[Алекс]

Try not to pick up a lowlife Ukrainian accent.

Russian = future world language #1

You can get yourself a Russian keyboard from Ebay, don't get a Ukranian one like me because it has no bI key, it has this piece of shit instead 'і' :mad:

http://www.americantravel.ru/files/436/5de7823a2f81f7b081119b8fc62d56a7

Давай изучать!

[Hrolf Kraki]

Try not to pick up a lowlife Ukrainian accent.

Russian = future world language #1

You can get yourself a Russian keyboard from Ebay, don't get a Ukranian one like me because it has no bI key, it has this piece of shit instead 'і' :mad:

http://www.americantravel.ru/files/436/5de7823a2f81f7b081119b8fc62d56a7

Давай изучать!

Future world language? You think it can really trump English?

What's wrong with a Ukrainian accent? :confused:

Anyways, I'll check out this keyboard option. I think I'm going to take some classes at the university I attend since I can't take Swedish (fucking 9am classes :(). Thanks for the help! :)

[Алекс]

Without doubt Russian will supercede English, the Anglosphere is going down.

Obviously some who live in the Ukraine speak fine Russian, however they generally have an ugly lowclass accent, also they mix in a varying amount of Ukranian dialog into their Russian, contaminating it. Many Ukranians deliberately exaggerate their Ukranian accent as a way of asserting national identity, similarly to Scottish/Irish people with their degraded English. You ought to avoid this bad situation and learn Moscow Russian.

[Hrolf Kraki]

Without doubt Russian will supercede English, the Anglosphere is going down.


Can you elaborate on this? I'm very interested in linguistics and I am curious as to why Russian will supercede English.

Obviously some who live in the Ukraine speak fine Russian, however they generally have an ugly lowclass accent, also they mix in a varying amount of Ukranian dialog into their Russian, contaminating it. Many Ukranians deliberately exaggerate their Ukranian accent as a way of asserting national identity, similarly to Scottish/Irish people with their degraded English. You ought to avoid this bad situation and learn Moscow Russian.

Hmm....interesting. Well one of my best friends moved here from the Ukraine when he was like 14 so I'm not entirely sure of how "Ukrainian" his accent is. But I do also have a very good friend who moved here from Moscow. I'd like to travel to Moscow to learn some Russian. Partly because learning Russian in Moscow would be a great way to learn the language, but mostly because I love Russian girls. :D

[Macrobius]

Without doubt Russian will supercede English, the Anglosphere is going down.


The Anglo-Sphere is a strange idea anyway. We had a French-speaking aristocracy that we finally took down in an endless series of peasant revolts that have been going on since the middle ages (not unlike the Russian Revolution, really) -- and all of a sudden we discovered how glorious the national history of our French-speaking apparatus was, and claimed the English-speaking peasants invented it all. This has all the probability of Bolsheviks touting their glorious Czarist past, but hey why not if you are in power and control the propaganda machine.

So we are stuck with this faux 400 year or 1000 year history of the advancement of the English people, when in fact English was a European national vernacular of minor status and we didn't even bother to teach it beyond day care until about 1750, when 'English Schools' were set up (Benjamin Franklin's proposal is worth reading), to help educate the middle classes who couldn't afford Latin Grammar school followed by four years of college like the top 1-2% of the population. Not that we let these middling level English-speaking canaglia run things -- the signers of the Declaration of Independence were a majority college educated, and that doesn't mean they learned English in school either.

What a hoot. 'Anglo-Sphere' is just some old propaganda from the Tudor putsch, given a chauvinistic gloss in the second British Empire (not the first, when the language of diplomacy was French). The only reality to it is that the language did catch on in India, and now has a long and glorious future similar to Chinook trading jargon or (for those with long memories) Aramaic in the Persian Empire. Tech writers of the World Unite! You have nothing to split but your infinitives!

[Алекс]

It does not have much to do with linguistics. The World is divided up into power blocs, /supernation states: U.S.A., Russia, Arabia and China. The U.S.A. is on its last legs, this can be seen politically, economically, militarily, socially, culturally, racially. It is already noticeably declining and losing the ability to enforce its will overseas. The coming heavy totalitarian government there will give it a little boost, but that's all. The other 3 are getting stronger, and as the last remaining White (arguably) nation state we will see what is left of the healthy Whites worldwide fleeing from their browned-out graveyard countries and turning to Russia for protection. This trend also is already visible. Finally Russia will be consolidated and become the sole hyperpower. It will gobble up at least most of Europe.

Of course we will be old men before this is played out.

http://www.msu.ru/en/admissions/

[Boleslaw]

Speaking from personal experience I can say the grammar is a real big pain in the ass.

Don't delude yourself into thinking you're going to learn the language fully within the classroom, it simply is not going to happen. I know one could say this about any foreign language, but it most certainly to applies to Russian more than say French or Spanish. Probably Oriental languages like Japenese and Chinese rank higher than Russian on the scale.

You say you have a friend who speaks the language, well that's better than nothing. However nothing beats a native speaker. Same thing with spending considerable time in Russia itself - there's no substitute.

Try to find out if there's a Russian club in your area, it helps you maintain contact with the language is a more informal setting. Trust me, it helps considerably.

Anyways this should provide a nice intro for you:
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/languages/russian/index.html

[Boleslaw]

Without doubt Russian will supercede English, the Anglosphere is going down.

Russian is certainly going to become more important in international affairs(I believe 2007 has even been declared the year of the Russian language); but claiming it will supercede English is overstating a bit. One can also say hyberbolically that Chinese is going to be the next international language.

[Boleslaw]

What's wrong with a Ukrainian accent? :confused:

Well people are going to look at you the same way we Americans often look at Southerners with their accent. Same basic principle at play here.

[Hakluyt]

Try not to pick up a lowlife Ukrainian accent.

Russian = future world language #1

You can get yourself a Russian keyboard from Ebay, don't get a Ukranian one like me because it has no bI key, it has this piece of shit instead 'і' :mad:

http://www.americantravel.ru/files/436/5de7823a2f81f7b081119b8fc62d56a7

Давай изучать!
Yes, right after the Russians learn how to draw maps. :p

[Hrolf Kraki]

You say you have a friend who speaks the language, well that's better than nothing. However nothing beats a native speaker.

Both my Russian-speaking friends are native speakers.

Try to find out if there's a Russian club in your area, it helps you maintain contact with the language is a more informal setting. Trust me, it helps considerably.

Anyways this should provide a nice intro for you:
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/languages/russian/index.html

Thanks for the help! :)

[Hrolf Kraki]

Well people are going to look at you the same way we Americans often look at Southerners with their accent. Same basic principle at play here.

Do I count as a southerner? :p

I live in Kansas.

[blacksun]

Try not to pick up a lowlife Ukrainian accent.

Russian = future world language #1

You can get yourself a Russian keyboard from Ebay, don't get a Ukranian one like me because it has no bI key, it has this piece of shit instead 'і' :mad:


Wat the keys do depends on your software.

My (latin, english, whatever, just normal) keyboard does have a key which produces ы Ы when pressed with (in unipad) russian layout selected.

From an Ukrainian keyboard I would expect the same.

You only get a problem when a layout has more keys than another, and then I would prefer the bigger hardware keyboard, that would be the Ukrainian one.
The mapping thereof has one key I can only reach by clicking on the screen keyboard: ґ Ґ