I learned Russian in a very unorthodox way. As a result, I am conversational, can read at an intermediate level (but somewhat slowly), but can hardly write. I spent most of my time practicing speaking and learning grammar and vocabulary. But I never spent much time on spelling or writing in cursive (which all Russians do…writing block letters makes you look like an idiot). My grammar is fairly strong, but Russian has so many different endings for verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc that even with a good base, there are a lot of cracks in my grammar foundation. But when I’m not 100% sure, I typically know enough to make a guess about how to modify a word based on the grammar rules and am right a good portion of the time. And if I don’t know a word, I have a lot of the tricks down for taking a word I know (say a verb) and turning it into a different form (say a noun or a gerund, etc).
After the intensive Peace Corps language training, I worked with a tutor for about a year, mostly on grammar, and practiced speaking with A-Yo constantly. Generally, it worked out well (aside from being unable to write with any speed or accuracy). So without further ado, here are some tips for learning Russian, if you are ever so inclined!
1) Learn the Cyrillic alphabet…it isn’t that hard. If you’ve had any exposure to Greek (in science class or fraternities (!)) then you know half the letters already, and most of the other half are similar to English.
2) Learn which syllables to stress when learning words and conjugations/declensions. Proper stress makes a big difference in the meaning for some words (for example, мука = torture / мука = flour) and affects pronounciation for some letters (e.g. the letter “o” is pronounced like an “o” when in the stressed syllable and like an “a” when in the unstressed syllable – молоко (milk) is pronounced “ma-la-ko”, not “mo-lo-ko”). Having proper stress when speaking goes a long way towards giving you a good accent. People with no clue about stress butcher the language.
3) Try to read lots of texts. It is a great way to learn new vocab. Even simple stuff like newspaper articles and children stories are helpful.
4) Learn the grammar tables. Yes, it sucks learning all the different declensions and conjugations, but it helps you speak with fluency and be understandable. You don’t have to go for 100% accuracy right away or know all the various exceptions or more obscure uses. Practice the most common ones first and then fill in the blanks as you go.
5) Don’t worry about mistakes in grammar. When speaking, try to be accurate, but don’t get hung up on one word in the sentence you can’t figure out the ending for. give you best shot and go on. Listen to whomever you are talking to and maybe you’ll get a hint about what ending or case to use.
6) Don’t get bogged down with verbs of motion at the beginning. Yes, having different words for going by car, by foot, or while carrying something and having to consider whether it is a one time event or a regular occurrence is difficult, especially compared to English where you can use “to go” for just about anything. Just give it your best shot at first, and try to get the main ones down first (i.e. Ходить / Идти and Ездить / Ехать) and then work to expand from there.
7) Listen to who you are speaking. It can give you good clues about what grammar form to use when you reply. If some asks “Кому ты дал мяч?” (To whom did you give the ball?) bells should be going off in your head DATIVE CASE! and you can answer “моему другу” (to my friend) or “моей сестре” (to my sister).
Marry a Russian. It really helps your language skills! And you have access to borsch every day of the year!
sneaky
some times I have trouble coming up with verb or adjective endings on the fly when speaking japanese
but generally they are pretty regular
particularly with the ending that means “to make…or let…someone do something”
and I forget some of the forms of “to come” 来る kuru since it is one of the few irregular verbs.
That is interesting about the verbs of motion…they sound like a pain in the butt.