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Well, this is my first blog post, and I can't think of too many things to say, so forgive me if it's short.
Here's the story:
I've been planning to start studying russian for some time. The main reason for that is my deep love for russian novels(Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gogol, etc) and my general interest in Russian culture. However, everywhere I read it says Russian is one of the hardest languages, so I want to make sure I learn from the best sources available. Since I can't find any book recommendations, or any books for that matter, on russian language in portuguese, I've decided to go for english books. From what I've read over the internet "The New Penguin Russian Course: A Complete Course for Beginners" is a must, so I'm definitely going to buy this one. I'll be blogging about my efforts and comparing Russian with English/Portuguese.
Finally, I have a question for those who have learned Russian: Did you take lessons from a teacher or did you teach yourself? Which books did you use? How good is your Russian(on a scale of 1 to 10) and how long did you study/have you been studying it?
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I tried to learn a bit of Russian some time ago. Of course I thought it was too much work for me in the end, but I did retain a small grasp of basics. I recommend memrise.com as it was very helpful in my own learning. If you are comfortable learning Russian from an English-speaking base, instead of from Portuguese, you can try the Pimsleur Russian on memrise. http://www.memrise.com/course/54221/pimsleur-russian-level-1/
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
My thoughts as a native speaker: The accent is the most difficult part of learning the language. Make sure you learn the proper pronunciation for words - try watching subtitled films in Russian and repeating lines from the characters. You don't really need to understand what they are saying. The important thing is to get pronunciation and pace down. The grammar and such is actually rather straightforward. Just learn how to pronounce things or it will be very difficult for any native speaker to actually understand you.
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Good luck! Russian literature is amazing.
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My intake on learning new languages:
Learning a new language is directly proportionate on How much you want to learn it and How much you have the chance to practice it. That means that it doesn' t really matter if you are trying to learn say French , spanish or Italian, or Russian, Korean or Japanise. It all depends on your level of interest. Of course with Russian you will have to learn a new alphabet as well, but its going to be easier than say Italian Because of how much you want to learn it (i assume 0)
Another tip i can give you is: Focus on an area you want to develop. By Area i mean one of the following: Reading, Hearing, Speaking, writing. Everyone one is better at one of these areas than others. Set your goals: Be realistic, your not going to learn Russian in One night. However you might learn one word or more in One night. If you learn that word and remember it and can use it anytime anyplace that is a win. You will accomplish more than just thinking of learning.
On how to actually learn, i would sugjest if you have the opportunity to take at least 10 lessons; This doesn' t have to be right away, actually a even better thing would be starting to study first on your own and then take lessons, or vice-versa however you feel comfortable. I would advise you to take lessons only from a native speaker. Watch your favorite films that you know by hearth in Russian with russian subtitles. Or if you find this too daring watch them first In Portuguese with Russians subs or in Russian with Portuguese subs. If you have difficulty remembering specific words that you are learning, try and associate that word your having trouble with to another word example Davai/ David or Davai/davidoff (not sure if thats how you spell Davai)
If you like starcraft Broodwar this site is the center of the Russian scene, they have an instant chat and people speak Russian here http://www.defiler.ru/
Well thats all i can think of, Good luck, take it on step at a time and have fun
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Portugal-portuguese sounds kinda like russian, emulate that to start with.
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Everyone says their own language is the hardest. The russian alphabet is different, but it's kind of similar to english. Imo it's not too bad.
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On April 24 2013 06:31 LegalLord wrote: My thoughts as a native speaker: The accent is the most difficult part of learning the language. Make sure you learn the proper pronunciation for words - try watching subtitled films in Russian and repeating lines from the characters. You don't really need to understand what they are saying. The important thing is to get pronunciation and pace down. The grammar and such is actually rather straightforward. Just learn how to pronounce things or it will be very difficult for any native speaker to actually understand you.
+1. When people ask me to teach them words, I will enunciate it clearly but they still (usually) manage to get the pronunciation wrong somehow. If you have a buddy who's fairly proficient at it (or maybe an online program where you can chat with native speakers) I'm sure that will help you in the long run a lot more than just book studying as they can check your pronunciation.
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Currently watching a film, russian with english subtitles I found while looking for movies with subtitles as advised here. It's quite funny.
http://stagevu.com/video/qufmfzsqvfci
Not sure how helpful it will be with this method of watching movies, gonna try it out and give feedback.
What I did earlier is: Learned alphabet, some gender declinations and basic phrasesbut kinda stuck now cause I have to learn other stuff @ uni.
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Hello, guys. Im from Russia, native speaker of Russian language. And my hobby is starcraft2. Im looking for native english speaker for conversations. Would you like to talk? My contact information: sudako2f@gmail.com skype: sudako2f
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