Thread: Basic Russian

There is a form of English known as "Basic English" which has vocabulary of 750 words. Does anyone know of a Russian equivalent?

Hm.. Maybe "базовый русский/английский"? Or "начальные знания русского/анлийского" etc...

Originally Posted by Оля

Hm.. Maybe "базовый русский/английский"? Or "начальные знания русского/анлийского" etc...

Of course, it's "базовый русский". What ronaldM wants to know is where he can find this vocabulary of 750 (or something) Russian words, methinks

Аааааааааааа

There is a such euivalent: Ellochka's tongue. It's vocabulary has only 30 words, but it's quite enough for most purposes.

Here is the russian original

:P

sounds more like porn to me

Originally Posted by Lt. Columbo

sounds more like porn to me

Why? Didn't you read the "The Twelve Chairs (Двенадцать стульев)" - the great satire of Ilya Ilf and Yevgeniy Petrov? If "no" than you've lost alot, IMHO. But I'm not sure if it is so good in English translation as in Russian original.

Кажется, действительно существует такой язык Basic English, а не просто basic English, и он в обиходе --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_English

Vadim84 is right. I am looking for suggestions of which words I should concentrate on when building up my Russian vocabulary.

Using the 750 words in Basic English is some help but not the complete solution. For example several English words, "answer" for example, appear both as nouns and verbs.

If I was to compile such a list for Russian I would, for example, if given a choice of synonyms choose verbs and nouns which are regular and follow basic rules.

Originally Posted by ronaldM

Vadim84 is right. I am looking for suggestions of which words I should concentrate on when building up my Russian vocabulary.

Using the 750 words in Basic English is some help but not the complete solution. For example several English words, "answer" for example, appear both as nouns and verbs.

If I was to compile such a list for Russian I would, for example, if given a choice of synonyms choose verbs and nouns which are regular and follow basic rules.

You gotta know as much russian words as possible!!! My guess - there must be no such a term as "minimum"!!!

Originally Posted by ronaldM

There is a form of English known as "Basic English" which has vocabulary of 750 words. Does anyone know of a Russian equivalent?

Try this: www.slovio.com It really works for all Slavic languages. I am Russian and I just spent about several hours to learn basics of Slovio and then I tried to speak in slovio with polish, slovac, makedonian, croatian and serbian people - everybody understand Slovio quite well. All of them interested what the language I spoke and they were suprised that it's a constructied language.

http://www.slovio.com/1/0.knigis/qslovio-02-eng.pdf

Thanks a lot JJ. Exactly the sort of thing I was looking for.

In some ways for me it is even better than what I asked for as I work in many Slavonic countries (currently: Russia, Ukraine, Macedonia and Belarus) and it appears to use words which are similar in many Slavonic languages.

Originally Posted by JJ

Originally Posted by ronaldM

There is a form of English known as "Basic English" which has vocabulary of 750 words. Does anyone know of a Russian equivalent?

Try this: www.slovio.com It really works for all Slavic languages. I am Russian and I just spent about several hours to learn basics of Slovio and then I tried to speak in slovio with polish, slovac, makedonian, croatian and serbian people - everybody understand Slovio quite well. All of them interested what the language I spoke and they were suprised that it's a constructied language.

http://www.slovio.com/1/0.knigis/qslovio-02-eng.pdf

Another basic Slavic language:
http://slovianski.com/index.php?jazik=en

Originally Posted by JJ

Originally Posted by ronaldM

There is a form of English known as "Basic English" which has vocabulary of 750 words. Does anyone know of a Russian equivalent?

Try this: www.slovio.com It really works for all Slavic languages. I am Russian and I just spent about several hours to learn basics of Slovio and then I tried to speak in slovio with polish, slovac, makedonian, croatian and serbian people - everybody understand Slovio quite well. All of them interested what the language I spoke and they were suprised that it's a constructied language.

http://www.slovio.com/1/0.knigis/qslovio-02-eng.pdf

That's it! The End is near. Repent y'all

Originally Posted by Chuvak

Originally Posted by ronaldM

Vadim84 is right. I am looking for suggestions of which words I should concentrate on when building up my Russian vocabulary.

Using the 750 words in Basic English is some help but not the complete solution. For example several English words, "answer" for example, appear both as nouns and verbs.

If I was to compile such a list for Russian I would, for example, if given a choice of synonyms choose verbs and nouns which are regular and follow basic rules.

You've gotta know as many russian words as possible!!! My guess - there must be no such a term as "minimum"!!!

Originally Posted by ronaldM

Thanks a lot JJ. Exactly the sort of thing I was looking for.

Originally Posted by charlestonian

That's it! The End is near. Repent y'all

Maybe you guys will give us a little report about results?

You asked for an update so here it is.

Shadow1 (many thanks) sent me a web site which has the frequency of Russian words. The list is fairly "clever" in that for verbs it gives the infinitive and for nouns the nominative singular. It is a good guide as where to start with vocabulary. The web site is:

http://www.artint.ru/projects/frqlist/frqlist-en.asp


It is also a good guide as to what grammar to concentrate on. For example 'B' and 'Na' are the second and fifth most popular words which indicates that learning to use these words for "in" and "to" is a useful thing to study.