Thread: Говорю по-русски

Originally Posted by Fester

I think it looke like you have just translated it word by word from a dictionary. You can't do that when learning languages, especially not in russian where the grammar is really heavy. You need to study grammar a lot before you try to put together your own sentences, and if you're studying all by yourself I'ts not going to be easier to learn.

I reccomend starting with cases, because they tell what function a word has in a sentence, and to me, as a student of russian this looks almost like random jibberish

Thanks Paul and Fester. I'm familiar with cases, and thought I was using them properly. Apparently I wasn't I have charts for declension, but perhaps I still think in English, and not in Russian. Perhaps here I can practice and learn; for instance, here is what I wrote in reply in Russian. Give me some pointers on how I would improve it:

Согласно, а я покоряю для исправлеия! Я покорный студент разговоривания. Пожалуйста, исправляете. Действительно у меня учебника и тоже есть интернет. Тот куда я почитаю рассказ (Сетевая словесность. Современная русская литература в Интернете). Здесь в форуме имею надежды упражнять...

Well yeah, I can take the first sentence you wrote for example "Мой зовут Кивин" wich would translate to something like "My calls me Kivin", or "Something (that is not mentioned in the sentence) that I own is called Kivin" I'm not a teacher nor a expert in russian but it feels like you have started in the wrong end.
Knowing a lot of words will of course help you with the understanding part, but without the grammar it will make no sense to others when you are producing.
The only thing I can recommend is that you start with learning some correct basic phrases (like "my name is", "I want to do...") and basic conversation, then analyze them and try to understand why the sentences are constructed the way they are.
After that you may start creating your own, of course you will make mistakes, everyone does. I'm not trying to be mean or anything, but there were quite a lot of mistakes here, and it's not the kind of mistakes that one might expect if you know what I mean.

It's 10 times harder to unlearn something than learning something, if you start learning a new skill or language in the wrong way, it will be hard to make it right, it's kinda like trying to switch out a faulty brick from a brick wall in the bottom of the wall, while the wall is already built. It's easy to change the top parts while building a wall if something goes wrong on the way, but you would need to tear it all down to change the bottom ones.

I probably should apologize because in the fluster of the moment I thougtht "зовут" was "name". I imagine it should have been "моя имя кевин"? I've been trying to keep it simple so I use the cases and declensions properly, but I'm not doing a good job. In studying the grammar I've tried to take it step by step, beginning with agreement in gendre, number and case. Given that I'm fairly comfortable in reading Russian, I'm surprised I'm so far off in general. I want to write small sentences that make sense grammatically. I don't want to skip any steps. As I said, I thought I was paying attention to case, etc. I'll make a renewed effort to write small sentences that make sense. If anyone would like to converse in this manner, I will take it as a learning experience! I think it's important that I continue to try to write in Russian, even if I make mistakes. I will try my best to learn quickly and be an asset to the forum.