Thread: Advice for continuing my beginning of Russian

Well I've started learning Russian and I can say a few things so far (the course book I'm using is New Penguin Russian Course), and have taught myself the alphabet, but I have to say a word at least 2-3 times before I can say it "fluently." And I don't recognize a word until I say it a few times (until I can say it "fluently") (if I recognize it at all.. either it being a word close to the English equivalent or it being a Russian word I already know, though that's not that many words yet).

My question is, can anyone tell me from experience how long it took them to be able to read (not necessarily comprehend, just be able to read it about as fast as a second language in the Latin alphabet) it "fluently?" And any tips regarding this?

I'm going to Russia in June and obviously I won't be fluent in a few months, but I'd like to learn as much Russian as I can before then..

I do have somewhat of a headstart though, as I've been learning German for 8 months now, so I know about cases, adjective endings, etc.

Unless I can figure out how I can be able to read Russian words faster and figure it out relatively quickly, I think I'll just work on being able to speak it as opposed to being able to read/write/speak it, and then perhaps focus a bit more on reading/writing once I'm back from Russia when I have more time.

Edit: Also, when I was much younger, I learned Hebrew in school.. of course, I've forgotten that by now, but I have learned another alphabet. Too bad I can't remember anymore how long it took me, but I still feel that I can read Hebrew (when I do read it, which isn't regularly, just when I come across something, at a Bar or Bat Mitzvah, or on some tombstone perhaps, or wherever.. I haven't read Hebrew on a regular basis for probably about 6 years now) with a speed of somewhere in between my speed of reading Russian and my speed of reading German. From the FSI document linked to in the other thread, I feel this statement applies to me: "Without a significant degree of automaticity, reading is a painful decoding process, with little cognitive energy available for understanding and interpretation."

Originally Posted by awb

My question is, can anyone tell me from experience how long it took them to be able to read (not necessarily comprehend, just be able to read it about as fast as a second language in the Latin alphabet) it "fluently?" And any tips regarding this?

It won't take you longer than the time you spent learning how to read German fluently. There's no difference between remembering that German tsch is pronounced like English ch and Russian м is English m
It's all about some practice, no more than that.

There are strickt rules about pronunciation, it's not like English where a foreigner wants to thyme rough with dough and discovers it doesn't make a really good rhyme

So once you have learned these rules, which are about as simple as in German (=quite simple) you have no problem reading Russian.

As for tips...
Well, find 5-6 short easy texts for learners of Russian, practice reading them aloud, make sure you do it properly (you can do it here), try a couple of new ones, and - ....

If your learner's texts are interesting, not like "Masha and Sasha are pupils. They go to school everyday. They study there. There are teachers in the school. The teachers teach Masha and Sasha." it will be fine.

Yeah, thanks, the main problem is it feels like such a pain when I have to start reading in a different alphabet, I never really had problems with it in German. In German before I learned anything, I knew how to pronounce it all except for

Originally Posted by awb

My question is, can anyone tell me from experience how long it took them to be able to read (not necessarily comprehend, just be able to read it about as fast as a second language in the Latin alphabet) it "fluently?" And any tips regarding this?

The only way you are going to get better at reading is:

practice, practice and pracitce!

Don't worry about the alphabet. In a few months you'll know why...

Good luck with your russian! It's a pretty big task learning this language. Coming from latin I also was able to be a bit ahead of the game, but just know that it can be a little frustrating at times.

As for me, I started learning how to read the alphabet in May of 2005, I learned it in an hour or so. I don't really know if you need to memorize the alphabet, I didn't. But to the question! I don't really read it so fluently like I can english, but I do read it pretty well being that I see a lot of written russian. For big words like Самостоятелно и Самообучающий (If I spelled that correctly), I need to take a few seconds to sound it out. Just practice reading things, and you're fluency in reading will go up. Now, when comprehending a piece of literature in russian, you'll be pretty slow as am I. Anyway, good luck.

Try saying these words:
Дург - friend
Письмо - a letter or message
Компютер - Computer
Карандаш - Pencil
Голоса - Voice
Ум - Mind
Словарь - dictionary
Конкурентнаспасабный (I don't think I spelled this correctly) - Capable of withstanding marketing competition
Конечно - Certainly
Буква - Letter, character (Of an alphabet)
Тобакки - ciggarrettes
Собака - dog
Кошка - cat
Пытаться - To endeaver/try
Человек - Person

Originally Posted by Orpheus

Try saying these words:
Друг - friend
Письмо - a letter or message
Компьютер - Computer
Карандаш - Pencil
Голос - Voice
Ум - Mind
Словарь - dictionary
Конкурентноспособно - competitively
Конечно - Certainly
Буква - Letter, character (Of an alphabet)
Табак - tobacco
Собака - dog
Кошка - cat
Пытаться - To endeaver/try
Человек - Person

Originally Posted by BlackMage

Конкурентноспособно - competitively

The adjective form is "конкурентоспособный" = "competitive".

So non-competitive would be неконкурентоспособный and anticompetitive would be противоконкурентоспособны й.

Cool!

P.S. cigarettes = сигареты and it is spelled with only one "g" and one "r".

Yeh, just sound the longer unfamiliar words out just like you did when you were learning to speak English as an infant, though somethimes you wont be able to tell what the stress is...

I'm as good at spelling as Mr. T.

Well, a little update I guess. To be honest, I didn't get that far before going; school made me a bit more busy than I would've liked and after that (actually during the last week of school as well, but that was the post-academic week) I got an ingrown toenail and had to get surgery on it twice, so I got a little distracted from Russian, let alone German. In any case, I won't say I was totally clueless when I went to Russia, but not as far as I'd like to have been. In any case, it was a fun trip, and I'll say, as far as language skills go anyway, the speed/proficiency of my reading of Russian is what improved the most from the trip. I can now read a lot better than a few months ago, albeit not "fluently."

Now that I'm back the main materials I'm using are the Penguin Course, Pimsleur, and also Pronounce it Perfectly in Russian, which I listened to bits of, and some of it seems good, but a lot of it I know already, it gets really tedious. It's really geared toward the absolute beginner. Anyway, I think I'm having relative success with this, my main two problems now are:

a) Remembering all the vocab. Most of it doesn't sound anything like English/German, so I keep forgetting it. E.g., I looked up Germany and German (the language). I immediately remembered Гепмания but I had to keep looking up по-немецки, probably 6 times before I remembered it.

b) Although I can read Russian, I can barely type it and can't write it unless I'm looking at the alphabet/words that I'm writing. I have listening/speaking practice through Pimsleur/Pronounce it and reading practice through Penguin, but the most writing stuff is some of the exercises in Penguin where I have to fill in case endings or whatever. As for writing stuff on my own, I'm not at that stage yet. It was a couple months after I started German that I started writing stuff I think (not sentences, but stuff about what I'd done, etc.), but I hope I can be at a stage where my vocab is big enough that I can start writing stuff in around a month or whatever, but I kind of feel that I've got no ability to write or whatever at this point. I guess I could spend some time just writing out the limited stuff I can though, just to get a feel of writing in Russian.

Hmm, not sure exactly what I intended to ask with all that at this point. I guess I can ask about Russian music though. As for what I like already, I don't really listen to music as a hobby, nor do I know anything about music/art in general, but (partly for the purpose of learning German) I've relatively recently begun listening to Rammstein if that means anything as to what I listen to. And maybe movie recommendations as well.

Thanks.

mmm reading reading reading. it works miracles for the vocaulary. you dont really have to memorize all the new words, if you can guess their meaning from the context, thats fine. if you cant, look them up, and after you ve come across them a couple of times you for sure will remember them. If u dont understand anything, dont worry, you will be surprised how it all changes after a month or so. At first you can try to read bilingual books
( try to look here - http://www.franklang.ru/gb.html#%CA%ED% ... _(bilingua):_]
reading also helps writiing, btw
just dont read some absolutely boring stuff, that will make you hate Russian and get tired of it quickly ( Я -ученик. Маша -тоже ученица. Она хорошая. У неё есть кошка. итп) read something, you are interested in, and if you are lucky you will forget that you are reading something in a foreign language, you will be interested in the book itself, and somehow it helps a great deal, words just seem to memorize themeselves.

music links (free sites)

http://zachot.ru/
http://muzoff.ru/
http://www.zaycev.net/

audio books ( you can google for the text)
http://akniga.com/akniga/
[/url]

goodluck! ))

thanks for the links and advice. i'll see how long it is before i can start reading things outside of the Penguin book. but for right now I think the texts there are ok (hopefully not too boring) and one of the purposes of the texts in Penguin are to drill in the vocab words it has in the respective section.

Originally Posted by BlackMage

Originally Posted by Orpheus

Try saying these words:
Друг - friend
Письмо - a letter or message
Компьютер - Computer
Карандаш - Pencil
Голос - Voice
Ум - Mind
Словарь - dictionary
Конкурентноспособно - competitively
Конечно - Certainly
Буква - Letter, character (Of an alphabet)
Табак - tobacco
Собака - dog
Кошка - cat
Пытаться - To endeavor/try
Человек - Person

Originally Posted by awb

I've relatively recently begun listening to Rammstein if that means anything as to what I listen to. And maybe movie recommendations as well.

Keep in mind that Till sings in very poetic German with a lot of the Rammstein songs, so a song like Rosenrot may contain verses which sound strange to even native speakers, in other words they will hear things they aren't likely to say on the street. On the other hand, songs like Ich Will contain simpler words and sentence constructs which aren't in such a poetic language. Also keep in mind the accent Till has.
Rammstein is definitely a good choice though for listening to German if you want to learn the language as long as you take into account that some of it would be like quoting Shakespeare in English.

Get as much typing practice as possible, you can pick it up quite quickly even though it may not seem like it. You can download practice typing software, that can help too.

well the way I type in Russian is I use the language toolbar and I switch it to Russian. I've enabled English, Danish, Finnish, German, and Russian. No idea why Finnish is on the list, but I do some Danish reading online (easy since I know German though).

And yeah, I like how Rosenrot sounds, but I wouldn't quote it on the street. I think on the street it'd be more like "ich ficke deine Mutter, dann bring' ich dich um die Ecke" [;

I think my fav. rammstein song is Reise Reise, though

As to Rosenrot, though, it was based partly on Goethe.. so of course it's a bit poetic. Other songs like Ich Will and Keine Lust probably contain more practical vocabulary (although onanieren isn't something I say much in German)