Thread: How do I learn vocabulary?

I'm just starting to learn Russian and feel overwhelmed by all the different forms of words. When I learn a new word should I try to memorize the different cases for nouns or just the nominative and trust that I'll be able to figure out the others as I improve as long as they aren't irregular? Should I learn the masculine, feminine, and neuter forms of adjectives or just one? Or is it better to learn complete sentences?

Thanks for your help.

Now that is a problem. Sooner or later you will need all of that but you should switch on your intuition to help your memory. You need some reading experience to use intuition. So there should be some balance between theory and exercises.

That's why courses are constructed to learn languages. You should select one more or less respectable textbook or set of lessons and follow it rather than try to memorize all at once. Each lesson usually contain some theory rules, some new words, some reading and some exercises. That is the normal way to learn languages for adult people.

Try to check this thread.

Hi Steve,

It's better to learn complete sentences than isolated words. On the flashcards you make, I recommend jotting down the nominative form (or infinitive, if it's a verb) and then mention what case the word is in in your example sentence. Also be sure to note accent shifts. So, if I were learning the word for "water", it would look something like this:

I want water, please.

Я хочу воду, пожалуйста. (accus.)
nom = вода

I'd also just learn the forms of a word on a need-to-know basis. Again, re: "water", you're much more likely to use it in it's nom or accus case than, say, the dative.

Thanks o_xopowo. I was leaning towards doing complete sentences but I wanted to get some feedback first.

Watch old translated movies, at first you wont get it, then you will get the tone, how to express, etc .. then you will know the most used words.. Good Luck!

Learn the 6 Russian cases in all forms (masculine, feminine, neuter and plural), only then memorize new words. It may take time to recognize the same word in different cases at the beginning, but once you get the hang of the cases, it shouldn't be a problem. In other words, it's more useful to memorize words after you picked up a bit of grammar.

In fact, before we learn English words, we learn plural forms, posessive form (Cat's house) and stuff, so Valda's right, it's a good idea to master some basics of grammar and just then start filling out your vocab. The only difference between English and Russian in terms of what to learn before you start learning words is that we have a tad more of the "stuff" in our language.

Thanks for the advice Medved and Valda.

Originally Posted by Steve K

I'm just starting to learn Russian and feel overwhelmed by all the different forms of words. When I learn a new word should I try to memorize the different cases for nouns or just the nominative

My general recommendation:

For nouns, always make a habit of memorizing the nominative and genitive singular at the same time. Once you get used to the general case declensions for Russian nouns, you will USUALLY be able to figure at all the other forms of a noun if you know the nom. and gen. sing. (As you progress, you'll learn that for certain categories of nouns it's helpful to memorize the nom. and gen. plural, too, along with the singular. And certain nouns have irregular case forms that you'll deal with later. But you really can't go wrong by always learning the nom. and gen. sg. of any new noun.)

For verbs, you should at minimum memorize three forms: the infinitive plus the 1st-person sing. AND 2nd-person sing. of the non-past conjugation. In general, once you've learned the basic conjugation patterns, you can logically deduce the rest of the forms based on these three. (But, again, as you progress, you'll figure out that with certain verbs it's also extremely helpful to memorize certain other forms, especially the 3rd-person plural and the masculine past.)

With adjectives, once you've picked up the general patterns, learning the masc. nom. sing. will usually allow you to figure out all of the feminine and neuter forms in both the singular and plural.

Incidentally, a good-quality unabridged Russian/English dictionary will tend to reflect the above observations -- e.g., for the vast majority of nouns, only the nom. and gen. singular are given in a dictionary, because it's assumed that once you've digested the basic case-ending paradigms, you should be able to work out the other 10 forms based on these two. But a good dictionary will also list any "unpredictable" forms if a given noun happens to have them.

Good luck!

For verbs I recommend learning them in perfective/imperfective pairs.


Scott

Nice post Throbert. thanks.

Scott, yes I was thinking about doing that.

So all I have to do is learn the forms Throbert mentioned, perfective/imperfective pairs, the grammar and complete sentences?!

I've been doing a quick overview of the grammar. I guess I'll finish that then work on vocabulary. So for vocabulary flash cards I should put the whole sentence and the noun and verb forms mentioned?

Originally Posted by fortheether

For verbs I recommend learning them in perfective/imperfective pairs.


Scott

That's definitely a must. Wish someone had told me that when I just started learning.

Me too!

Originally Posted by Valda

That's definitely a must. Wish someone had told me that when I just started learning.

Learn the nouns ending with ь with этот или эта. For example do not learn just день learn it as этот день or эта ночь. Otherwhise as you dig into the russian grammar more you will have problems with those nouns ending with ь.

And for the verbs learn them in pairs and learn their declensions as well.

Try to remember the conjunctions with the cases that they are used with.

Etc...

And try to repeat alot. Review the vocabulary you are trying to learn in a regular basis. Read as much as you can, listen and try to write as well. Infact if you can find a Russian friend to make conservations with I think that will be the best.

It will not be easy but at the end I believe it will worth it.

Good luck at your studies.

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

My general recommendation:

For nouns, always make a habit of memorizing the nominative and genitive singular at the same time. Once you get used to the general case declensions for Russian nouns, you will USUALLY be able to figure at all the other forms of a noun if you know the nom. and gen. sing. (As you progress, you'll learn that for certain categories of nouns it's helpful to memorize the nom. and gen. plural, too, along with the singular. And certain nouns have irregular case forms that you'll deal with later. But you really can't go wrong by always learning the nom. and gen. sg. of any new noun.)!

Why do you advice learning the nominative and genitive singular at the same time? How does that help predicting the other forms of the verbs? I am still a newbie at Russian and if that really helps I would like to review all the nouns I know up to this learning technique.

Best.

Originally Posted by impulse

Why do you advice learning the nominative and genitive singular at the same time? How does that help predicting the other forms of the verbs? I am still a newbie at Russian and if that really helps I would like to review all the nouns I know up to this learning technique.

Best.

Nominative and genitive are cases for nouns, it has nothing to do with verbs. At first you may think that declensions are just bizarre, but in fact they are nicely arranged into a system. Otherwise, noone would be able to learn the language!
So there are types of declensions, and if you know genitive - you know the type of declension - you know all other cases. This works not only for Russian students - when I studied Latin we had to memorize nominative and genitive at once too.

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Originally Posted by bublinka

Nominative and genitive are cases for nouns, it has nothing to do with verbs. At first you may think that declensions are just bizarre, but in fact they are nicely arranged into a system. Otherwise, noone would be able to learn the language!
So there are types of declensions, and if you know genitive - you know the type of declension - you know all other cases. This works not only for Russian students - when I studied Latin we had to memorize nominative and genitive at once too.

I started to review all the nouns I know. I wrote them down in an excel sheet and it makes over 300 nouns so far. So I need to write the genitive singular and plural for all these nouns and add in the other nouns usining the same method as I learn them.

While I was writing down the genitive plurals of the nouns, I realized that I can distinguish the gender of the nouns ending with a sof sign. This is a new discovery for me and infact really makes it very easy to remmeber the gender. I really do not know the other benefits of this yet. I do not know how the genitive singular and plural of a nouns affects the form of the noun in other cases. I will onde day discover that I think.

Best