Thread: How do I learn vocabulary?

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

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.

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.

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