Thread: a more intelligent "where to begin?"

This is not just an average "where do i begin?" thread, although I am a complete and total beginner.

I'm a native and fluent American English speaker.

I was wondering if I should begin with Russian grammar and cases, and then, as I learn new words, I can place them how I want...

-or-

Should I start with word/phrase learning and work my way from there?

(Please don't post in Russian if you want me to understand your response)

Thank you for your help!

Hi chuff,
I think that you should learn the grammar first. Knowing grammar is much more useful than learning set phrases. If you come across some sentance you've never seen before, knowing the grammar behind it will help you work out the meaning a lot better than just knowing a few set phrases... especially if you are a beginner. Set phrases are just meaningless noise unless you understand what they mean. When I was first starting to learn Russian, I learnt all the case, verb, adjective conjugations and main grammar and spelling rules all before I even knew how to say very basic phrases such as "what is the time" etc... Although this somewhat limits my speaking ability, at least I get what people mean most of the time because knowing the grammar I can work it out.

Anyway, yeah, learn grammar.

I am a vocab buff. My suggestion is to learn as many words as possible.
I suggest learning the words in the top 5000 list rather than learning random words.

Somebody posted this the other
day

http://www.english-learning.co.uk/voc.html#v3

Chuff how old are you?

fifteen

How rude. I don't see how this is more intelligent, and I'm sure other posters don't appreciate you looking down your nose at their threads. Why is this "not average"?

Originally Posted by chuff

fifteen

Hurry up lad, you've got something of a head start.

Originally Posted by TATY

How rude. I don't see how this is more intelligent, and I'm sure other posters don't appreciate you looking down your nose at their threads. Why is this "not average"?

Because this is the average:

Hi, im a 15 yr old american gurl. theres this guy i like hu is russian in my class n i wuld die to speak russian, so plz can sum1 teach me russian?

Originally Posted by basurero

Originally Posted by TATY

How rude. I don't see how this is more intelligent, and I'm sure other posters don't appreciate you looking down your nose at their threads. Why is this "not average"?

Because this is the average:

Hi, im a 15 yr old american gurl. theres this guy i like hu is russian in my class n i wuld die to speak russian, so plz can sum1 teach me russian?

I don't see many of them.

Well then you are very fortunate.

Listen to Russian pop music, that is both fun, gives you vocabulary, teaches you about pronounciation! Grammar is boring, but in order to decipher what they are saying, it is necessary. Learn the basics!

Tell me some good pop russian songs i can download. (i already have rasputin + tetris)

Originally Posted by kalinka_vinnie

Listen to Russian pop music, that is both fun, gives you vocabulary, teaches you about pronounciation!

Agree, agree, disagree a little.

Originally Posted by Them

Tell me some good pop russian songs i can download. (i already have rasputin + tetris)

http://sande.nm.ru/files.html

Download some of the russian songs here, they are some of the latest

You should learn Russian the same way you learned English, which I presume was by memorizing pages and pages of grammar rules then applying them to words you find in a dictionary.

Right on...

How rude. I don't see how this is more intelligent, and I'm sure other posters don't appreciate you looking down your nose at their threads. Why is this "not average"?

Because the "average" posts (that I've seen) are not really planning on working hard to learn the language, they just want a quick tip to impress their native boyfriend/girlfriend. Either that, or they are looking for a "hawt" person with which to tutor.

Originally Posted by Them

Tell me some good pop russian songs i can download. (i already have rasputin + tetris)

rasputin+tetris - what is this?

TETRIS??? Not the game tetris??? Ahhh, the great many hours I have spent playing tetris when I should have been learning Russian.... навсегда... тетрис у меня будет жить в сердце...

Кстати, я услышал, что русский выдумал эту чудесную электронную игру.... круто!

Originally Posted by basurero

Кстати, я услышал, что русский выдумал эту чудесную электронную игру.... круто!

я слышал
better придумал

Yeah it was a Russian programmer Алексей Пажитнов. There's a record about him in Russian Wiki - [it's a link to the record]