Thread: Any suggestions?

My boyfriend is Russian - his family moved here from Moscow when he was 10. He, his brother, and his parents all speak fluent Russian, and we know a lot of Russian folks here in town. I love the language, and would really love to learn... but the college here no longer offers Russian courses, so I'm pretty much on my own, and was wondering if anyone had any basic suggestions when it comes to learning another language (which I never did in high school). I have people to talk to, verbally, and a few people to talk to over e-mail, and stuff like that. I'm just... not quite sure how to go about learning. :/

Are there any books/methods that are extremely better than some of the others?

My boyfriend is from Russia too, his family moved here when he was 12. They all speak fluent Russian (he speaks perfect English too), so I am also trying to learn Russian. Well, right now I am not at a college that offers Russian, so until I transfer to a university that does, I am using a book. Its working pretty good for now, you just have to be highly self motivated and practice regularly. Besides, we are at an advantage too since our boyfriends are Russian, we have a good tutor. The book I am using is called "Russian For Beginners" by Duff & Makaroff. Another idea, I tell my boyfriend to try to use words around me that I have learned, its good practice and helps keep them in your memory. Well good luck!

I don't know if you can buy it in the US, but my book is called "ruslan russian" and if you do both bokks it is up to GCSE (16yr old exams in UK) standard. I think it's good. Also "take off in russian" is good.

Teach yourself Russian by Daphne West is very good as is the Ruslan mentioned by Oddo.
But honestly the best way is to find a tutor willing to help you learn the language properly. Tapes and books can help aid your learning but without someone to show you how to master it properly, i honestly think you are going to struggle.
This is of course only my opinion....good luck in any case!

i need some grammer books... i always lose myself in stupid grammer paradox's, any suggestions? also, they should be relativley cheap, i don't have... any money.

dogboy i thought your goal was to learn russian on the internet absolutly free, and by no means paying any money

Yeah, Dogboy, you totally sold out. It used to be about the grammar.

you know i actually thought about that when typing that... hmm well good thing im poor, anyone wanna try to help me with adjectives first?

Yes, but what help is needed?

I think I might just start learning all the verbs, then the nouns, and worry about the major grammer later. I mean, as long as you know that femenine, masculine, and neuter words have different endings, and you memorize what the endings are, it would work fine, right? Has anyone ever done it this way?

I think it is better to start with nouns, then adjectives and then verbs because it is most difficult thing. When learning nouns you will know how to form plural, in learning adjectives—how they depend on gender of the noun. Verbs depends on gender (in past tense), tense, plural, person, it is much more difficult. And then you can learn cases of nouns that are difficult too. After it you will be able to form simple sentenses. Then you can study combinations of two sentenses in one and so on.
But you should decide by yourself what is more comfortable for you. And I want to say that in each part you've learnt you should practice. Even in simpliest sentenses. If you know all rules it does not mean that you can use them.

I recommend... "Essential Russian Grammar" and "Russian for Beginners" Essenitial Russian Grammar is straight forward and is concise, only 120 pages long and it contains EVERYTHING for Russian grammar. It is very simple.