Thread: Quickest possible way to star speaking russian?

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

Anyone can learn how to say the Russian equivalents of "My name is X -- what's your name?" and "Can you tell me where the bathroom is?" and "How much for a kilogram of tomatoes?" in FAR LESS than one year.

This is not the same thing as "speaking" a language, however!

(If you look on YouTube for so-called "polyglots" who claim that they can speak nine languages, in most cases they merely know a dozen or so phrases in each of the nine languages. Some of them are truly bilingual or even trilingual -- with native fluency in two or three languages -- but for the rest of the "nine languages" they claim to speak, they've only memorized basic phrases and sentences similar to the examples I gave above.)

P.S. I got straight A's in four years of college-level Russian. Then I went to Moscow to teach English, and five minutes after getting off the plane at Sheremetevo airport, I realized the horrifying truth: I could barely understand what anyone was saying!!!

And ten minutes after that, I had a revelation: the single most important slogan for me to use, at least for my first couple of months living in Russia, would be: По-медленнее, по-проще, по-короче, пожалуйста -- я не русский! (A bit more slowly, simply, and briefly, please! I'm not a Russian!)

P.S. My story is not meant to suggest that the Russian program at the University of Virginia had low standards, or that I was a lazy student. (My ability to speak and understand spoken Russian improved significantly after living a few months in Moscow, in part because I had a very solid base of grammar and vocabulary from my college courses.) The point is that real people in real life do not speak like the "practice dialogues" in textbooks -- and real life does not have subtitles, either.

P.P.S. Even if you're not taking Russian through a formal course at a school, I would recommend that you acquire a college-level first-year Russian grammar textbook (I'm sure you can get a used one very cheaply online), and that you take the time to work your way through ALL of the practice translations and sentence drills ("Иван видит красивую девушку. Она сидит за столом."), no matter how boring they seem. A good college textbook will provide you with A LOGICAL STRUCTURE to help you better organize and make sense of all the "fun" Russian that can learn from songs and movies online.

I really like this post, Mr McGee and I'd like to add a few things if you don't mind:

Everyone is different, so this may or may not work for you, but if you have five hours a day to study, then definitely get some clips of some movie or video in Russian that is at least semi interesting to you. Get the text for it too. Pull out some words every day, write them down, by hand, and memorize them. Take 5-10 words a day. Then listen to the video and pick out the words. Keep doing this until you've learned a bunch of new words and can semi understand the conversation. You should read it aloud too. To do this you will have to learn some grammar (see advice above about this).

Then get yourself into a situation where you can use Russian. Go to Russian store weekly and prepare what you want to say, ie Can you show me where the herring is? Or perhaps there is a Russian speaking person around you who is interesting, make conversation with them, you can prepare a little in advance too.

One older guy many years ago explained to me that to learn a language, you need to engage all 5 senses (the writing part is for visual) so you can use this approach to supplement whatever else you're planning to do.

Originally Posted by bytemare

then definitely get some clips of some movie or video in Russian that is at least semi interesting to you. Get the text for it too.

This part isn't always so easy! YouTube has lots and lots of Russian movies with subtitles in English, but far fewer with Russian captions for the deaf. However, if it's a relatively short clip, there are people on here who are willing to type up a transcript. Or, in some cases, the Russian script/screenplay for an entire movie may be online (if it's a very popular movie), and people here may be able to help you locate it with Google.

Fortunately, it's not so difficult to find videos of Russian songs with "karaoke lyrics" that you can read as you listen.

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

This part isn't always so easy! YouTube has lots and lots of Russian movies with subtitles in English, but far fewer with Russian captions for the deaf. However, if it's a relatively short clip, there are people on here who are willing to type up a transcript. Or, in some cases, the Russian script/screenplay for an entire movie may be online (if it's a very popular movie), and people here may be able to help you locate it with Google.

Fortunately, it's not so difficult to find videos of Russian songs with "karaoke lyrics" that you can read as you listen.

Yeah I really did mean that, that you have to find clips with text or ask someone to help with transcription. But this is good, it gets you interacting with people I also think that finding music you like and learning the words can really help!!!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz2yVLxOFVg

Рекомендую. Субтитри тоже по-русски. Мне нравится.

"ШИКАРНЫЙ ВИД!"

Originally Posted by Meerkat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz2yVLxOFVg

Рекомендую. Субтитри тоже по-русски. Мне нравится.

"ШИКАРНЫЙ ВИД!"

шикарный фильм

Originally Posted by jim

шикарный фильм

Это не была ошибка, но "шикарный вид" - любимая фраза Мишки Япончикa в этот телесериал.

Вот:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...yVLxOFVg#t=839

Originally Posted by Meerkat

Это не была ошибка, но "шикарный вид" - любимая фраза Мишки Япончикa в этот телесериал.

Вот:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...yVLxOFVg#t=839

ya he wasn’t talking about a movie, about his clothes he was talking about.

lol, it’s alright, not sure how accurate that would be if it is said about a movie, this would be more like new slang rather than anything.

Originally Posted by Meerkat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz2yVLxOFVg

Рекомендую. Субтитри тоже по-русски. Мне нравится.

"ШИКАРНЫЙ ВИД!"

шикарное видео
шикарный видик