So, you’re ready to make the leap. Maybe you’ve been paying attention to the news and see that Russia is becoming more and more important. (I contend that it has always been important, even after the end of the Cold War, but not everyone agreed. Unfortunately, due to recent events in Ukraine, I’m being proven right.) Or maybe you just really want to read Russian literature in the original language (if you think Tolstoy is good in translation, he’s even better in Russian) or want to be able to write blog posts in a language that will reach a large proportion of the world’s population (according to estimates, as many as 260 million people may speak Russian fluently, either as a first or second language).
Regardless, you’re going to do it. Maybe you’ve scoured a few language learning blogs as well and think this is achievable. (It is.) But Russian isn’t exactly a popular language and a lot of the popular language blogs deal with languages that use the Latin alphabet (the same alphabet we use in English) or Asian languages like Chinese that don’t even have an alphabet.
I started learning Russian the summer before I started college. Then I took four years of classes. Classes can definitely be helpful, but it is possible to learn without them. If you want to start learning Russian, here’s how to do it.
1) Learn the Alphabet First
Before you do anything with the Russian language, you need to learn the alphabet. Russian uses an alphabet called Cyrillic, which has some similarities—and some differences!—to the Latin alphabet we use in English. Writing Russian words with the Latin alphabet is called transliteration and I don’t recommend doing this. It may be easier in the short term, but in the long term, you will be much better served by diving into the alphabet right away.
And while we’re on the subject of learning the alphabet, I highly recommend learning the alphabet in actual alphabetical order. Some websites I’ve seen teach it in a strange manner, by first teaching letters that look like their English counterparts and sound the same, then letters that look like English letters but make different sounds, then everything else. I think this is unnecessarily confusing and adds an unneeded step to the learning process: memorizing the alphabet in alphabetical order. Save yourself the trouble and learn it in order.
This site is great for learning the alphabet because it has recordings of native speakers saying the letters.
2) Get Exposure to Russian Sounds
So, you’ve learned the alphabet. I estimate that will take about a week—yes, you can memorize it in one day, but I recommend spending some extra time in the beginning to get it down solidly. Practice sounding out random words. You may want to invest in a textbook or self-study course to help you with this. At this time, you should start listening. You want to get as much exposure to Russian sounds as possible, so tune into a talk radio station (see below for a list that I recommend) and just let it play in the background. It will be incomprehensible at first. That’s okay. Just keep listening until you understand everything. For me, it took about two years of daily listening to accomplish this.
3) Learn Vocabulary and Grammar
The previous step will be ongoing, so as you’re doing regular listening, it’s time to learn vocabulary and grammar. There are a ton of websites out there for learning basic vocabulary and grammar.
Master Russian
Russian Lessons
Learn Russian with RT
Once you reach this point, if you haven’t bought some sort of textbook for learning Russian, I would highly recommend you do so. As I said, I learned Russian in a university class. We used the textbook Live from Russia. I’d recommend getting something that has both a hard copy book and some form of audio to go along with it. Grammar and vocabulary exercises are also important (as is an answer key so you can check your progress). I used an earlier edition of this book and it was great. The new edition looks even better, as it has online exercises along with audio. I’ve heard good things about Pimsleur as well, though I have never used one of their courses.
4) Get Practice with Native Material
Once you have developed your vocabulary a bit and are getting more comfortable using Russian yourself, it’s time to start doing two things: watching native material, like TV programs, movies, etc., and reading native material in the form of news articles and eventually books.
Reading the news is probably the one single thing that has made the most difference in my vocabulary level in Russian. I like reading about politics and stuff like that, so I open up Google News in Russian every morning and read a couple of stories here and there. I write down new words I know in my language notebook. When I was at an earlier stage in my learning, I used to make electronic flashcards of sentences I read using the program Anki. This helped me a lot in retaining information. I know flashcards aren’t for everyone—there was even a “flashcard war” in the language learning blogosphere about four years ago—but I really think everyone should give them a try.
5) Repeat steps 2-4
Keep practicing Russian! If you can find people in your town who speak Russian, that’s amazing. If not, then Skype will become your best friend now, as it’s a great way to talk to people who speak Russian.
And, of course, if you have any questions about Russian that you can’t satisfactorily find answers to, you can always ask a fellow learner like me!