Language Tutorial

I've noticed that there seems to be some trends in Czech and Russian grammar, and since Czech is a Western Slavic language, and Russian is an Eastern Slavic language, does this mean they are quite similar coming from the common ancestor of Old Slavic?

Yes, it will give you an advantage, but only if you know Czech at an advanced enough level. Words don't always match, and as far as I know the rules for placing stress on syllables seem to be different. Among the Slavic languages, Czech is one of the farthest from Russian and you would have a better advantage if you knew Ukrainian or Belarusian. If you don't know Czech, than it's kind of pointless to study two foreign languages at the same time with the goal being only to learn one of them.

This is for people who have taken Russian before. Please. My parents won't let me get Rosetta Stone. Too expensive.

Dude, Russian is a very complicated language. I would know, I speak it. Every grammatical rule has more exceptions than anything. Different alphabet and letters, different sounds in the pronunciation, totally different sentence structure. Really… you won't learn that much from a workbook because the pronunciation is very tricky, so I'd suggest software, for one. It would be best for you to take a class though. Go to a local community college, they aren't that expensive there.

More lessons at http://obzn.com In this Russian language course you will study what the differences are between (С-с = S-s) and K (k = к). Learn about letters that are same and different in English and Russian languages and how they sound.

Duration : 0:10:59

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Technorati Tags: Courses, Language, learn, russian, School, speak, words

I recently got the rosetta stone program for Russian, and was quite excited to use it. Me and my fans think Russia is awesome, and wanted to learn some Russian and take a trip there. Unfortunately, it seems that you have to be quite fluent in the Cyrillic alphabet to use the program. I was wondering if I am right in this, and if so, if anyone can give me any pointers in learning the cyrillic alphabet/Russian in general.
спасибо! (Thank you)

Yeah, you do, and even though it may seem like this could inhibit your learning of the language, it'll strengthen it, because:

a) The Cyrillic alphabet is VERY easy. You could easily learn it in 20-30 minutes and then internalize it by practicing often / finding a Russian text to read.
b) if you ever do make it to Russia, you won't find transliterations, and you won't find that many people who even know the Roman alphabet.
c) If you ever plan on studying other Slavic languages (i.e., Polish, Serbian, etc) it'll make pronunciation much easier once you know the letter and it's Cyrillic counterpart. For example, the word "Srebrenica" would be pronounced "Sre-bren-ee-ka" by the average person, but it's actually pronounced "Sre-bren-ee-tsa" since the Cyrillic letter transliterated as "c" is ц, pronounced "ts."
d) Russian is just so much easier to understand and pronounce with the Cyrillic alphabet. When you see a bunch of apostrophes and stuff in the middle of transliterated words, it's confusing, but to see a ь at the end of a word just makes sense.

General pointers on learning the alphabet:

a) If you can, find a site or something that will read a Russian word (or, simply, an English word) and ask you to write it using the Cyrillic alphabet.
b) Find a Russian text or something like a block of text from a Russian website and practice reading it aloud. This will speed up pronunciation as well as internalization of the Cyrillic alphabet.
c) Listen to Russian texts and dialogues. I'll provide a link to an excellent Russian course at the end.

All in all, even if you end up using a program that doesn't use the Cyrillic alphabet, please learn it, because it's practical.

=D

I’ve giving up on czech so i’m going to learn russian instead.

Like Czech, Russian is a Slavic language, so the grammar and some of the vocabulary will be similar. In addition, Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, whereas Czech uses the more familiar Roman alphabet. All in all, Russian would only be a little harder than Czech, mostly in learning a new alphabet.

That having been said, I managed to teach myself to read and write Russian about 15 years ago. I don’t claim fluency, but I was able to correspond with people in Russia with little difficulty. So I say go for it. Russian is a useful language, with a rich literary history, and well worth learning.

I’ve been wanting to learn Russian for some time now, and I already know the fundamentals (verb aspects, comparative, adjective and noun cases, verb tenses, word order in sentences, reflexive verbs, telling the time, etc.), but I hardly heard it spoken and I was wondering if anyone could recommend a site with spoken conversations (audio).

http://www.russianlessons.net/
http://learnrussian.elanguageschool.net/
http://www.multilingualbooks.com/freelessons-russian.html
http://www.word2word.com/coursead.html#russian
http://masterrussian.com/
http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Bookstore/3230/
http://listen2russian.com/
http://www.docnmail.com/learnmore/language/russian.htm
http://freelanguage.org/learn-russian/russian-lessons/free-russian-lessons-online

Learn Russian with Babel Yak’s new system. You read, hear and then speak - the easiest way to memorize a language.

Check out: http://www.babelyak.com
———

This is Lesson 1 of Babel Yak’s Russian Unit I. It is not similar to other language learning programs in that:

1. Our program is comprehensive

2. You are not contained you next to a computer

3. You learn on-the-go

4. Our videos are made specifically for portable players such as iPod, zune or any other MP3/MP4 player.

5. You learn the alphabet naturally as you progress into the lesson. Phonetic spelling also makes it easy to pronounce the words (read the bottom line of the video text)

———
Russian greetings and subjects such as You are I are covered in this lesson.

Duration : 0:9:56

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Technorati Tags: alphabet, cyrillic, foreign, humanities, langauge, Language, learn, russian, slavonic

I would love to learn but sadly there is nowhere in my area that teaches Russian. I looked at Rosetta Stone but I’m not sure if I would like that format of learning very much. I want to completely understand what I am saying and I’d like to actually be able to learn the Cyrillic alphabet too. Any suggestions?

Nice of that guy to read that you didn’t like Rosetta Stone, and then give it to you!

Here: Start with livemocha.com

The alphabet: (I think you can actually access a set of flashcards through them and you can go into your control panel to access the keyboard so you can do the exercises in cyrillic…cause you have to!)
http://www.friends-partners.org/oldfriends/language/russian-alphabet.html

Here’s a site that has the conjugations: http://www.russianlessons.net/verbs/verbs.php?verb=30

Actually, that’s the conjugations reference from an online textbook. So there’s more attached to it.

And Byki.com has some flashcards that you download and can learn a few phrases…

Those, plus a textbook I picked up at a library sale, are the resources I’ve been using.

There’s more online…just do a search, if you don’t like those.

I've recently become interested in learning the russian language. The only problem is that I've no idea which organisations/schools offer russian as a foreign language, so right now I'm trying to teach myself using internet and audio clips. I really want a tutor to teach me the language properly in person so that I'll be able to learn it faster instead of trying to figure out how the language and various variations to pronounciations/sentence structures work on my own. The 3rd language centres over here don't offer russian as a foreign language, and it's really hard to find russians in singapore. I'm currently in the music conservatory at NUS, and I only know 2 russian teachers of mine. But it's kind of hard to ask them for proper russian lessons in the conservatory when my timetable is getting fuller by the semesters. Plus they aren't trained in teaching languages.

Does anyone know where I can go for proper russian lessons, not counting internet, books or going to russia?

Try this website. I help you to search and this list of Russian school come up.

http://www.hotfrog.sg/Companies/Cambridge-Languages

http://www.hotfrog.sg/Companies/Telelingua-Language-Centre

http://www.hotfrog.sg/Companies/Linguaphone-School-Of-Languages

http://sg.dir.yahoo.com/Regional/Countries/Russia/Social_Science/Linguistics_and_Human_Languages/Languages/Specific_Languages/Russian/Education/Language_Schools/?sort=lf

i don't believe that anybody wants to learn Russian…can you argue with me?

Я люблю русский язык!

I voluntarily did an intensive Russian language program last summer along with about 100 other people who also wanted to learn Russian… so… it looks like you are wrong, my friend

Russian is an amazing language.