Best resources for learning Russian?

by philg

I’ve decided to defrost my brain, which was last used at some point in the 1990s. One of the tasks that I am setting for this previously idle organ is learning the Russian language. I would appreciate tips from readers on the best materials. Textbooks? Rosetta Stone? Apps? For correcting pronunciation and conversational practice, I have more or less full-time access to native speakers. I don’t need to be able to read, though perhaps that is helpful for learning to speak and listen?

(Note that I don’t want to go to a face-to-face class due to the travel time and scheduling that would be involved, though I guess it would be worth hearing from readers who’ve tried self-study and also a traditional class.)

Thanks in advance for any advice!

21 thoughts on “Best resources for learning Russian?”

  1. I tried the app Duolingo for Italian. It was reasonably glitch-free and pleasant enough to use at first. Unfortunately I became frustrated with it before gaining any useful proficiency in Italian. I also purchased Rosetta Stone for Italian, a couple of hundred bucks if I recall, but was never even able to get to work on my Macbook. That was in the midst of a lot of other randomness, so not sure I made a quality effort, but it certainly didn’t “just work” on my Mac.

  2. I learned Russian using the Lipson method. I think it was much more effective than the traditional Russian approach. I don’t know whether it can work without a teacher, because much of the phonetic approach doesn’t make sense without someone saying the words, showing the phonetics, and explaining the rules. It’s possible that someone has created an audio-visual course that way.

    Later, I used the Pimsleur tapes are a refresher and found them to be quick and effective. I’m sure that you can borrow those courses from a library.

  3. Much depends on your goals, of course. For Web links, masterrussian.com and RT’s self-taught Russian course are pretty good.

    For vocabulary increase, I would recommend Anki or a similar flashcard program for you phone – then pay a native Russian speaker in Russia, $10 on Fiverr to make you a good deck of flashcards (I haven’t found any good Russian flashcard decks on Anki).

    The grammar can be tricky – my key insights I would offer as someone who has been studying with a tutor for about a year is to understand the following:

    1. Russian is (possible prefix) root/stem (often 3-5 characters) plus one or more suffixes that indicate singular/plural, reflexiveness if a verb, grammar case, etc. These prefixes and suffixes have a set order in which they are applied (like in math where you have order of operations). Learning the most common prefixes and suffixes and what they generally mean, will be quite helpful.

    For instance – СЯ at the end indicates a reflexive verb (like an action you feel internally or that applies to the person or thing), e.g. “Мне нравится” = I like .

    2. In English, we have less complicated grammar and more helper words, while in Russian they have more complicated grammar and fewer helper words. For example, “I am home” “I am cold” in English is “Я домой” but “Мне холодно” because the grammatical case changes when expressing an emotion or feeling.

    I had tried self-study in the past, but could never get “over the hump” in terms of the initial understanding as to “why” certain things in Russian were like that.

    So perhaps, a few classes interspersed with self-study would work well for you. I had found a girl in Ekaterinburg whose course of study was teaching, on Fiverr, that gave me 20 minutes of Skype video time per $5 – this might be something for you to look into as there is no traveling involved. Once you have the basics down, then the challenge is to have the discipline to do further self-study.

  5. I don’t know about self learning, but I would definitely recommend learning to read. First, as you postulate, it’s easier to learn how speak and listen. Most material will have Russian words written in Cyrillic, so it’s probably harder to find just phonetics.

    Secondly, in my opinion the Russian alphabet is quite precise in defining the sound,s so it does help.

  6. The approach in “Fluent Forever” combined with Anki seems good – I’ve just started using it with Italian. The author used it to learn Russian.

  7. From about 1990 – 1997, while living in Miami, I was committed to becoming conversational in Spanish. Off and on over that period, I took a community college night class every few semesters, attended a couple of hours of private tutoring for several months, studied vocabulary and grammar workbooks for an hour very evening, dated a delightful Cuban-born woman, and leased an apartment for six months in the Little Havana section of Miami. I barely achieved a sub-intermediate level; it was exhausting to maintain a conversation of any length, and I couldn’t follow a native speaker unless that person spoke slowly and in proper Spanish.

    During the Summer of ’92, I attended a six-week, in-residence, full-time total immersion Spanish language program at Middlebury College. That program was intense – about four hours of class and four hours of language lab each day, social events, no English allowed, and no English media or entertainment. By the time the program ended, I was dreaming in Spanish. Immediately after the last day of the program, I drove to Boston to visit my Mom and and the first words out of my mouth were in Spanish. Shortly thereafter, I tested at a 4th grade level. Unfortunately, I haven’t kept it up, but I’m still proficient enough to be the informal Spanish translator at my work place.

  8. Another vote for Middlebury College (biased because it is my alma mater). But I can vouch for the intensive immersion course. I have done it for French and while I’ve lost a bit from lack of use, it really got me up to speed much faster than any other method. They are also quite good at Russian as well.

    philg,

    btw – since you are making babies for the Motherland. Papa Putin is giving away money to women who sacrifice for the greater glory of Rossiya (http://tinyurl.com/cxgm5yl). You (well, actually the mother) can probably get ~$6500 per baby depending on the exchange rate. The money can be put towards housing or education. My wife had twins, so I am a rich man now thanks to Putin. Speaking of which, what about spending the summers in Russia? My kids spends 2-3 months per year there, then I catch up and spend three weeks there. My russian skills crap, but I can manage to get around speaking at a 1st grade level.

  9. How about the 3 native Russian speakers in your household. refusing to speak any English whatsoever at home?

  10. http://www.russianpod101.com/
    Try this. We used japanesepod101 and frenchpod101 and they worked pretty well.
    My son learned some Japanese (written and spoken) using it in a couple of months before we went on a trip.
    It has good multi-media — written , audio, and video lessons. I don’t know what
    else works but this seemed like a good evolution of the stuff we used to buy cd’s or cassette tapes to study.

  11. Rosetta Stone is very useful if you want to learn phrases like “the boy is under the ball.” I’m still waiting for an occasion to use that phrase and 90% of the other phrases that they teach you in Rosetta.

  12. Hi Philip,

    My wife was teaching our son Russian, and after much research she used this book (Golosa) :

    Golosa: A Basic Course in Russian, Book One
    http://www.amazon.com/Golosa-Basic-Course-Russian-Edition/dp/0205741355/ref=pd_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&dpID=61GA0SNlu%2BL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR128%2C160_&refRID=13S3HJC338MT56YMVPY9

    Also, after ‘Golosa’ book, ‘Russian Face to Face’ (level 2) with workbook is great.

    Enjoy,

    P.S. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us!

  13. First, learn the alphabet, if you haven’t already. Watch Russian Soviet cartoons, like Ну, погоди! and work up to ones with more dialog, like Трое из Простоквашино. You can find these on Youtube. At first watch them with subtitles. Then, talk about the cartoon in Russian. What you thought the theme was, what character you liked, etc. Watch other movies and modern TV programs, and work up to no subtitles, eventually things like Что? Где? Когда?

    Also, I learned a lot by watching Zhirinovsky videos, link Zhirinovsky runs a fake political party in Russia, which is one of the many things that I love about the country.

    One thing that is annoying about Russians is they think if they don’t correct every @#@$ thing wrong with your Russian, they have dishonored the Motherland. Russians think if you make a mistake it will become a habit. I think that whatever language you are learning, it is important to start speaking.

  14. One more thing, buy Cyrillic stickers for your keyboard. link It’s true you can use an iPad tablet and get the Cyrillic keyboard to come up, but sometimes, it’s just easier to type on a real keyboard.

  15. I used iTalki to find tutors and have made quite good progress using 5-6 tutors to study mandarin using Skype lessons. It takes some time to find tutors that work for your needs (I tried 12 to find 5 that worked, iirc), but it has been a great help for my studies.

  18. Not specifically about Russian (I am a native speaker), but the Pimsleur course/approach mentioned above was useful for basic Spanish, Italian, and Polish.

  19. Learn where diplomats and spies learn and for free: Foreign Service and Defense Language Institute. Some of those tapes were recorded back in the cold war.

    A lot of the modules are self contained – just load the tapes on your phone and you can always practice. I loved the Latin American Spanish course to jot my memory from school and figure out what kind of savage tongue my Chilean friends speak.

    https://gloss.dliflc.edu/
    http://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/languages/russian.html

  21. You might look for someone who can work with you individually. When I was learning Spanish, I found someone like this by contacting the language department at a local University. They put me in touch with someone who was married to one of their grad students. One-on-one conversation practice works great because you are forced to talk.

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