Going to try to learn Russian; should I learn the alphebet first or start with words and phrases?
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 at
6:21 pm
Pretty self explanatory, If I want to try to teach myself Russian, should I memorize alphabet and sounds or should I start by learning different words and phrases?
Thank you everyone! I will definitely start on the alphabet. And movies and music are great ideas for when I learn more. Thank you again!
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Filed under: Russian Language
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Hi Lex,
Russian is a wonderful language and the first step is to learn the alphabet, which is known as the Cyrillic alphabet.
It’s a great feeling when you can decode the Russian symbols and understand the sounds behind them. Having this ability gives you the confidence to move forward and stay motivated.
To really know the alphabet takes a bit of practice, but you can check out this link to get you started:
http://listen2russian.com/lesson01/index.html
(it has all the sounds plus a worksheet)
Good luck and please email me if you have any questions.
Jonathon.
you should learn the alphabet so you know what the words you’re looking at look like.
You need to learn the alphabet first, but it is pretty easy. It will only take you a week or two, then the fun begins.
Learn the alphabet, don’t worry it’s easy. I’m no genius, and I learned it in about an hour.
Definitely the alphabets and their sounds.
If there are combination of letters that have a particular sound learn those as well.
Example in French: eau within a word makes a particular sound. In addition, it also sound just like au, aux, and eaux.
I’m not sure what this is exactly called, but it’s the best way to start if you want to be able to pronounce the words correctly.
If you don’t learn the alphabet first, it will be harder later.
You just cannot learn the language until you memorize the alphabet. 33 letters are not too difficult, are they?
I suggest alphabet first, or how else are you going to be able to know what letter makes what sound? Anywho, here’s my little run down on learning Russian:
Well, you’re definitely not going to learn over night or even a year. Learning any language takes many many years, and only the truly dedicated learners will be able to master the language. With Russian, you have to take in the consideration of learning a whole new form of written works, called Cyrillic. You must also take in to factor about the grammatical setup and pronouncation. However, it is NOT impossible!
Websites:
First of all, try this one: http://www.ilike2learn.com/ilike2learn/r...
If good and easy. Also, you might want to try out youtube. Try typing in Learn Russian, and make sure to click on Victor Huglainov’s, he’s the odd looking guy, but his videos are GREAT!
Books:
One great book I know can be found in your local Barnes and Nobles Bookstore under the Language section. It’s titled: "Learn Russian:10 Minutes A Day." This book is WONDERFUL, and I can’t suggest it enough for beginners.
Culture:
Try finding anyone you live around and see if they’re Russian, and ask to talk with them and have them teach you some. Also, try watching Russian movies. Two I can suggest to you are: Дневно́й дозо́р (Day Watch) and Ночной дозор (Night Watch). They come in subtitles, but you’ll at least be watching a film in Russian that will help you progress, by hearing native speakers.
Music:
There are some GREAT Russian music groups! Go to youtube.com and type in: Fabrika, Blestyashie, Via Gra, Zhanna Friske, and Russian Music Videos.
Try these two websites as well: http://blest.ru/ and http://www.sras.org/library_russian_musi...
Learn the alphabet first, but the best way to do that is also learn a few words at the same time.
The Russian alphabet looks very different at first but it’s not very ard at all! Most letters correspond directly to a letter in the Roman alphabet, and most of those are either just like Roman letters or like Greek letters that you are familiar with from math or science or college fraternities and sororities.
C (Russian) = S (Roman)
P = R
So right there you have your first word:
CCCP = USSR
(once C and the U are for words that are not the same in both languages)
O = O
so the name Ross in English is Pocc spelled in Russian
the symbol for Greek letter pi = P
the symbol for phi is the same as the English letter F or the ph combination.
the symbol for gamma is the same as the letter G in English!
Even the scariest Russian letter–the one that looks like the funny x with an extra line thru it is just the zh sound or sometimes a soft J like in journal.
And many words in both English and Russian originally come from Latin, so once you can transliterate the letters, you can read the word!
Look on the web for Russian Alphabet. There are lots of sites that explain it. And it is also good to look at two different books or websites because if one explanation doesn’t make sense to you a different one will!
Here’s a cool chart with Russian letters and their English analog (near equivalent):
http://www.travelto.spb.ru/alphabet.html
And here’s a cool list where all the words in Russian are the same as in English and it covers every letter of the alphabet!
http://www.alphadictionary.com/rusgrammar/alphabet.html
If you use the chart linked above, you should be able to read every one of the Russian words on the second chart!
If you sound them out slowly, you will see that you can!
And they give you clues like crossword puzzle clues to help you out!
Here’s one of the words:
Америка
Note: the backwards N is an I (i). (regular N =N).
A = A
M = m
e = e
p = r
и = i
k = c
a = a
Read that from top to bottom and you have learned another Russian word!
Great choice! I’ve in the recent months also started on Russian. I’d definitely go with the cyrillic alphabet first. It looks very unknown at first, but I learned it in just a few hours, it’s really very easy! Try this website, it’s the one I used:
http://www.dorogadomoj.com/se03abv.html
Good luck in your studies, and nice pick on Russian! It’s a really amazing language!
I don’t think leaning alphabet first is a good idea. The reason is that in Russian, much like in English, writing and pronounciation are completely different for most words. There are tons of rules in Russian language to describe why some words are written the way they are written, but these rules are not very logical, not very consistant and defenitely not easy to remember – generally, to say something correctly you should KNOW how to pronounce it, looking on written letters does not help.
Therefore, I think the right way sould be to learn some basic spoken langauage first and only when you’ll know how to pronounce some most used words you can pass to reading.