How long will it take me to learn Russian?
Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 at
8:28 am
If I work at it every day? I'd love to speak Russian. It's a sexy language. It'd feel good to be able to read a different alphabet, too.
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It depends on your definition of fluent. You might mean "How long will it take until I’m satisfied with my knowledge of the language", which of course varies from person to person. What exactly do you want to accomplish with this? Do you want to just be able to read your favorite authors in the original Russian? Or do you want to be able to carry conversations, watch Russian television, read everything, etc. I hate to give you estimates, since people learn at different paces.
If you just want to read:
Anywhere from 3-6 years depending how quickly you learn languages, how often you learn, and how much help you have(books, radio, people, MasterRussian forums, etc.) This is only a rough estimate, though. You may be an extraordinarily skilled language learner and take only 1-2 years, or you may take longer. If you have already read all the Russian books you intend to read in translation, you will probably have less of a difficult time than if you tried to read a book you had never read before.
If you want to be fluent in terms of being able to speak, understand, read, and write at a near-native level:
Impossible to give an estimate. Depends again on how quickly you can learn, how much help you have, etc.
I would dare say that if you never had any real contact with spoken Russian, you’d never be able to achieve a fluent level of listening comprehension and speaking. Is it a full-immersion environment? Then it would probably take you much less time than if you learned it on the side as a hobby. But it’ll take you several years, at least.
well, learn the alphabet first. It will take a month but not because it contains 33 letters, but because you need to get rid of stereotypes and when you see a "P" say "[r]", when you see a "B" say [v], when you see "X" say [kh], etc.
Then start to read and listen to tapes CDs and videos, but study carefully. The stresses in Russian words have almost NO RULES, you need to remember each case! You also need to study 7 cases for each word and 7 more cases for this word in plural! Need to learn 3 different genders. And adjectives change too! You need to learn at least 4 different forms to say "me" or "you". well, after two years you can learn a little.