How I learned Russian

Russian is a difficult language.

But if you do it the right way, you can learn it fast.

In this article I will tell you how I learned Russian.

The common myths about Russian.

The main challenges I had to overcome.

And at the end I'll give you some tips, If you want to learn it.

The Challenges of Russian

I met some Russian speaking exchange students when I was in university and we started a Language Exchange.

This was at the beginning of my language learning journey, when I hadn't developed the Natural Language Learning system yet.

Let me tell you. Russian is not easy.

If you think the Cyrillic alphabet is what makes it hard to learn, think again.

The Cyrillic alphabet is not that different from the one you already know.

You can learn it in an afternoon.

No that's what beginners and amateurs focus on.

The real challenges are grammar and especially vocabulary.

Compared to Western European languages Russian has a lot more words that look nothing like their English counterpart.

Example: opportunity - oportunidad - opportunité - возможность (vozmozhnost)

See what I mean?

That makes it way harder to understand and therefore to learn.

Grammar is also very different from English and a lot more complicated.

So naturally, progress was very slow in the beginning.

Berlin

Some time later, I moved to Berlin to work in the Spanish Embassy.

Berlin turned out to be a great place to practice Russian.

I lived in East Berlin, in a neighbourhood called Lichtenberg.

There is a considerable Russian speaking community there.

Many have been there since the Cold War days.

Others migrated from Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union.

I even had a Russian supermarket called Stolitschniy in my neighbourhood.

With Russian staff and Russian and other Eastern European products.

I had many opportunities to speak Russian.

So I decided to learn more seriously.

I joined an A2 class at the local Volkshochschule.

But it turned out language classes in Germany was as bad as in Spain.

So I decided to learn on my own.

I had already learned about the Comprehensible Input method.

So I started reading, listening and watching videos in Russian as much as possible.

I also memorised vocabulary with associations.

And once a week, as a reward, I had a video call with an online tutor.

You can see that it worked.

My Russian is not perfect, but I can speak it quite well now.

One of the Best Languages for Massive Input

One of the advantages of Russian is that there's nearly endless content online.

There is a lot of interesting content you can get for free.

Russians are quite lax with copyright laws.

You can find many Russian films on YouTube, for example.

And of course, podcasts, books and articles about any topic.

I've spent countless hours reading articles and books in Russian, listening to podcasts and watching films and documentaries.

You can kill two birds with one stone this way.

You keep getting better at the language and also learning about the country and the culture.

How to Learn Russian

If you want to learn Russian faster than I did, this is what I recommend you do:

Yes grammar is difficult but you'll learn it in context if you read and listen enough.

Do not study grammar rules! It will be extremely difficult, frustrating and inefficient.

Instead, focus on learning as much vocabulary as possible with associations.

And read and listen to the language as much as possible.

Watch videos in Russian, with Russian subtitles.

Your mind will associate the letter with the sounds.

And you'll soon get good at reading Cyrillic.

Once you understand the language well, start with the speaking exercises.

Use Language Islands if you want to make it faster.

This is the best way to learn Russian.