Learning Russian

Hi! My name is Déborah, my personal tumblr is Atom-Heart. I'm learning Russian on-line and so far I gathered a good amount of helpful websites and resources and I'll put them here, little by little with any other information I find interesting to Russian learners and Russia lovers world wide :]

[russianpod101]

Strategies for Learning at Home 🏡 PS: Learn Russian with the best FREE online resources, just click here: https://www.russianpod101.com/?src=social_special_infograph_learning_home_2_100119learn russian, russian, russianpod101, free russian, russian lesson, russian phrases, russian words, learning russian, russian language

[learn-russian-language]

‘Chef’s Table’ Recap: Vladimir Mukhin

One man’s quest to bring the cuisine of Russia’s glorious past into the 21st century

I have been watching this Netflix's series Chef's Table that shows chefs from around the world, it has a different take, it's not your regular kitchen recipies show.

You get to know not only the life story of the chef but the culture and history of that country.

And the 3rd episode of the 3rd season is about a Russian chef! Valdimir Mukhin and the White Rabbit. And is so interesting because it is in russian and you just listen to people speaking this beautiful language, talking about food, tradition, culture.

[languagemoon2]

Hi!! Could you perhaps list some blogs/resources focusing mainly on Russian? Thank you! :D

Sure thing, anon! Now I’m not super focused on Russian atm but I’ve managed to scrounge up something for you :)

Free Online Russian-Learning Websites:

http://www.study-languages-online.com/

http://masterrussian.com/

http://www.russianforeveryone.com/

http://www.yesrussian.com/

http://www.russianlessons.net/

https://www.duolingo.com/course/ru/en/Learn-Russian-Online (I’m sure you’re familiar with this one)

Cyrillic Alphabet:

http://masterrussian.com/russian_alphabet.shtml

http://www.russianforeveryone.com/RufeA/Lessons/Introduction/Alphabet/Alphabet.htm

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/russian.htm (I absolutely love Omniglot and would recommend it to anyone with a general interest in languages)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIKX9RYOX5w (For children, but good for learners as well)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhrSpf8kaqQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64vWY8YIijY

Russian Keyboard:

http://www.apronus.com/internet/ruskey.htm (Online Cyrillic keyboard)

http://winrus.com/kbd_e.htm (A downloadable phonetic keyboard instead of the Microsoft keyboard that is already formatted in Microsoft computers, the phonetic keyboard is easier to use because Cyrillic letters are placed with the closest roman letter equivalent on an English QWERTY keyboard)

Online Dictionaries:

http://www.rustran.com/

http://www.freedict.com/onldict/rus.html

http://www.lexilogos.com/english/russian_dictionary.htm

http://dictionary.reverso.net/english-russian/ (Reverso is pretty good in my experience)

Immersion:

http://www.bbc.com/russian

http://ria.ru/radio/ 

http://all-radio.ru/

http://www.rususa.com/fun/radio/

http://ru-news.ru/

http://rusnovosti.ru/ (News)

http://www.pravda.ru/ (News)

http://rutube.ru/ (Russian youtube)

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/33661.Best_Russian_Children_Books (For some beginner’s reading)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPYC—L3hwnJHZZGpCaPo2DxiSFwjkYd (The children’s show ‘Masha and the Bear’ in Russian)

Movies in Russian (Click on title to see the wiki page):

Leviathan (2014)

Solaris (1972) 

Stalker (1979)

The Return (2003)

Hard to be a God (2013)

The Mirror (1975)

Russian Ark (2002)

Elena (2011)

Battle for Sevastopol (2015)

Battleship Potemkim (1925) 

Ivan’s Childhood (1962)

How I Ended This Summer (2010)

12 (2007)

Burnt by the Sun (1994)

The Thief (1997)

Faust (2011) 

Mongol (2007)

The Fool (2014) 

A Driver for Vera (2004)

Russian Music:

Aria (Heavy metal)

DDT (Rock)

Kino (Post-punk)

Nyusha (Pop, R&b)

Yulia Savicheva (Pop rock)

t.A.T.u (Pop, electronic)

Nautilus Pompilius (Alternative, post-punk)

Russian Novels:

Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov) (BEST)

Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)

War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy)

Dead Souls (Nikolay Gogol)

A Hero of Our Time (Mikhail Lermontov)

The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

Apps - Android specific (Sorry, I don’t have Apple ios so I cannot offer anything there):

Duolingo 

Memrise

Mango Languages (Offers a free trial)

Babbel

Learn & Speak Russian - Mondly

Radio Russia

Learn Russian by Babel Yak

Learn Russian 6,000 Words

Verses of Russian poets

Multitran Russian Dictionary

Tumblr Blogs:

@learn-russian-language

@russiangrammar

@rashn

@gemrussian

@lovsiberianhusky

Haha, this may be more than you were asking for but it was fun to make and I hope that this helps you and anyone else who may be studying Russian!

[obsessedwithlanguages]

thanks for this post!

[erlenwein]

Okay, so. Movies listed here are all rather serious and depressing, so I would like to add some, which are more fun.

First of all, Leonid Gaidai. Check this guy out, he is INDREDIBLE.

Operation Y and Other Shurik’s Adventures (1965)

Kidnapping, Caucasian Style (1967)

The Diamond Arm (1968)

The Twelve Chairs (1971)

Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the Future (1973)

It Can’t Be! (1975)

Also:

The Hussar Ballad (1962)

Peculiarities of the National Hunt (1995)

Peculiarities of the National Fishing (1998)

Peculiarities of the National Winter Hunt (2000) - there’s also 4th movie in this series, but it’s very bad. these three are classics.

Books!

Mikhail Bulgakov, although I’m not a big fan of him (we have some strange cult of him which I do not understand at all):

Heart of the Dog

A Country Doctor’s Notebook

Zoyka’s apartment: A tragic farce in three acts (a play, I LOVE IT SO)

PUSHKIN WHY THERE’S NO PUSHKIN

Yevgeny Onegin 

The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin

The Captain’s Daughter

HIS POETRY

FAIRYTALES

Other cool ones:

Brodskiy!! you probably know him anyway

Gaito Gazdanov - very underrated, but so much better than Bunin IMO

Ilf and Petrov - early soviet prose, HILARIOUS

Chekhov is famous, read his short stories.

Teffi - she was awesome and funny

Maxim Gorky

Gogol - so-called Peterburg Tales (Nevsky Prospect, The Portrait, The Overcoat, The Nose, Diary of a Madman)

Vladimir Mayakovsky (poetry) - there are records of his voice!!

Vladimir Vysotsky - POET & SINGER. He was famous for his songs, was a great actor, there’s a lot of records (he has a remarcable voice, so check him out)

Music!

Agata Kristi (post-punk)

Undervud (rock)

Splean (Сплин) - indie rock

Aquarium

Golden Ring (Russian: Золотое кольцо) - folk music, very cool IMO

and again Vladimir Vysotsky!!

[learn-russian-language]

There are A LOT of cool options here! There is even a mention to my tumblr in there, I can't believe I didn't see this before!

[learn-russian-language]

Listening to Episode #3 of Be FLuent in Russian Podcast

I feel very accomplished today. I have listened to Episode #3 of Be Fluent in Russian's podcast and this time with more of that active learning attitude.

While I was listening I wrote down all the words and sentences I could understand. Then I took the transcription of the story and highlighted the parts I got right and I was happy to realize I understood a big part of it and also understood the meaning of most of the sentences.

I also highlighted the words I don't know the meaning so I can look it up and wrote some comments aboout some interesting expression. I saved it all up in a Word file so I can consult and improve it whenever I want.

[learn-russian-language]

So, this is a great listening exercise! On this videos Fedor Shirin reads a pretty simple text about his day. Afterwards he break it down sentence by sentence with the translation, keywords and some vocabulary context. A very important thing, he talks about active learning. After you listen to this you ask your how many percent did you understand? Describe what you understood about the text, what did he say? And what words stood out? Try to remember them. So doing this you will develop your listening skills. You can also listen to this on spotify, just search for Be Fluent in Russian.

[learn-russian-language]

Spotify made me this playlist Daily Mix 5 that is basically Russian music with an 80's vibe. I'm loving it! I haven't studied much this week, I've been so busy with work, but at least linstening to Russian music keep me in touch with the language somehow.

Do you have any playlist/russian music suggestion?

[learn-russian-language]

Real life is so overwhelmingly scary right now that I'd rather get overwhelmed by Russian grammar, at least I'm dealing with this interesting alphabet of a beautiful language! 🤓🇷🇺 _ #russiangrammar #learnrussianlanguage #russianlanguage https://www.instagram.com/p/Ca9_4IpO625/?utm_medium=tumblr

[learn-russian-language]

Started reading Мелкий Бес by Федор Сологуб.

First time reading a book by this author, I am at the fist 50 pages and enjoying so far!

I think it's impossible... well, maybe not impossible, but it sure is a poor experience to learn a language and not getting to know that nation's culture!

It's more then just grammar rules!

[learn-russian-language]

В воскресенье (a1↑)

Утро. Воскресенье. Какая хорошая погода!Я хочу есть. Но… У меня нет хлеба. У меня нет риса. У меня нет сахара. У меня нет чая. У меня нет ко

Today I read a short text in Russian and undestood the general idea! Yay! Of course after doing the google translation magic I understood it way better and picked up some stuff I haven't before because I didn't know a lot of the words.

There is this menu with some options, and at Read Russian section you can find texts from different levels. You can also watch short videos with transcriptions at the Watch Russian part.

[learn-russian-language]

Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.

A new tool that blends your everyday work apps into one. It's the all-in-one workspace for you and your team

A few days ago I talked about using Notion to learn Russian and I found this very useful template. It's in Spanish and it's made for learning French so I have been doing some adaptations. I'm translating it to Portuguese/Russian and replacing the content about French with ones about Russian language.

It's helping me a lot with how to structure the way I study, the resources I want to use...

You can find the whole post here where there is also a template for learning English.

[wonderful-language-sounds]

do you have any book recommendations for a beginner in Russian? something easy like a children's chapter book maybe?

I generally recommend a beginner reader such as the ones below:

Beginner’s Russian Reader

Читаем и всё понимаем

I Read Russian

Let’s Read Russian!  

Русский без границ  

Шкатулка

Шкатулочка

I have other books here if you want as well.

[sunandhubris]

Days in Russian

[photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unspalsh]

ДНИ ПО-РУССКИ

(the highlighted vowel is where the stress falls)

понедельник - Monday вторник - Tuesday среда - Wednesday четверг - Thursday пятница - Friday суббота - Saturday воскресенье - Sunday неделя - week дни недели - weekdays уик-энд - weekend выходные - days off/weekend позавчера - the day before yesterday вчера - yesterday сегодня - today завтра - tomorrow

To say "on Monday/Tuesday/etc" and to indicate on which day something takes place, you use в+the day in the accusative singular: в понедельник - on Monday во вторник - on Tuesday в среду - on Wednesday в четверг - on Thursday в пятницу - on Friday в субботу - on Saturday в воскресенье - on Sunday To indicate a habit or something that regularly happens, по+dative plural is used: по понедельникам - on Mondays по вторникам - on Tuesdays по средам - on Wednesdays по четвергам - on Thursdays по пятницам - on Fridays по субботам - on Saturdays по воскресеньям - on Sundays

(thanks @lipwigvonmoist for proof reading this short post)

[learn-russian-language]

Russian Flashcards - Apps on Google Play

Master Russian Conversation with latest speech recognition and voice technology

I'm trying out this flashcard app.

The flashcards are divided by themes and each one comes with audio, translations, speaking practice ang quizzes.

You can also put them on different folders (got it, forgot, never studied).

[lovelengua]

☆ Youtube Channels That Teach Russian

In English

World With Natalie

Rush Into Russian

Russian Grammar

Boost Your Russian

Be Fluent in Russian

College Russian

Real Russian Club

ARusPro

Amazing Russian

Learn Russian with Denis Fedorov

Cafe Russian

In Russian

РКИ для всех

71 шаг к русскому 

Russian with Tatiana 

Umashi Learn Russian 

русский с носителем 

Russian with Max 

О русском по-русски 

Alphabet Guides

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[polemicandcontent]

10 unusual language learning tips !

i see a lot of the same (sometimes unhelpful) tips being thrown around, so here’s my two cents:

1. write shopping lists/to do lists in your target language - often you don’t learn this vocab but it’s conversational & v useful! also writing yourself notes (lil pep talks on the bathroom mirror, for example) can work.

2. buy a small whiteboard and practice verb conjugation (esp. romantic languages) or script writing 

3. talk to pets in target language if possible!

4. look for quotes in your target language - often the turns of phrase are  more colloquial, and is a good opportunity to see how things are translated from your native language 

5. find a fairly easy news headline (in target lang) and try to re-write it w/ vocab you already have. you’ll quickly find gaps - this is a good thing! (if you’re feeling extra spicy, try writing a small subheading or description about the article).

6. create an imaginary friend who you speak with on the shower, or on the train, doing the laundry etc. talk w/ them in your target lang (in your head, obvs) about your day, future plans, etc etc.

~for more advanced learners~

7. when you’re more advanced, and have some grasp of past/future tenses, buy a children’s/tween’s/YA book that you’ve already read. highlight and annotate the shit out of it. you’ll know the general gist already, which makes context clues easier to find.

8. change wikipedia settings into target language - same goes for any social media site. this can be a mega challenge, but is so good for vocab, plus you’re more likely to remember the info since you worked so hard for it.

9. write a review for a book/film/record/whatever you’ve most recently consumed. maybe start a diary of them, or just have an ongoing word doc.

10. find a bilingual edition of poetry/literature if possible. you might find you can spot translation differences, but you’re sure to find some new vocab.

[speakie-talkie]

Some good ideas

[sombrestudy]

Basic essential Russian verbs

So I made a list of a few of the most basic verbs in Russian because my Russian really sucks right now :)

1. to be - быть

2. to have: “у respective genitive pronoun есть”

eg. у меня есть собака - I have a dog

3. to see -  видеть 

4. to look - смотреть 

5. to go -  Идти

6. to go (by vehicle) -  Ехать

7. to learn -  Учиться

8. to speak -  Говорить

9. to eat -  Есть

10. to want -  Хотеть

11. to be able to -  Мочь

12. to take -  Брать

13. to read - читать

14. to write - писать

15. to sleep - спать

16. to wait - ждать

17. to live - жить

18. to say - сказать

19. to work - работать

20. to know - знать

[speakie-talkie]

A great list of essential verbs!

[learn-russian-language]

So, I've tried to use Notion a few times with no success because I thought it was too overwhelming. But then this week I thought I should give it another try so I could use it to study Russian.

This year I want to get out of my Duolingo-only diet because I know it's important to study out of just an app and this can be a important tool to help me keep track of my lessons, cool resourses, playlists, videos, etc

So I watched some videos about it, some were in Brazillian Portuguese (cause I'm Brazillian :P) but I found this one in English that shows some good tips, she also shares some interesting links on the video description. I'm excited! I hope this works for me and maybe it will help you too.

I'm still deciding if I'm going to pick up from where I left or maybe (probably) do some review. Take my notebooks, organize them, choose the grammer book I'll use. It's a long way ahead!