How to learn Russian in 3 months?
Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages, one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages alongside, and part of the larger Balto-Slavic branch. It is an East Slavic language native to the Russians in Eastern Europe. It is an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and is used widely throughout the Caucasus, Central Asia, and to some extent in the Baltic states. Russian was the de facto language of the Soviet Union until its dissolution on 26 December 1991. Russian is used in an official capacity or in public life in all the post-Soviet nation-states. Russian is the largest native language in Europe and the most geographically widespread language in Eurasia. It is the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, with over 258 million total speakers worldwide. Large numbers of Russian speakers are residents of other countries like Israel and Mongolia. Russian is the seventh-most spoken language in the world by a number of native speakers and the eighth-most spoken language in the world by a total number of speakers. The language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second-most widespread language on the Internet, after English.
To gauge what a Russian learner can learn in 3 months, let's see how a new language can learn in a month if a learner spends about two hours in a day.
The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) created a list of languages to show the approximate time an English speaker would need to reach “Speaking 3: General Professional Proficiency in Speaking (S3)” and “Reading 3: General Professional Proficiency in Reading (R3)”. Learners are requested to bear in mind that this ranking is the sole view of Foreign Service Institute FSI USA. Learners should also not get discouraged if they find their target language in a difficult to learn category. Humankind has not only seen many exceptions to things all around us but also moved right ahead in the face of adversity. Just as all five fingers in our hands are different, not everybody conforms to the same learning or grasping pattern or methodology and not everybody faces the same difficulty. Some people may have factors adding to the learning of Russian, such as knowledge of Belarusian! We offer many tips on how to best learn a language that will surely help you to tackle even the most difficult language on this list.
FSI has placed Russian in Category 4 that would need 44 weeks or 1100 hours until R3S3!
A learner must also know that there are numerous factors that can actually benefit him to shorten hairs learning time such as knowledge of a Slavic language which has more similarity to Russian the age of the learner the methodology and techniques been used to learn the time being invested to learn and so on and so forth when you are young your brain adapts quickly to learning any new skill, despite having your own moment of frustration. When a learner starts to learn a new language he feels slightly terrified overwhelmed intimidated and under-confident especially when dealing with language such as Russian
But remember, this feeling goes away very soon.
Yes until you haven’t learnt Russian properly speaking to another in Russian maybe a little mess and you could be a little embarrassed but remember these small efforts will go a long way let nothing deter you some you will realise that holding your ground was the best decision you ever made. Holding video conversations would sound scary at the beginning due to lack of sentence building and grammatical knowledge added to an improper accent, and lack of confidence that you are ready to talk to a Russian speaker. But soon you will be able to overcome these fears. Till then prevent yourself from backing out even if you have to battle with yourself.
Numerous Cyrillic alphabets on the screen may look intimidating and may even be exhausting, with every attempt to read and pronounce a new word be like climbing a hill. Turn away from this negativity and you will realise that right after a month of learning, all of the fear and negativity would have vanished in thin air.
Look for some nice teachers who are patient and skilled to teach Russian alphabets. Cyrillic no longer remains a Big Deal after learning with the right teachers and methodology. If you eliminate fear from your mind you will be able to calm down to learn better and eliminate the romanized versions of Russian words out of your life. You will instantly be able to recognise the Cyrillic alphabet and like this say “sight-read” it, by recollecting its pronunciation. Ensure that you remove all romanization after learning from your notes and replace them all with Cyrillic so that when I think about a word in Russian, I only see Cyrillic in my mind.
Craving More Reinforcement on What I’ve Learned
Practice the Cyrillic alphabet to such an extent that you develop a hunger to read, write, listen and speak Russian wherever you see it. Speak to Russian native speakers as much as possible to get the accent as close as a native after learning to speak Russian. Make use of the numerous online resources available to help you remain in the rhythm and continuity such as Anki, Memrise.
Cultivate the habit to make notes
Write a journal or a diary adding new phrases not just words, to ensure you have a useful collection of vocabulary supporting you at all times. This is a way for me to make sure all of the phrases I took the time to write down will stay in my active memory and be available for recall when I need them. These basics will allow you to have very fulfilling conversations and video calls in Russian!
Learn to use everyday expressions and very basic phrases
Learn to introduce myself
Learn to ask simple questions
Learn to answer simple questions
Be creative with everyday expressions, try something new everyday, learn survival phrases, conversation connectors, fillers, flow phrases, introduction and biographical phrases. Make a cheat sheet for yourself with important phrases.
By having the same “first” conversation over and over again with new people, you will become confident in the simple answers that you would be ready and comfortable to play around with your existing answers and move on to more complicated ones!
Grammar Comes Naturally
Russian will begin to make sense to you after a time of intensive use, and you will no longer be alarmed when you see written Russian or hear it spoken. Instead, you’ll be able to easily distinguish between genders in vocabulary, know how to conjugate verbs, and understand how Russian tenses function!
Video calling is no longer scary
With adequate exposure to the Russian language you will be able to drop your nervousness and fear to come out more confident than before to start hosting a conversation confidently
Use resources
RussianPod101 For listening and pronunciation practice
In 3 months you could complete all “Absolute Beginner” lessons and start with the “Beginner” series at a minimum.
Italki For spoken practice with native speakers
In 3 months you could complete 11 conversations on video calls at a minimum.
Assimil Russian For exposure to written Russian and light grammar
In 3 months you could complete 22/100 lessons at a minimum.
Reading and Writing Russian Script To learn Cyrillic
In 3 months you could complete the entire book at a minimum.
You really can get a feel for these things through natural exposure to the language. I haven’t yet studied any Russian grammar formally, but I think next month I will start digging into how exactly the past and future tenses work, because I’m genuinely curious about it!
Finally,
Russian is a rather homogeneous language, in dialectal variation, due to the early political centralization under Moscow’s rule, compulsory education, mass migration from rural to urban areas in the 20th century, and other factors. The standard language is used in written and spoken form almost everywhere in the country, from Kaliningrad and Saint Petersburg in the West to Vladivostok and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the East, the enormous distance between notwithstanding. In March 2013, it was announced that Russian is now the second-most used language on the Internet after English. People use the Russian language on 5.9% of all websites, slightly ahead of German and far behind English (54.7%).
There’s an amazing new way to learn Russian! Want to see what everyone’s talking about! Click Here.