I understand Russian, but I can’t speak it well. Why?
Russian is the most common native language in the European continent. It is mostly spoken in the Eastern parts of Europe namely, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Caucasus. It is spoken worldwide by 258 million speakers. One of the most important features of the language is the distinction between the soft and hard sounds of the consonants. Every consonant has a soft and hard sound. It also has reduced the use of unstressed vowels. Stress is not used usually in the language however in some cases serious changes in accent can be used to differentiate between words, hence changing the meaning of the words. As a learner of Russian, you might have taken notice of how pronunciation in Russian is different from any other language. It is just not similar to any of the Indian or any other European languages.
Learning Russian is a very difficult task, but as someone who already understands Russian , you are already half way through the difficult task. It has such a varied and comparatively difficult alphabet along with pronunciation, you will surely need time to learn, understand and use it completely in your daily routines.
Ways to speak Russian
- Listen and Repeat – the best idea to solve this problem is to get yourself any Russian audio in the form of audiobooks, news clippings or random day to day life videos and listen to it very carefully and slowly repeat it loudly sentence by sentence. It is important to keep in mind that the book that you choose should be a simple book that has plenty of everyday dialogues that can help you relate to your day to day situations and help you learn basic phrases and words.
- Practice a lot – instead of simply translating English into Russian, try expanding your Russian vocabulary so you will know the right word for everything that you wish to convey or communicate. Then start with building smaller sentences on your own. And try to say them out loud and practice in front of the mirror or camera, do not forget to record yourself while practising as you can see yourself later and understand where you go wrong and correct and practice accordingly.
- Take up a course – apart from learning to speak Russian on your own, you can also take up classes that focus on your speaking skills. There are many courses that provide its learners with an interface to interact with native speakers of the language and also provide exercises that will help you build your Russian vocabulary and improve your speaking skills not just understand it but also be able to speak. Multibhashi is one such platform that provides its learners a complete package.
Finally,
These were a few ways to improve your speaking skills in the Russian tongue. It is a complex language but not something you can never master. Practicing is the key and it will help you build confidence while speaking the language.
