Acquiring Russian The Natural Way

I'll aim to do a monthly report about my Russian acquisition journey and since I didn't do one for August this will be a double feature! My background: I made several attempts to learn Russian over the past couple of years. I had a maximum vocabulary of around 50 words which I learned through a combination of Anki, Memrise, Duo Lingo, Babbel and Michel Thomas. I learned the Cyrillic script although I was conscious I wasn't pronouncing all the words correctly. My knowledge of grammar was and is still non existent.  Besides English I'm also fluent in another West European language (I won't say which, but it's one of Danish, Dutch and German). I was raised bilingually so I have first hand knowledge of acquiring a language through immersion only. Later I attended primary school and secondary school in both language environments but I was reading in both languages regardless of where I was going to school. Fast forward to the summer of 2020 and I was once again inspi...

It might just be my imagination but I think my ability to concentrate while watching Russian Comprehensible Input is improving. My main source of Russian CI is the wonderful channel:  Comprehensible Russian  specifically the Zero Beginners playlist . When I first started watching these videos a couple of weeks ago I could only watch one per day, even though they are very short. Perhaps because I had to concentrate very hard to follow what was being shown and to try and grasp as much meaning as I could. But lately I've been finding it easier to watch a couple of new videos in a row, plus rewatch some I previously looked at. Perhaps it's because I have an increased vocabulary and because I've become more used to spoken Russian? That would seem the most logical explanation. Let's see how long this lasts. Will it continue if I'm watching a video for the 4th or 5th time? Will comprehending and understanding more make it easier to consume more input or will I need to swit...

I've started noticing random Russian words popping into my head. Sometimes I know its meaning, sometimes I don't. Today it was  игрушка / toy  which is part of the pronunciation course I'm following. If I can't remember the meaning of the word I just use Google Translate on my phone to quickly find out. I just have to be sure that I'm pronouncing the word correctly.

 A quick overview of the optimal input that will help you acquire a language.

I've briefly mentioned Jeff Brown in one of my earlier posts but I'm not sure I linked to this video which I found very inspirational. It's an hour long but if you're not yet convinced as to whether acquiring a language with comprehensible input is possible then it's worth a watch. It shows all the steps Jeff took to acquire Arabic in a year. It also includes some comments from Stephen Krashen along the way. Arabic is said to be one of the most difficult languages to acquire for English speakers, more difficult than Russian. I might not be able to do exactly what Jeff did over the course of a year but I'm definitely taking inspiration from his approach. 

Here's a quick overview of my current understanding of Russian grammar. It might be useful to keep track of this over the coming months. I've heard that Russian uses something called cases, something that I know the Latin language has as well. From what I've heard it means that a word is altered depending on certain circumstances. For example a noun might have a different ending if it is doing something or something is being done to it. I can imagine that some words also change if there is some aspect of time involved. So describing something that happened yesterday or something that will happen in the future.  As you can tell my understanding of grammar in general is very limited. I know what nouns, verbs and adverbs are, but that's it. For example I've heard people talk about the 'future imperfect tense' but I have no idea what that means. I'm interested to learn about Russian grammar but according to the methods that I'm following it's not som...

As I mentioned yesterday I've started to notice why some people advise to not start reading or speaking too early. While I can read a lot of Cyrillic I've noticed that I sometimes pronounce words the wrong way. I think I do a good job 60% of the time but I'm weary of building bad habits that will be hard to change for the other 40%. While a word like   слова is easy enough, I'm not sure I'm really getting the nuances of words like  который or маленький correct. Unfortunately I can't erase the Cyrillic script from my mind and  as someone that is actively learning Russian I can't but help notice Cyrillic on the internet. To fix this as best I can I'm going to do the following. 1. Train my ear to better recognise the Russian phonemes with this video series provided by Fluent Forever and the accompanying Anki deck. 2. Train my mouth to better pronounce the Russian phonemes. 3. Adjust how I'm learning the 625 words. I mentioned that I've been creatin...

I recently discovered that included with the 625 words pdf are audio recordings of each word. After listening to them I realised that I was pronouncing a couple of words in the wrong way. And it's noticeable how difficult it is to override a wrongly remembered pronunciation. This shows to me the importance of learning it correctly the first time. While someone like Steve Kaufmann has learned multiple languages through a lot of reading, from what I can tell he has a strong accent and that's something I want to avoid as much as possible.  An interview he does with Matt vs Japan shows that while he can speak it well he has a poor accent compared to Matt, who has only focused on Japanese with a Mass Immersion / All Japanese All The Time approach.  26:46 / 30:21 Steve Kaufmann & Matt vs. Japan Discuss Hardcore Language Learning  (I've linked to the part of the video where they speak Japanese with each other). From now on I'm going to review the included recordings e...

Over the past couple of weeks I have not been able to get as much input time as I would like. Probably only 15 - 30 minutes a day. Ideally I would be exposing myself to several hours a day, but that opportunity depends on what kind of work I'm doing. Perhaps I should look into loading podcasts onto my phone or a separate MP3 player. The good news however is that I had my first dream in which I tried to speak Russian. In my dream I was walking down the street when I saw a little boy, who turned out to be blind, in an orange monk cloak playing with a puppy.  Now I have no idea why that scenario presented itself to me. I guess dreams are just weird like that. But the great thing was that he spoke Russian and that I tried to speak with him.  I need to point out that in my dream I was trying to speak Russian with the limited vocabulary that I currently posses. I didn't dream that I was suddenly fluent. All I could do was say certain words that seemed relevant. Child / ребенок...

The YouTube channel that really made me excited about the comprehensible input method is  Comprehensible Russian , in particular the  Zero Beginners Playlist . I find these videos short enough that I can give them my full attention and concentration without getting tired. Every couple of days I go back and rewatch lessons and because they are short I can rewatch several at a time without getting tired. When watching the lessons I'm not concerned with understanding every single word. Rather I focus on following the message. The first time I watch a lesson my understanding is usually very basic. But every time I rewatch it my understanding becomes more nuanced and I start to understand one or two new words. I do my best to try to connect the language directly to thoughts, memories, concepts and feelings. It's tempting to do mental translations for everything but I believe that will slow me down in the long run. Of course I can't help but automatically translate some words or ...