Rapid Russian: a reality check

To learn Russian more quickly, take responsibility for your own progress.

No teacher can beam the language into your head.

“School style” group Russian classes very inefficient if you rely on them on their own, though group language classes can give your learning a welcome social dimension and help with motivation.

One-to-one classes or language exchanges can be an invaluable tool but full time one-to-one learning is expensive.

If you’re an adult learner, make the two real engines for rapid progress in Russia effective self-study and lots of practice in your own time.  

And let’s be clear from the get go: nobody ever got fluent in Russian just by using an app. Some apps are better than others, many are “gamified” to, erm, keep you on the app. What are they good for? As a supplement or for some extra down-time engagement (if you don’t feel like doing something more effective instead).

1. Learn with your specific Russian goals in mind

Follow the advice in this post and you can get yourself ready to use your Russian in the sorts of basic everyday contexts that we all need or in highly specialised contexts that are personal to you.

This post is addressed to you if you’re a beginner, a false beginner or rusty.

That said, much of what you’ll read will also help intermediate learners who are ready to move swiftly to the next level.

You might want to be able to connect with in-laws or grandchildren or use the language to get things done and make wonderful memories when you’re travelling. You might already be into aspects of Russian culture and want to experience it from within.  You may want to forge new business contacts by giving a presentation in the language or bond less formally with potential customers afterwards.  

You’re clear on what you want your Russian for?

You’re sure you REALLY want it?

And you want it, like, yesterday?  

Ok, let’s look at what you need to do to learn Russian fast.  

2. Master pronunciation fundamentals

Time may be short, but don’t be tempted to neglect the key elements of the Russian soundscape. If you haven’t tuned your ear in properly, your listening skills will suffer even if you know the words or grammar “on paper”. 

You’ll sound dire, too.  

Focus on sounds that are different from English. Understand that getting the rhythm and intonation of phrases right can be even more important than the pronunciation of individual sounds and words. 

You don’t need to polish so much that you could pass for a native. but if you pay attention to the right things and you can “sound” better than you are. 

That matters because you need to win the confidence of the fluent Russian speaker you want to talk to. 

If you fail at key aspects of accent, talking with you can be a real strain for them.

There’s a risk they’ll just switch to English…or avoid you altogether. 

3. Learn the Russian alphabet

Russian is written in a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet that’s also used for Ukrainian, Bulgarian and several other Slavic languages (and for some non Slavic ones).

Beginners in Russian often imagine that the alphabet is a formidable hurdle but the truth is, you can learn it in less than a week (some argue even in one afternoon). You should! Not only will you have something to impress your friends with, but you’ll feel like an insider from the word go and you’ll be able to access authentic Russian texts much more quickly (obviously!).

For more on how to do it, check out this post: Learn the Russian alphabet fast: three tricks.

4. Get the main sentence patterns 

If you want to learn Russian fast, don’t get distracted by abstract Russian grammar for its own sake.

Don’t get bogged down in tables showing Russian verb and case endings. 

Instead, think of grammar as the most important repeatable Russian sentence patterns. Focus relentlessly on these patterns. 

Grasp rules of thumb that explain what’s going on and that you can apply on the wing (like the ones for the Russian case endings). Learn the highest frequency exceptions. 

Later, when you’ve developed more of a feel for what sounds right, you can work some more on “grammar” to help you fill in the gaps, refine your expression and explain surprises. 

5. Learn the most frequent Russian vocab

Raw word power matters but did you know that just 250 words or so make up about 50% of everyday Russian? 

Build up to six or seven hundred “essential words” and you’re very much in business. 

Reach 1000 words, you can understand 80% of an everyday Russian text and say a lot of what you want, even if you have to explain things in a roundabout way.  

Your “first thousand” should include the 650 most common words (the top 50 Russian verbs are of course, important among them). And then?

6. Add three types of fluency booster vocabulary 

Add to those 650 or so most common words another three classes of words and phrases (think of them as special fluency weapons in your drive to learn Russian quickly): 

Filler and conversational connector words such as “nu” (well, so), “znachit” (I mean, kind of, like), “tak” (so), “kak by” (like, sort of). They pepper natural speech and can really help move a conversation forward. 

“Tool kit phrases” that help you keep up and learn as you go, without switching to English: “Kak skazat’ x po-russki” (How do you say x in Russian), “Pozhaluista, govorite medlennee” (Please speak more slowly)and so on. 

Your own personal “islands of fluency”, that’s to say, bespoke words and phrases that may not be so common but which relate to your personal need for Russian: talking about your profession, hobbies, goals and so on. 

7. Learn how to get Russian into your memory (and out again)

Ok, Dr P, but how do I actually remember the key grammar patterns and essential vocab well enough to use them in real life? 

Not by accident! Not in your sleep! Not with one magic method! 

First, you need to get words into your memory (“encoding”). 

To help you remember, understand how Russian words are formed: look out for similarities with English, understand how Russian makes bigger words out of smaller parts by gluing smaller words into bigger ones (compounding) or adding prefixes and suffixes.  

Use memory association techniques to remember individual words. 

Learn “chunks”, that’s short phrases for every situation that native speakers of any language deploy without thinking.  

Second, you need to make sure you don’t forget what you’ve just learned. 

It’s been shown that reviewing material as soon as the day after you first tried to learn it and then at increasing intervals is the way to make it stick. The method is called the spacing effect.      

Paper flashcards or a flashcard app with the English on one side and the Russian on the other are great for this. If flashcards aren’t your thing, you can double down on lots of reading and listening practice with your course materials and other sources that interest you.   

8. Make your learning more effortful for maximum efficiency

Work creatively with your new vocab, chunks and grammar patterns you want to focus on. 

Make up your own short dialogues with your words and phrases and practice with a conversation partner. Do the questions and other exercises that come with your course make your own. Dictation and translation back and forth can be powerful activities to get you working intensively with new examples of Russian that you’ve just come across. 

Test yourself to turn vocab and grammar review from just repetition into more effective recall.

Working with flashcards or translation from English into Russian makes for more effortful interaction, great for consolidating memories! 

Go back to your dictation, translation and or other exercises at intervals.  

In short, don’t be passive, be interactive with your Russian texts and audio.

Make your learning effortful. 

If you’re tired after focused study, that’s a good sign. No pain, less gain!

Yes! Deliberate practice like this is hard.

You may well finish a session feeling more frustrated than when you began or even that you’re going backwards. 

Get what I call the “fluency mindset“, stick at it and trust the process.  

8. Get a good beginner’s Russian course

With new sounds, grammar patterns and vocab to master, you could easily waste a lot of time gathering scattered materials for yourself. You can end up overwhelmed and not knowing where to start. 

If you want to learn Russian fast, do yourself a favour and begin with a well designed course that introduces the high-frequency Russian that ALL beginners need in a step-by-step way. 

Working through the course unit by unit, week by week is a great way to pace your learning. 

You can also refer back to your course materials if you hit questions when you’re out using your language “in the wild”. 

Make sure the course is dialogue based, has audio with transcript and parallel translations into English. 

Go for courses that have some explicit grammar explanation but made accessible and with a light touch. If you like exercises, make sure your course also supplies self-correct answers. 

You’re looking for a course that doesn’t just teach the key pronunciation, grammar and vocab that we saw are so important but one that you can use for the effortful practice that we’ve just been looking at. 

9. Get lots of enjoyable reading and listening practice

Focussed study with the aid of a good course will accelerate your progress in Russian remarkably, but it’s not enough on its own.  

If you want to learn Russian fast, you also need a lot of exposure to the language: listen, read.  

Once you’ve got some basics through your course – or earlier if you feel the urge – get started earlier with more relaxed “extensive” listening and reading. 

Here the aim is to get enough to follow main thread of conversation or a story. 

Extensive listening and reading are great helping you remember what you’ve already seen. 

Plus: if the material isn’t too difficult for you, you’ll be able to “acquire” more Russian as well in a natural context, sub- or semi-consciously, without deliberate effort.  

So, find books to read aimed at learners at your level.

Try podcasts for learners in the language, ideally with transcripts. 

Some successful learners love diving into authentic content (i.e. made for natives) asap too.

To make reading native-level material easier, choose short articles on factual topics, read stories that you already know in English or use a parallel text with Russian on the right and an English translation on the left

As for listening, you may find it easier to watch the Russian (original or dubbed) films or series that you already know in their English versions.

As you start watching authentic Russian films, TV shows and YouTube vides, don’t be shy of switching on the subtitles to help (but, beyond the very earliest stages, use the Russian ones). 

The golden rule for “extensive” reading and listening practice is this: find things you find interesting and would want to listen to or watch in English anyway.  That way, it’s going to be so much easier to clock up hours and hours of enjoyable practice.  

10. What about speaking? 

Whether you should speak from the very beginning depends on your personality. 

If you’re the gregarious type who loves talking, learn the absolute basics and then throw yourself into using the language. Otherwise, there’s a risk your motivation will flag and you’ll give up. 

If you’re not so social, it’s also not a problem.  For you, conscious vocabulary and pattern building, reading or listening are going to be much more efficient activities in the early stages.  When you start to speak, you’ll have a larger vocab and more experience of what sounds right and better listening skills. All these will help you activate your speaking more rapidly than somebody who focusses on speaking from the very beginning.

Most of us want to speak as well, though, and you can’t get good at speaking without speaking a lot. 

Don’t put off speaking too long, just because you don’t “feel ready”. You don’t want to pass up on opportunities to make new friends in your language.

More than that, if you want to learn Russian quickly, don’t be a perfectionist. 

Don’t fixate on mistakes. Nobody cares. Instead, focus on your message and on the other person.

Prepare and practice short, relevant “scripts” on conversation topics that you’re going to need. 

Guess intelligently, pick up non-verbal clues to meaning, use those filler and conversational connector words to sound more authentic and win some time. Ask questions for the same reason and to check you’ve understood.  

If you already know Russian speakers with whom you can practise, great.

That said, will they always have time to help you as you strive to move forward at pace? Will they have the knowledge of the language to explain why things are said a certain way?  Do they know how to give feedback constructively?

Don’t pay for a teacher to explain things you can get much more cost and time effectively from a good course.

No, where a teacher can really help is to explain things you’re stuck on and to ensure that you get consistent deliberate practice speaking. A good teacher will be able to give you reasoned feedback on your speaking and writing.  

Try out different teachers over Skype or Zoom on a platform like italki.com. When you’ve “clicked” with one or two, book a series of sessions in advance to make sure they really do happen.

The platform I use for this is italki.com. I’m such a fan, I’ve had over six hundred lessons (for several languages).

Want to learn Russian fast? Let’s recap   

• Get real! It takes hundreds of hours to get really fluent, but if you’re clear on what you need your Russian for and you use smart methods, you can make rapid progress.
• Don’t skimp on sound. Get key aspects of pronunciation right and you’ll win friends and influence people (well, they won’t run away or switch to English, at least
• You don’t need all the grammar, just the main sentence patterns.
• You must learn the highest frequency vocab. The first 650 words, plus “toolkit phrases”, conversational fillers and connectors and the bespoke vocab that matters for your, personal needs.
• Apply “brain savvy” methods to remember patterns and vocab. Effortful intensive, deliberate practice will speed things up.
• Use a course to present you with just what you need, to avoid wasting time, confusion and overwhelm.
• Read and listen for pleasure as much as you can. You don’t have to “speak from day one” but to get good at speaking, you need to start and practise, practise, practise. One-to-ones with a teacher or exchange partner are great for this.

Related posts

Why learn Russian?

How I learned Russian

Russian language exams: a guide

Learn the Russian alphabet in an afternoon: three tricks

Get Russian verb aspects right every time

The post How to learn Russian fast appeared first on How to get fluent, with Dr Popkins.

If you’re not fully familiar with the Test of Russian as a Foreign Language exams (Тест по русскому языку как иностранному) check out my earlier overview post on Russian exams.

I’ve passed both Certificates and I’ve used most of the materials mentioned below myself.

The books are all in Russian only without the useful acute accents to mark stress you’ll find in many materials in the earlier stages. Hey, you’re at B2/C1 level now….Remember?

Without further delay, дамы и господа, allow me to present today’s runners and riders:

Russkyi yazik. Uchebnik dlia prodvinutykh

This is a four volume course, aimed at learners already at B2 who want to get to the top of C1 (that’s to say, to a level ready for the exam). Each volume is about 200 to 250 A4 pages, with some colour photos to break up the text.

As you’d expect at this level, the books won’t teach you grammar or vocab explicitly.

Each volume is sub-divided into two or three over-arching themes (e.g. “Towns and their inhabitants”, “Our holidays and important dates”, “The future of humanity is emerging today” and (I kid you not) “The Russian Army” (vol 4).

Each theme is the further sub-dived into divisions of the TRKI C1 exam (reading, speaking and listening (rolled into one section), vocab and grammar, writing. There’s a CD in the back of each volume for the audio material.

There’s a huge amount of material here in a range of registers. The input material (reading, listening) has exercises to prime you first and for reflection afterwards.

There are also occasionally QR codes to relevant additional material (e.g. Russian Wikipedia articles), which, one hopes, won’t become as obsolete as quickly as the pictures of 2015 ipads. (I do so wish authors wouldn’t labour the “latest” from the world of technology or entertainment. It always feels like an attempt to get down with the kids and is a sure-fire way to date a text rapidly.)

Even if you just get one of the four volumes, you’ll find a huge amount of material presented in an interactive way. There are lots of exercises of all types but their value for self study is limited in that most do not have answers.

Still, there’s an awful lot you could do with it in addition to what the authors intended. For example, there are transcripts for the audio so you could do dictation exercises. You could translate some of the reading passages into English and then try translating them back, and so on.

Russkyi yazik is a course to be begun maybe a year before the exam and used to provide structure as you move up from B2 to C1. As the day of judgement approaches, you could then move over to some of the books mentioned below, which are more tightly focussed on the exams themselves in the narrow sense (i.e. the questions rather than the general level of Russian you need as a prerequisite).

The publishes have posted a webinar by co-author Olga Khorokhordina exploring the book in detail This is aimed at specialists, not students. That said, if you want to start honing your Russian now and have one hour 14 mins to spare, “Russky yazik: the movie” could be for you. At least listen to the first minute or two and let me know in the comments below what you think she’s saying about a mysterious fifth volume

(Series details: Русский язык. Учебник для продвинутых. Рогова К.А., Вознесенская И.М., Хорохордина О.В., Колесова Д.В. Вып.1 2014, 204 стр. 978-5-86547-713-6; Вып. 2, 2015, 288 стр. 978-5-86547-851-5; Вып. 3, 2015, 228 стр. 978-5-86547-852-2; Вып. 4, 2016, стр 292. 978-5-86547-853-9)

V myre lyudeu

Three volumes, aimed at students who are approaching the end of B2 and want to do the TRKI-2 or B2 plus students working towards TRKI-3.

I used the first volume: “Writing and speaking” (B2 and C1). The second volume, “Reading and speaking” is also aimed at both levels but the third volume “Reading” is just for students preparing for the B2 exam.

The first two volumes weigh in at about 280 pages and there is audio with the second volume. There is some use of colour, including photos, to lighten and brighten the text.

The first volume covers nineteen topics (“Our home: capital city and provinces”, “The pace of life”, “Gender equality in the job market”, “Science and the future of mankind”….)

I didn’t have the book when I sat the TRKI 2nd certificate but used it a lot in advance of my TRKI 3rd certificate exam.

The two exam levels are interwoven through book one (exercises are marked TRKI-2 or -3).

Despite the title (“Writing, speaking”) there are passages to read as well (as a springboard for writing exercises, as in the exams).

There are lots of exercises. These are either aimed at developing and testing your vocabulary and syntax or aim to look and feel similar to the actual TRKI-2 or TRKI-3 writing or speaking exercises (the latter, though, in written form).

It’s great that you can correct many of the exercises with the key at the back. Of course, if you want corrective feedback on your free composition writing tasks, you’d need a teacher.

The second volume is split roughly in half. There is a large selection of audio of the types of monologues and dialogues required for the listening sub-test each level (including formal meetings, extracts from Russian films, news reports) with questions on what you hear and the answers. At the end of each section, there’s information on the format of the listening sub-test.

At 164 pages, the third volume is shorter than the first two. It describes itself as “3.1”, suggesting that a second part was planned. Like book 1, it’s all intended for both levels (though it’s indicated if individual questions or tasks are aimed at TRKI-2 or 3). There are texts of various registers and on a range of topics. A text will typically fill one page (say, about 400 words). Then there are a good number of varied exercises to each text. First multi-choice questions on the text, then a focus in on individual words. Next, the questions open out again to the topic, with a suggestion for how to use the topic for speaking practice.

Again, there’s an academic webinar on-line from one of the authors.

(Series details: В мире людей. Вып. 1. Письмо. Говорение: учебное пособие по подготовке к экзамену по русскому языку для граждан зарубежных стран, 2013, 288 стр. 978-5-86547-612-2; Вып. 2. Аудирование. Говорение…, 2016, 288 стр. 978-5-86547-916-1; Вып. 3. Чтение. Говорение…, Часть 1. 2018, 164 стр. 978-5-86547-941-3)

Trenirovochnye testy po russkomu yaziku kak inostrannomu II/Testovyi praktikum po russkomu yaziky kak inostrannomu II sertificatsionnyi uroven’

In the older of these two books (2012) you have two full past papers.

The 2019 volume has the same format and there are two more papers. It appears that there a CD but there also QR codes, so you can call up, for example, the film extracts for the listening text straight to your phone.

If you’re now a TRKI-2 student, you’re in training clover. Just think: when I was preparing in 2015, I didn’t know about the Trenirovochnye testy volume and all I had was the one, “official” model paper.

You should get hold of both relevant volumes and the official paper and train yourself under exam conditions on all five at intervals in the three months or so before your exam. You don’t have to spend a full half-day doing all the sub-tests at once but you should do each under “exam conditions”, with your stopwatch going.

(Details on both books) Тренировочный тесты по русскому языку как итостранному II, Андрюшина Н.П., Макова М.Н. 2012 4-й изд. ed 140 стр. 978-5-86547-466-1)/(Тестовый практикум по русскому языку как иностранному. II сертификационный уровень. Общее владение 2019 1-й изд. 164 стр.
978-5-907123-14-4)

Trenirovochnye testy po russkomu yaziky kak inostrannomu III

Practice papers are at a premium for the TRKI-3. There’s the one official model paper. This book adds an invaluable second and third model paper to your training roster.

You should get hold of this book and do both exams (and the “official” one) under timed conditions.

I did them all twice in the couple of months or so before the exam.

Both the II and III level books have audio/audio-video CD and/or QR code for the listening and speaking parts. The keys at the back give the multi-choice answers for the vocab/grammar, reading and listening sub-texts. It isn’t, of course, possible to provide answers for the writing and speaking sub-tests. All-in-all they are indispensable TRKI 2nd and 3rd Certificate materials.

(Details: Тренировочный тесты по русскому языку как итостранному II Андрюшина Н.П., Жорова А.П., Макова М.Н., Норейко Л.Н. 2019 7-й изд. 152 стр. 978-5-86547-812-6)

Testy, testy, testy II/III

These two books are essential additional practice for the vocab and grammar subtest of the TRKI-2 and TRKI-3 exams respectively.

Each book contains eighteen sets of multi-choice questions (on average forty or fifty per set). They follow the exam “Vocab and grammar” sub-test format but most sets focus in a particular one of the examiners’ favourite topics (cases, verbs of motion, aspects, prefixes, gerunds). At the end, there are a number of mixed sets of questions.

(Details on both books: Тесты, тесты, тесты… : пособие для подготовки к сертификационному экзамену по лексике и грамматике. II сертификационный уровень, Капитонова Т.И., Баранова И.И., Никитина О.М. Zlatoust (2019 изд.) 152 стр. 978-5-86547-820-1)/(Тесты, тесты, тесты… : пособие для подготовки к сертификационному экзамену по лексике и грамматике. III сертификационный уровень Капитонова Т.И., Баранова И.И., Никитина О.М. 8-й изд. 144 стр.
978-5-86547-820-1 144)

TRKI na 100% – Tests for Russian language B2 level; C1 level

This is much-needed new series of practice tests appeared only after I’d done the Second and Third Certificates. So, I haven’t used them myself but they sound very promising: first, they are actual past papers (each volume contains two complete papers), second, there are answers included, third, the exam audio is accessible online. There’s one volume for each level from A2 to C1. Can’t wait to have a look!

(Details: ТРКИ на 100%. Тесту по русскому языку – B2, Виноградов et al, Zlatoust (2019 изд.) 156 стр. 978-5-90712-362-5; ТРКИ на 100%. Тесту по русскому языку – C1, Левентал, И.В et al, Zlatoust (2021 изд.) 140 стр. 978-5-90749-316-2)

Uchebno-testirovochnye testy po russkomu yazyku kak inostrannomu

There are four books in the “Learning and Testing” series of TRKI 2nd and 3rd Certificate materials and we’ll look at each one in turn.

“1. Grammatika. Leksika”

Five chapters, each with about a hundred multi-choice questions as found in the vocab/grammar subtests at both levels. Most questions are suitable for both levels but there is a block of questions (each time about 15) aimed just at TRKI-3.

Then there are five more chapters, each of which delves into the topics tested in the first five. There’s a useful table of commonly confused words (гористый горный духовный душевный).

There’s a key to all the multi-choice questions, so this volume is great for self-testing.

“2. Chtenie”

The first two brief chapters offer some theory and reading skills tips. Then there are a further four chapters with a wide range of texts across different genres (popular science, journalism, sociological (economy, politics), creative literature). There are multi-choice questions to each text.

You get other types of exercise for each text too, for example identifying words or phrases which perform a particular function or are typical of a particular style of text. There are sometimes open questions arising from a text. There’s a key for self-correcting the multi-choice questions.

“3. Pis’mo”

Volume three begins with a brief initial “theoretical” section explaining the different types of rhetorical styles (scientific, business/official, conversational etc. and different types of text.

Then there are five chapters, each focussed on how to write different types of text (short business texts such as memos, formal and informal letters, essays. There is DVD with video clips which serve as sources for some of the writing tasks (e.g. a letter, description or essay).

According to my Russian teacher, some of the stylistic recommendations in the book are rather old-fashioned (pre-internet).

It’s not always made explicit how the material relates to which exam and it’s not always clear. Chapter Two “Записываем содержание изходного текста” is only four sides long and has a section on acronyms and abbreviation of words and how to précis a text. This appears to be aimed at question 2 of TRKI-3 for which you are required to use these. No keys to the exercises (as most involve free composition).

“4. Listening. Speaking”

The first section (two chapters) are theoretical background explaining and illustrating concepts such as the difference between “language” and “speech” and explaining what homonyms, synonyms and paronyms are or how when people listen, different types of listening (for gist, detail).

The meat of the book is section two (three chapters).

Section II Chapter 1 One focusses on speaking with material and exercises on intonation, and relevant to speaking tasks such as resolving conflicts or discussing a film. Chapter 2 is “Let us listen and answer” and Chapter 3 is “Let us listen and discuss”. There are a wide range of materials to listen to and different types of exercises (with a key at the back for the multi-choice ones).

There is a DVD with audio and audio/visual clips for the exercises.

The book closes with a short third section “Preparation for giving a speech” which seems to be of limited relevance given that this is not required in either exam.

If an exercise in this volume is “of a type found in the certificate exams” (задание, подобное сертификационному), it’s marked with a big “C”. This is a minority of the exercises and it’s not made clear which level or which particular question rubric the exercise relates to. I think that the volume is best approached as a broader education in the skills and providing materials and exercises to think about what’s going on when you speak and to practise listening.

Overall, this series has a much more academic feel than the other books mentioned above.

I think the theory would have sat better if it was more tightly and explicitly linked to what you need to be able to do for the exams. Likewise, the “point” of the exercises throughout could have been made clearer.

I think the most useful are the “Reading” and the “Grammatika. Leksika” the vocab grammar volumes would be useful even in the last weeks before the exams.

The other two books feel to more like something you’d use in the long run up to the exams rather than in the immediate preparation phase. Yes, there’s lots of useful training material in “Listening. Speaking”, but you’ll need to use it along side the past papers to get a sense of where the authors are coming from. The “Writing” volume needs handling with care.

(Series details: Учебно-тренировочные тесты по русскому языку как иностранному. А.И. Захарова, Е.Н. Лукьянов et al. М.Э. Парецкая, И.Н. Савченкова, Г.Р. Шакирова, Выпуск 1. Грамматика. Лексика, 136 pages 2019 10-й изд. 88 стр. 978-5-86547-815-7; Выпуск 2. Чтение. 2012 4-й изд. 88 стр. 978-5-86547-494-4; Выпуск 3. Письмо. 2019-изд. 96 стр. 978-5-907123-17-5); Выпуск 4. Аудирование. Говорение. 2019 5-й изд. 168 стр. 978-5-907123-23-6)

TRKI 2nd and 3rd Certificate materials: Choose and use!

All the TRKI 2nd and 3rd Certificate materials reviewed above come from the Zlatoust press in St Petersburg, whose website you can check out for content page pdfs and sample pages for the other texts. You can generally obtain them from specialist foreign language booksellers and some may be on larger, well-known online stores.

Except for the past papers, the Testy books, TRKI na 100% and the “Gramatika. Leksika” volume in Leaning and Training Test series, all of the books discussed above have a wider purpose of getting you thinking about Russian and offering explicit instruction. You’ll find that the exercises range wider than the actual tasks require in the two exams and you’ll be exposing you to a lot of Russian texts whether written or audio/audio visual.

They’ll overlap then, with other types of exposure that you’ll want to use at this level.

Needless to say, as you move up through the levels, you’ll be getting as much general listening and reading input as possible. You’ll also be speak Russian as often as you can and don’t neglect the writing. For speaking and correction of written work in particular, taking lessons on Skype on a platform such as italki is convenient, flexible and good value. The other thing you’ll want is a good descriptive grammar book (I used Wade’s A Comprehensive Russian Grammar – but grammar books are a topic for another post).

Have you found other TRKI 2nd and 3rd Certificate materials, whether books or other resources that you’d recommend or that I should add to the list? Let me know in the comments below. Good luck with your exam preparations and don’t forget to enjoy the challenge and the journey. If you want to check out more on my chequered TRKI 3rd Certificate history, start with this post. Whichever exam you’re taking: yдачи вам!

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1. Russia itself: the best reason to learn Russian?

The land of Russia itself is a huge answer to the question “Why learn Russian?”.  If you can, visit the country and get a taste of its tongue even if, unlike me, you’ve no intention of living and working there and becoming a lifelong explorer of the place and its culture.

You know the stats: the Russian Federation is the largest country in the world, covering about one eighth of the world’s land mass and spanning eight time zones (nine if you count the enclave of Kaliningrad in the West).  There are a wide range of climates and (mostly vast) landscapes to explore.

Two world cities offer the visitor almost overwhelming architecture and art.

Moscow: the historic capital (until 1712), under whose thumb the surrounding lands were gradually gathered into the Grand Duchy of Moscow (predecessor of the modern Russian state) from the fourteenth century onwards. With its cathedrals, fortress (“kremlin”) and old, crooked streets, Moscow is a symbol of “traditional” Russia. As capital again from 1918, it was became the showcase for the Soviet take on modern, all decorated skyscrapers, stadiums and thoroughfares.  Now it’s a throbbing, twenty-four hour metropolis, Europe’s largest city.

St Petersburg: the Imperial Capital (1712-1918), spectacular Venice of the North, with its “Petrine baroque” and neoclassical palaces, bridges and statues; a glistening facade, built on the marshes at great human cost on Peter the Great’s orders, to be his “window on Europe”.  Two centuries later, just before the Imperial order came crashing down, it was the scene of a glittering flowering of the avant-garde in the arts.

Russians will tell you that St Petersburg isn’t really Russia.  When I arrived in the Soviet Union for the first time, by train from Helsinki, it certainly seemed Russian to me! It was only years later that I got it, when I arrived on another train, this time from far to the north-east, after a month working in the town of Vologda in the Russian north, which still has its share of traditional wooden houses and where the odd proverbial cow really does still roam the streets.

Yes, most visitors never leave the two capitals, but there’s so much else to see. There are another thirteen cities with populations above one million.  This is also a country of countless smaller towns, rising out of the woods and the fields and always (you sense) on the brink of being swallowed up again by rurality.  That, at least was how the 280,000-strong town of Tambov, 300 miles south east of Moscow felt in a green high summer.  I spent a month there, working in the local archives, being given vodka in the evenings and watching the Barcelona Olympics on a massive Soviet television.

Provincial Russia is rich with tradition and history, with interesting buildings and people. Some towns were closed to foreigners in Soviet times, like Russia’s sixth largest city, the two-million strong city of Samara, one of my favourites, on the banks wide river Volga.

Russia, they’ll tell you, is a country of villages (and Moscow the largest). It’s a country of snow, mud and dust. In the north, peasant huts, were traditionally decorated outside with carved window frames.  Inside hung elaborately embroidered linen cloths and, in the “Holy Corner”, an icon.  The stove was big enough to sleep atop.  Onion-domed churches were of elaborately decorated wood, tribute to the creativity of the hardy Russian peasants with their rich traditional culture. I spent ten years of my doctoral and post-doctoral life studying them.

The disaster of forced collectivisation from the late 1920s has left swathes of the rural economy in a sorry state, but life goes on. Traditions were clung to or are being revived. They’re recreated by millions of Russians each weekend too, as they escape the inhuman scale of high-rise modern housing for a weekend at the summer cottage (the “datcha”). Lovingly built over years, stocked with home-grown pickled gherkins and tomatoes. Here you may find yourself drawing water from a well. You may use a dry privy, sweat it out in the smoke-filled confines of a “black” sauna or gorged on meat with “black” (that’s to say, Russian rye) bread and moonshine round a camp fire as your host picks up the guitar.

And here’s the key: the Russian language. Beyond certain tourist hotspots in Moscow and St Petersburg, English not widely spoken. Just from a practical perspective, your travelling experience will be much easier with Russian. When, for instance, your train arrives in Samara an hour earlier than you ‘ve told the person who’s supposed to be meeting you.  (Well, I didn’t know that Samara was in a different time zone from Moscow and that all trains run on Moscow time.)

Practical, survival knowledge aside, the main reward when you have even the roughest of working knowledge of the lingo is the ability to engage with the locals at a whole new level. You want at least a gist of what that guitarist is singing, too.

Not that Russian is the only language, in those parts, mind.  How could it be in a place so large?  The Russian Federation, no less than the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire before it, is a multinational state, with many other indigenous languages.  May they revive and flourish!  Let Russian be your lingua franca as you travel, but be aware of the struggles of other, equally valuable, languages for survival before it.

2. Russian culture and customs: exotic lite.

To the explore from the West, there’s much that’s reassuringly familiar about Russia and Russian.  After all, the country may have expanded it all directions but, at its core, it was a north-east European country, sharing a climate and fauna with its immediate western neighbours: long, dark, snowy winters, pine and birch trees, wolves, boar and bears.  There’s a diet to match, familiar veggies and mushrooms, black bread. We’re on a continuum, the “vodka belt” that runs from Sweden, through Poland, Finland, to the Baltics, Belarus’ and Russia itself.

And yet.  And yet. Familiar as so much of it is, Russia and Russian offer just that hint of the exotic.

Yes, this is a Christian country, but the Christianity is of the Eastern type.  Orthodoxy was brought north from Byzantium and (is shared – in its various variants with some southern Slavic neighbours).  Your first time in an Orthodox Church, standing in the semi-darkness before the high golden screen or iconostasis will create an impression: icons, incense; haunting song; open coffins. T here’s not much by way of futile attempts to sermonise and not much prudery either.  The priests can marry and, in tsarist times, the impoverished, hapless cleric could well have been the biggest drunk in the village.  Orthodoxy deals with life – and the state – as it is.

At first glance written Russian looks exotic, but not too exotic.  It’s not a different writing system altogether, like Chinese.  It’s an alphabet, but not a completely different one like Georgian. Look closely and it’s sort of familiar and no, I don’t mean those irritating backwards “R”s beloved of lazy designers (“Я” ya is the sound). Rather, of the 31 letters, seven can have roughly the same sound as in English (“а”, “е”, “о”, “т”, “м”and so on.  Others may be known to you from Greek (“н”, “г”, “ф”,  “х” ….).  That’s because in the ninth century the missionary St Cyril, active in what’s now Bulgaria, took the Greek alphabet and modified it to reflect the sound system of the south Slavic dialects, spoken there at the time.  The “Cyrillic” script was born and a new written language: Old Church Slavonic (the language to this day of Orthodox scripture and liturgy).  It’s used (with minor modifications) by Bulgarian, Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian and (along with Latin script) Serbian.  Many of the “smaller” languages within the Soviet Union were written in it and many still are.  Don’t worry, you can learn it in an afternoon, as I show in a post with, as it happens, just that title: Learn the Russian alphabet in an afternoon: three tricks.

And back to that diet.  It may be European but it’s also picked up influence from across Russia’s long and varied borders.  The Russians are tea lovers, like the British, but here they drink it without milk with a slice of lemon. It’s best tried from one of the beakers made from very thin glass with a metal handle that you get on Russian overnight train journeys (did I mention the trains, by the way?).  There is also food from the south, notably Georgian cuisine and the eastern flat breads and delicately spiced “plov” (pilaf) from Uzbekistan (a rice-based dish, boiled for hours with a clove of garlic).

Russian intellectual life is European.  From the thirteen to the sixteenth century Muscovy missed out on the Renaissance that transformed the Western mind (a minor detail – not) but in the seventeenth and eighteenth century Russian Empire went big time for the Enlightenment.  Voltaire and Catherine the Great (reigned 1762-1796) were correspondents.

German idealism hit big time in the nineteenth century, its peak was that supreme nineteenth century ideology: Kommunismus.  Like Germany and Hungary, two other eastern European countries trying to rationalise what they perceived as their “backwardness”, Russian thinkers flattered themselves with the idea that their country was chosen to follow a special role, a bridge between east and west, on a mission to combine the best of both.

Imported ideas – and the reforms “from above” that they inspired – always came up against Russia’s very different realities: the sparse population, the size of the territory and the lack of a canon law tradition…. Russia took European ideas and made them its own.  Whether literature, art and architecture, politics or technology the results were often spectacular, whether successes or disasters.

If you love European culture but want something different, on a dramatic canvas, Russian could be for you. It’s Europe with a twist.  Exotic, but still exotic lite.

3. Ohhh…the sound of the Russian language!

But how crass of me to be looking for the answer to the question “Why learn Russian” outside the language itself!

All languages are beautiful.  If a language doesn’t seem so at first, it’s only a question of tuning in (what I call the “Chinese opera” effect).

A native English speaker will have to practise some of the intriguing sounds of Russian.

There are the contrasts between soft (palatalised or “light”) and hard (velarised or “dark”) consonants. Irish, I gather, has the same thing (and calls the consonants “slender” and “broad”).  In written Russian, these are sometimes marked with special soft  sign (“ь”) and hard sign (“ъ”).

Then are the two Russian “i” sounds, “и” (IPA: i) and “ы” (IPA ɨ).  Russians speaking English always seem to slip into the first. In Russian, I’m sure I often try to pass of the English “i” (IPA: ɪ) for both, which no doubt sounds equally grating.

Russian is has those wonderful zh, ch, sh, shch or ts sounds (“ж”, “ч”, “ш”, “щ”, and “ц” respectively). These palatal sibilants are typically “Slavonic” and the reason why Polish has those eye-watering consonant combinations and strangely accented consonants. Doesn’t the Cyrillic alphabet do a better job here?  The good news: these are not difficult sounds for English speakers to reproduce (as we have most of them all ourselves).

Some classify Russian – and English – as “stress-timed” languages: certain syllables, at regular intervals, are more heavily stressed than others (in contrast to so-called “syllable-timed” languages like French or Welsh, every syllable seems to be given equal weight).  In words with multiple syllables, Russian has a syllable that takes the main stress but there can be secondary stress on another, like English. Russians, though, really like to give it to the main stressed syllable! There’s nothing more ripe than a succulent fully stressed Russian “a” or “o”.

Ok, ok, I’m no phonologist but, to my (totally unbiassed) ears, Russian sounded great from the start. Have a listen and decide for yourself!

4. Learn Russian because Russia is a land of song.

Another great reason to learn Russian is that language will open the door to a rich tradition of song….though the chants you’ll hear during an Orthodox service are Old Church Slavonic, that archaic, literary language that St Cyril first wrote down.

The Russian peasantry’s many tunes and lyrics were collected and studied by nineteenth and twentieth century ethnographers and in the Soviet Union various state-funded, professional ensembles were formed. Some go from strength to strength today, performing to packed houses the length and breadth of the country.  Often they use traditional instruments such as the gudok (three-stringed, pear-shaped), the svirel (a flute) the volyanka (Slavonic bagpipes) and, most famously, the triangular, three-stringed balalaika.  A recent development is the fusion of traditional sounds with electronic music, for example the music of the ensemble “Ivan Kupala”.

As in many European countries, in Russia the nineteenth century “discovery” of folk music by urban intellectuals fed into the classical tradition in the sounds of a romantic nationalism. Russia is famed for its nineteenth and twentieth century classical orchestral music and, as for words in the high tradition, the language can offer a whole new dimension to your engagement with the equally feted Russian operatic tradition.

Russian language rock and pop developed from the 1960s and 70s and awaits your attention.

As in all the Soviet bloc countries, irreverent, unpredictable Western-inspired “youth” culture presented a perceived threat to the regime.  The Soviet authorities controlled recording (on the state label Melodiya). An underground scene developed, illicit distribution aided by the invention of the compact cassette.

Now, of course, there’s the full gamut of Russian-language rock of all types, including Russian rap.  Should I also mention “popsa”, the Russian take on manufactured “bubble gum pop”? Despised by my sophisticated Russian musician friends and basically anyone of taste and half a brain aged fifteen or above but beloved of fourteen year old girls…and one or two others.

One of the first types of Soviet song I came into contact with in my Saint Petersburg student hall of residence was “the author’s song” or “chanson”. This genre – there are actually various branches – traces its roots to peasant songs and those of political prisoners in tsarist Russia.  In its Soviet and post Soviet form it means simple acoustic guitar chords, with the lyrics dominant. It’s sung poetry, really, but always composed by the “bard” him- (and, though much less often, her-) self. It’s not always easy to understand for the learner, especially the allusion and slang of a master of the genre, such as Vladimir Vysotskii (1938-1980).

5. Russian has great literature.

A very obvious reason to learn Russian is the glory of Russian literature.

The earliest chronicles and epics from this part of the world were written in Old East Slavic (the parent language of Russian, Ukrainian and Belorussian).  In the medieval period, Old Church Slavonic was used (a form of Old Bulgarian) and religious themes dominated.

Secular literature in colloquial Russian started to appear from the mid seventeenth century. By the end time the tsarist regime fell, Russian was the medium for one of the World’s greatest literatures.

Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) forged a more flexible and up-to-date Russian style in his novels, plays and poems and is considered by many to be the founder of modern Russian literature.  He’s been a cult figure since before the 1917 revolution.  With Pushkin, the consensus is that much is lost in translation, so you’d better learn the language!

The literary flowering known as the “Golden Age” began in the 1830s with Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852), running through Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) to Lev Tolstoy (1828-1910). Then came the “Silver Age”, the last years of the Tsarist regime, with luminaries such as Aleksandr Blok (1880-1921) and Andrei Bely (1880-1934) and younger writers such as Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930), Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941) and Anna Akhmatova (1899-1966), whose tragic fates were inextricably linked with the revolution and the new order.

Many Russians take their literature very seriously and some students of Russia have argued that it’s the prime element in a modern sense of specifically Russian national consciousness (“russkii”) as opposed to a wider Orthodox identity or statist/imperial (“rossisskii”) consciousness.

Poetry seems more pervasive in Russian culture than it is in English.  I’ve found that educated Russians can often recite from memory.  Maybe this is because teaching methods in schools are often traditional, focussed on assimilating the cannon.  During the brief political “thaw” under Khrushchev from 1953 to 1963, leading poets read their works to packed stadiums.  Today, Alla Pugacheva, Russia’s diva-in-chief, sings a Pasternak poem to a packed TV studio.

Literature and politics have always been intertwined. When Alexander Radischev (1749-1802) wrote about the wretched condition of the serfs, Catherine the Great declared him mad and exiled him to Siberia. Nicholas I acted as the personal censor of Pushkin’s works.

The Soviets tried to control literature: only approved authors could get published, but masterpieces were still produced.  Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) never saw “The Master and Margarita”, regarded as one of the great novels of the twentieth century, in print.  Unofficial, typewritten, carbon-copies of banned, unpublished works were circulated surreptitiously as “samizdat” (self-publication).  In each Soviet generation, there were writers who were persecuted, imprisoned or exiled, most famous among them the Nobel prize winners Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) and Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996).

The contemporary, post-Soviet literary scene is lively.  I often find “post-modern” novels in the high tradition, such as those of Victor Pelevin (b. 1962) a real challenge: all intertextuality and (to me) obscure references, but there are also more accessible writers with a “new realist” style.  Huge amounts of new popular literature appear, ranging from quality detective novels to more pulp fiction (great for exposure to straight forward but pithy, colloquial language!).

If you’re a reader, it doesn’t stop with belles lettres.  Russian is one of the major languages of scholarship and science, the medium for important contributions to learning in ethnography, linguistics, cultural and literary criticism, mathematics and engineering.

There’s a strong periodical tradition, dating back to the thick, generalist monthly journals of the pre-tsarist period to Soviet high-brow subscription periodicals.

Huge amounts of newsprint are churned out. A stock image of the Soviet Union was of people in fur hats gathered round notice boards onto which the splayed pages of the day’s broadsheets were glued.  Now, it’s the internet, with top bloggers who are household names (and often in a very uneasy relationship with the powers that be).  Then there’s social media. “V kontakte” is the “Russian Facebook” but lots of my Russian friends are very active on planet Zuckerberg as well.

The Russians are so in love with the written word that it even spills into their visual art.  Text featured prominently in the paintings of avant-garde artists like Natalia Goncharova (1881-1962) or Liubov Popova (1889-1924) or, more recently, the large canvasses of Erik Bulatov (b. 1933).  There is a very strong graphic design tradition of stamps, posters, magazine and book covers. Give your room a Russian makeover to get you in the mood!

6. Russian is great language of film.

You’re not a reader? Try Russian film!

The first film in Russia was of Nicholas II’s coronation in 1894.  The last decade of the tsarist regime and the first, heady years of the Bolshevik order were not just an exciting time in literature.  In the visual arts and still photography Russia was ahead of the game. A nascent cinematography was part of the scene.

During and after the Civil War (1918-1922), the Bolsheviks were quick to appreciate the power of the silver screen to spread their message in a country where many people were still illiterate.

The most famous of the early Soviet directors created masterpieces and employed innovative cinematographic techniques, most famously in “The Battleship Potemkin” directed by Sergei Eistenstein (1898-1948).  There were documentaries, epics, Socialist Realist histories of revolutionary heroes, musical comedies.

Soviet cinema was always tightly controlled, especially under Stalin.  Certain themes were taboo (drugs, sex) until the loosening of restrictions on freedom of expression (“glasnost'”) under Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s.

In the postwar world, the powerhouse studies were Mosfilm and Lenfilm.  As the directors had regular salaries, they could produce self-consciously intellectual movies without having to worry about box-office takings.  The greatest of the art-house directors was Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986).  Many films in a more popular style were also produced, the best of which, from the 40s through to the 80s still resonate in the culture – and are much loved – to this day.

The Soviet film industry was not only a Russian affair.  There were major studios and leading directors based in other republics, notably Georgia.   They filmed in their own languages, but also in Russian.

Altogether, there’s a lot to watch.  In London, I’ve been able to catch up on classic Russian language films in the various seasons at the British Film Institute.  There was also a (contemporary) Russian film festival for a few years but, sadly, it seems to have come to an end.  What’s going on near you?  If there’s nothing, why not organise a screening of a Russian classic?  You want to stay at home?  Then view online!  The site culture.ru has a wealth of unsubtitled Russian language movies, which Mosfilm has loads on its YouTube channel, with English subtitles.

The Russian film industry, like so much else in Russian culture, went through hard times as the old state funding system collapsed but is now back on its feet.  With an eye to earnings the popular end of the “industry” has gone for Hollywood style pyrotechnics in a big way and can be just as thrilling – and just as politically crass – as its American counterpart.  Feel good movies are back.  Art house is strong again, too, with directors such as Andrei Zviagintsev (b. 1964).

Watch that screen!  There’s surely lots more to come.

7. Russian is a world language.

Russian has world language status not just because of the language’s literary prowess.  It’s also thanks to sheer numbers.  I’ve seen differing estimates, but with about 165 million native speakers usually ranked 8th (between Arabic at 206 million and Japanese at 122).  When you add in the second language speakers, it rises to 7th, with about 275 million (between Arabic at 300 and Portuguese at 235).

The first language speakers are not only residents of the Russian Federation and the Russian diaspora. Russian is the first language of many people in several of the other successor states of the Soviet Union. The largest numbers are in the other two “east Slav” countries: Belarus’ and Ukraine and, to the south east, in Kazakhstan.  There are smaller (but politically potentially very significant) groups in Estonia, Latvia and Moldova, mainly as a result of deliberate Soviet plantation policies.  About 15% of Israelis have Russian as their first language (most first or second generation migrants from the Soviet Union and successor states).

Kazakhstan aside, there was less migration into former Soviet States in Central Asia or to Georgia and Armenia.  In all these places Russian was well established but, for the bulk of the population, very much as a second language.  Its fortunes are now on the up again, thanks variously to economic incentives, convenience and an appreciation of Russian culture (which runs deep in Georgia, despite recent political tensions with Russia).

In the Eastern European “Soviet bloc” anyone over about 45 probably had to study the language at school and some, like my taxi driver from Belgrade to Novy Sad on my visit to the Polyglot Conference, are keen to use it.  You may also unexpectedly come across Russian speakers in more far-flung countries which were allied with the Soviet Union, such as Angola, Vietnam or Cuba and others which enjoyed good relations, such as India.  From the 1960s to the early 1990s, many students, especially in technical subjects, came to study in Soviet universities and had to achieve a high level of competence in the language.  When I was living in the Hall of Residence of the Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg in 1991, the guy in the next room was from India (first language: Oriya).  He did a mean boiled chicken, with spices from Central Asia.

Since the end of the cold war, lots of Russian speakers have moved to North America and Western Europe where it used to be a rarity to hear Russian at all. Now your skills could come in useful there and there are many opportunities to practise, meet new people and expand your horizons. In London there are several freebie Russian newspapers and various meet-up groups and events.  I’ve spoken Russian with Central Asian taxi drivers New York.  What about where you live? Prick up your ears! You could well hear the language.

Despite the end of the Soviet empire, Russia remains a major power on the world stage which gives Russian heft.  It’s one of the six official languages of the UN (read: opportunities for translators and interpreters in New York and Geneva).  Russian has no official status at the European Union but proximity means there will always be a need for Russian there.  The IMF maintains a website in Russian.

8. Learn Russian as an important language for business and commerce.

Russia is a big economy and that means opportunities for Russian speakers.  With a population of over 140 million, the Russian Federation is the ninth most populous state in the world.  In 2014, says the World Bank, it was 10th in terms of GDP.

The Russian economy has real problems, no doubt, over dependent on commodity prices and dogged by corruption and poor productivity.  Russia is sometimes has the feel of a potentially fabulously rich country that never quite makes it.  How many Russian brands do you know, aside from weapons and vodka?

While distance and climate have always made economic development in some ways more of a challenge in Russia than in the countries to its west, in another sense, economic life Russia has always been too easy. The forests were so expansive that it was a case of slash and burn and move on. The need to hold down the population was one of the causes of serfdom. Today the super abundance of natural resources, oil, gas, metals make for what students of development call the “resource curse”. What incentive is there to reform and innovate when such fabulous riches are on tap (at least for those in the in group)?

There’s a very long tradition of trade links between Russia and Western Europe. From the early modern period, Russians traded fur and timber against things that they lacked, like lead, tin, precious metals, textiles, firearms, and sulphur.  In the industrial revolution tsars and the Soviets invited Western experts to help them set up their industries.  John Hughes, a Welshman, set up the steel industry for Nicholas I at Yuzovka (now: Donetsk).  After the fall of Communism, Westerners arrived, to help modernise the Oil and gas industries and to set up state-of the art banking and retail operations or, like me, to work in international professional service companies: lawyers, accountants.

If you’re a gold digger, maybe you’re too late.  Both sides feel they got their fingers burnt in the post Communists transition.  Russia is much more sceptical of offer from Western corporations, who themselves have their own complaints against Russia.  With recent sanctions and the expulsion of Russia from the G8 group of large economies, Russia may not be so open for business as a few years ago.

Nevertheless, Russia remains a member of the BRICS group of five major “emerging” economies and in 2014 the EU was still Russia’s largest trade partner.  Russia’s size and natural resources mean is always likely to be important in the World economy.  Relations go up and down, but there are always going to be opportunities, especially for people who can combine good Russian with other marketable skills. So, yes, job prospects and an economic incentive may be very good reasons why you want to learn Russian.

9. Other Slavonic languages will seem like a cinch after you’ve learned Russian….

Russian can be your key to the wider world of the Slavonic language group. Compared with other Indo-European language families, the Slavs are a relatively homogeneous bunch, developing into separate languages from the parent tongue, Proto Slavic (or Common Slavic) relatively late (the tenth century).  The very closest to Russian today are the other two languages in the “East Slavic” branch of the family: Ukrainian and Belorussia.

What does this mean in practice?  This: if you learn Russian, you’ll often be able to get the gist of what’s being said in other Slavonic languages. I explored the reality of this (mistakes and all) out and about with Slovak in Bratislava.

The patterns of the formidable case system present a challenge in the early stages of your Russian journey. But then – whoahooaa! – if you start your second Slavonic language, you’ll find not just that you get not just a ton of vocabulary with the same, or a related, meaning but that you get a many of the structures your second language more or less for free.

In the meantime, when you’re at large in other Slavic countries, a bit of intelligent guessing will get you a long way.  Warsaw has its “Rynek Starego Miasta” which sounds to you as a Russian learner something like “Rynok starogo mesta”.  Dig that familiar vocabulary and those familiar masculine genitive adjectival and nominal endings, Russian learners!  The Russian would mean “the market of the old place”.  The Polish actually means the market/square of the old town (“Old Town Marketplace”).

In short, with one Slavonic language, you’re already “broken in” and you’ll be able to pick up another impressively quickly. Russian is among the most complex of them.

Hardest first (with apologies to the Poles): let Russian be your Slavic anchor!

10. Becoming a Russian speaker gives you membership of a (relatively) exclusive club.

In English-speaking countries, at least, Russian is not a mainstream “school” language.  Leave Spanish and other such easy options to the masses. Leave Chinese to those mindlessly chasing the latest trend.  Of course, real exclusivity only comes when you learn a lesser-used language (like Basque or Welsh) but, all the same, if you choose Russian you’ll be joining a relatively exclusive club of true connoisseurs.

Ok, I’ll stop the teasing .

I’m just trying to say a couple of things.

First, not that many people in the English-speaking world take the trouble of learning Russian.  If you do, it should go down well with Russian speakers and you’ll have a set of perspectives and cultural references which will be (for better or worse) quite unusual in your peer group.

Second, how about supply and demand? From my perspective as a first language English speaker, it’s true that the market seems awash with young Russians educated privately in England at vast expense, native or near-native English-Russian bilinguals with whom you, hapless learner, may feel you could never compete. That said, they’re not all going to want to work as interpreters at the UN (they’ll be far too busy doing boring things on daddy’s yacht or making serious money in hedge funds or technology).

There is a small but steady demand for those who have learnt Russian as a foreign language to an outstanding, or just a good standard. Learn Russian and the opportunities to work through it will be there.

—oo–)OO(–oo—

As you decide to learn the language seriously, you can’t just tick off abstract “Why learn Russian” reasons from a blogish listicle. This list of ten reasons to learn Russian may spark your interest and urge you along the way but your motivation, whether driven by necessity or attraction, needs to be personal.  If they’re to endure, the reasons must be yours. You must answer the question “Why learn Russian” for yourself.

Either you already have an ongoing need or interest or you’re developing one.  To get fluent, you’ll have to build the language into your life for the long-term and develop a learning habit that will keep you going despite the ebbs and flows of personal motivation.

So, have I been wasting my time with these words?  Well, maybe I’ll have encouraged you to start exploring a bit or – if Russian is already on your mind or in your life – nudged you actually to start learning.  It would be wonderful if that were the case.  My love for the Russian language keeps on growing.  I hope it will become your love too.

Thinking of learning Russian or already started?  Let me know your answer to the question “Why learn Russian” in the comments below.

Ready to start? Check out this new post: How to learn Russian fast

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