Russian verb aspects can feel like the bane of a learner’s life. Just when you’ve learned some common Russian verbs, you discover that you have to learn a second set. For most verbs in English, Russian has a pair: an imperfective and a perfective. For “to say”, we have govorit’ and skazat’, for “to see” videt’ and uvidet’. But what’s the difference between the imperfective and … [Read more...]
Learn the Russian alphabet in an afternoon: three tricks
Non-Russian learners imagine it must be difficult to learn the Russian alphabet. Actual Russian learners know that it's easily done….and that the real challenges of the language lie elsewhere. In this post, you'll find three great tricks to help you learn the Russian alphabet in as little as an afternoon and we'll apply them together to each letter. If you’re going to … [Read more...]
“Dr Popkins Method?” How I learned Russian
This is the story of how I got fluent in Russian. It's post number four in my new “Dr Popkins Method?” series of articles. I got the idea for the series when I was down in Tenerife with some of my fellow language learners and teachers, bloggers and vloggers. They challenged me to help you better by sharing more my language learning journey. If you prefer video, you can … [Read more...]