Learn Russian

So you want to know the best way to learn Russian?

Молодец (good on you).

Over 250 million people worldwide are estimated to speak Russian.

I believe this is the most important time in history to learn Russian. It’s an enormously useful and important global language to learn. It’s bound to continue rising in dominance.

“What’s the best way to start learning Russian?”

I get this question all the time.

Well this Russian guide is designed to help new learners get started learning Russian.

The alphabet

If you are interested in learning the Russian language, the first thing to do to start learning the alphabet.

Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet which is completely different than the Latin alphabet used in English and many other Indo-European languages.

Other languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet include Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and more. (So if you learn Cyrillic, you’ll be able to read words written in these languages as well. Pretty cool, right?)

The Russian variant of the Cyrillic alphabet has thirty-three letters. There are many good resources for learning the alphabet.

I used a fantastic resource called RussianPod101 to teach myself during the summer before I started university. The best resources have recordings of what the letters are supposed to sound like. Having recordings by native speakers is very important as there are some sounds in Russian that do not occur in English.

I would recommend spending time working on the alphabet in the beginning.

A strong foundation will serve you well later in your studies. Even though it isn’t too hard to memorize the letters in order, actually being able to fluently read entire words and sentences with them takes some time.

Remember how hard it was learning to read in English (or your native language)? It’s just like that in Russian.

Luckily, learning to read as an adult learner, and therefore as someone who already is literate in another language, is easier than a child learning to read from scratch.

Start learning Russian vocabulary as soon as possible

Once you have the alphabet down, it’s time to start learning some words.

I learned words in my class, but there are lists of common Russian words online. Master Russian has a decent list, as does RussianPod101.

Russian does not have much in common with any Western language.

If you’re learning Spanish, and your native language is English, you’ve got a large amount of cognates (words that are similar in both languages) that give you a huge boost in vocabulary in the beginning.

Russian doesn’t work like that.

Unless you know another Slavic language, such as Polish or Serbian, you will need to learn common words.

Words are the building block of speaking a foreign language, and if you lack vocabulary, you won’t be able to correctly convey what you’re trying to say.

Luckily, since you only need about 850-1000 words to speak a language at a conversational level, all you need to get to that level is around 6 months of focused vocabulary learning. If you create the simple habit of learning 6 new words per day, that will teach you 26 x 7 x 6 = 1092 words in half a year.

Let’s say you skip one day per week on average, that still gets you to 936 words.

The great thing is that if you use an app such as ankidroid or Duolingo for this, that you can learn a couple of new words in just 5 minutes per day.

So you’re not even spending a lot of time on learning the basic vocabulary. I only started intentionally learning new words after 1.5 year of learning my first words in Russian.

And if I think back:

What if I’d started a simple Ankidroid practice of learning 5 words per day… my Russian would’ve been at a conversational level way earlier.

It’s not that I regret anything how I learned Russian, but if you’re in the beginning stages, it’s a very small effort to start a 5 minutes vocabulary practice, and it will give you humongous benefits.

Russian grammar

Learning some grammar is also important.

Of course, everyone learns in different ways, but Russian grammar is very complex and the sooner you start learning it and assimilating it, the better.

The good thing is, once you know Russian grammar, it will enable you to speak with a higher degree of accuracy when you encounter unfamiliar words. For example, all verbs in Russian have certain endings, and may follow a certain conjugation pattern, so knowing grammar will enable you to use new verbs correctly.

Focus on your weaknesses

We all have our strengths and weaknesses when it comes to language learning.

Some people speak with beautiful accents almost immediately but struggle with grammar, and others are the opposite.

In my case, I’m really good at grammar. I mastered most of the grammar of the Russian language by the end of first year. However, I had trouble remembering vocabulary and understanding the spoken language.

I set out to correct this.

For the first problem, I started using a spaced repetition system (SRS).

Spaced repetition is a learning technique in which flash cards are reviewed at increasingly large intervals.

The program I use is called Anki. Using Anki completely revolutionized the way I learn vocabulary.

It’s a spaced repetition app where you can add flashcards. Then you get a set amount of new cards and repetitions every day.

You can rate how easy/difficult the specific word was, and depending on your rating you basically get the next repetition the following day, or in a month._

So what happens if you combine those 2? Exactly.

Lots of afternoons staring at my phone screen and sore thumbs. For some reason I’d never heard of the fact that people can share their decks to other people.

So you can just go to their language page, and download a deck that seems nice, and has good reviews.

This is a good beginner one by the way, as it contains sentences and audio. This is a lot easier. And while there is some benefit to adding words yourself, it’s simpler to just download someone else’s work.

I input sentences I find in native material and periodically review these.

Anki isn’t the only SRS program out there but it’s my personal favorite (and no, I haven’t been paid to say this—I just really love this program!). Anki works on Mac and Windows, but if you don’t like it, there are other programs out there.

To improve my listening comprehension, I started doing just that: listening.

I found radio stations with lots of talking and listened to those all the time. Even when I was doing my homework, I had the Russian radio on in the background.

I didn’t understand anything at first but I kept listening. About a year after I started my daily listening, I found that I understood almost everything.

Ultimately, you need to find what your weakness is and focus on practicing that.

If you can’t remember grammar to save your life, study it until you do. If reading is difficult, read the news in Russian every day. (I still do this because I find it enjoyable.)

Russian resources

If you’re just starting out learning Russian, I highly recommend you take the time to focus on a course. Preferable without distraction.

While audio courses are great to listen to when you’re commuting, taking a walk, cleaning or cooking, I’ve found that you take up a lot more information if you intentionally listen to what is being taught. One course that helped me a lot was RussianPod101. You can read my review here.

The lessons only take 10 to 15 minutes each. And in each lesson you learn a good amount of new words, grammar and cultural references. I credit most of my Russian progress to it.

Begin practicing speaking Russian

You can learn all the grammar and words you want, but if you’re not speaking on a regular basis, you are just going to be stumbling for words when you try to have a conversation in Russian.

So you need to pay specific attention to speaking.

I was lucky enough to live in Russia to practice my speaking.

But I really noticed my Russian conversation skills take off after I started making YouTube videos where I’m practicing my Russian. It started off as a joke, but soon more and more Russians got interested in the channel.

In order to stay relevant on YouTube, you need to put out regular content.

That means that I was now at least practicing speaking Russian once every week for 5 to 10 minutes. Often I did (and am still doing) several takes of one video to make it better.

Just this simple thing of having a monologue in Russian several times per week has done wonders for my speaking skills.

Now, I’m not telling you to start a YouTube channel as well.

But what I mean is that if you start a simple practice of having monologues in Russian, you can also greatly improve your skills. Try your best to make correct sentences, while keeping space to allow your brain to ‘play’ with the language.

It also lets you practice without the fear of embarrassment while speaking in front of other people.

If you can get into the habit of recording yourself (audio for example), for 2 minutes at the end of the day, your speaking skills are going to skyrocket. Just talk to yourself about how the day went, or about yourself or a hobby.

It doesn’t matter what you talk about, as long as you’re speaking.

If you’ve got a Russian friend, then you could also send them the recording through WhatsApp for feedback.

And they could send something back to practice their English. And while it may sound a little weird and simple to record yourself on your phone speaking Russian, it’s a crazy effective method. Plus it takes only a couple of minutes per day… and it’s free.

Don’t overextend yourself

When you hear other people who’ve learned Russian speak Russian at a good level, it can be very motivating.

“Wow, I also want to be at that level in [insert X months]”

I know I’m guilty of that.

“I’m going to be practicing 2 hours every single day for the next half a year, and then my Russian will be at B2!”

Every time I’ve said something like that to myself, I couldn’t even follow through on my plans for 3 days. Once you start doing that stuff, you transform a nice interesting hobby into work.

And while it may work for some people, I think most people do better to ‘work’ on their Russian according to their motivation levels. Sure, aim to spend at least 10 minutes listening to a course, and 5 minutes of new vocabulary every day.

But don’t overextend yourself.

It’s better to spend 15 minutes per day for the next 3 years than to follow some excruciating schedule of 3 hours per day that you burn out on in 2 weeks, and then lose motivation and stop learning altogether.

A new culture

Ultimately, learning Russian hasn’t just given me some cool language skills (and mad bragging rights for mastering something as complex as Russian grammar).

It has given me an entirely new culture to immerse myself in.

I have read fantastic literature, talked to people who grew up halfway around the world from me, and learned about an entirely different world view.

Without a reason to learn Russian, it’s going to be difficult to motivate yourself to practice.

If you’ve ever thought “Hey, Russian sounds like a cool language… would be cool to speak it,” then you’ve already got the beginning spark of motivation.

You need to cultivate this spark, so that it becomes a flame.

What I mean is that learning to speak Russian (or any language for that matter) is going to be a long and arduous process. So the more you increase your desire to learn Russian, the better you’ll do in the long run.

One of the best ways to become more motivated is to immerse yourself in the Russian language. The more you listen to Russian, the more you will start to ‘feel’ it. And the more time you spend on it, the more you will start to feel motivated.

Learning Russian will become a part of your identity, and once that happens, you won’t stop.

If you’re not living in Russia, or meeting Russian people on a daily basis, it’s going to be difficult to achieve this. That’s why you’d do well to:

• start watching Russian movies
• follow Russian series
• listen to Russian music
• play Russian videogames

Every hour you spend on those activities improves your motivation.

At the same time, you also teach your brain and ears to get used to Russian. You’ll better understand where words start and where they end. So you catch 2 birds with one stone.

Also, you likely already spend a significant amount of time every single day on the above activities.

So why not switch the English content you’re consuming to Russian content. Just be sure to find something that includes English subtitles, so you can still understand the plot.

Last words on learning Russian

Russian is considered a difficult language.

And it’s true, up to a certain point. What many people forget to mention however, is the many faces of Russian that make it an ‘easy-to-speak’ language.

No articles.

Which makes your speech a lot cleaner, and you need less moving parts to think about. Flexible word order.

So you can start speaking before you know exactly how the entire sentence will look like.

And then think up the next words, as you go. The fact is that relatively few people learn Russian, so if you show interest in the Russian language, Russians will happily talk to you. So yes, the grammar and vocabulary parts are difficult.

But once you get those past hurdles, speaking comes naturally and fast.