Question by Lex: Going to try to learn Russian; should I learn the alphebet first or start with words and phrases?
Pretty self explanatory, If I want to try to teach myself Russian, should I memorize alphabet and sounds or should I start by learning different words and phrases?
Thank you everyone! I will definitely start on the alphabet. And movies and music are great ideas for when I learn more. Thank you again!
Answers and Views:
Answer by kawaiihime
you should learn the alphabet so you know what the words you’re looking at look like.
Give your answer to this question below!
Listen2 R says
Hi Lex,
Russian is a wonderful language and the first step is to learn the alphabet, which is known as the Cyrillic alphabet.
It's a great feeling when you can decode the Russian symbols and understand the sounds behind them. Having this ability gives you the confidence to move forward and stay motivated.
To really know the alphabet takes a bit of practice, but you can check out this link to get you started:
(it has all the sounds plus a worksheet)
Good luck and please email me if you have any questions.
Jonathon.
wschmerz says
I don't think leaning alphabet first is a good idea. The reason is that in Russian, much like in English, writing and pronounciation are completely different for most words. There are tons of rules in Russian language to describe why some words are written the way they are written, but these rules are not very logical, not very consistant and defenitely not easy to remember – generally, to say something correctly you should KNOW how to pronounce it, looking on written letters does not help.
Therefore, I think the right way sould be to learn some basic spoken langauage first and only when you'll know how to pronounce some most used words you can pass to reading.
whatnowwwww says
Learn the alphabet first, but the best way to do that is also learn a few words at the same time.
The Russian alphabet looks very different at first but it's not very ard at all! Most letters correspond directly to a letter in the Roman alphabet, and most of those are either just like Roman letters or like Greek letters that you are familiar with from math or science or college fraternities and sororities.
C (Russian) = S (Roman)
P = R
So right there you have your first word:
CCCP = USSR
(once C and the U are for words that are not the same in both languages)
O = O
so the name Ross in English is Pocc spelled in Russian
the symbol for Greek letter pi = P
the symbol for phi is the same as the English letter F or the ph combination.
the symbol for gamma is the same as the letter G in English!
Even the scariest Russian letter–the one that looks like the funny x with an extra line thru it is just the zh sound or sometimes a soft J like in journal.
And many words in both English and Russian originally come from Latin, so once you can transliterate the letters, you can read the word!
Look on the web for Russian Alphabet. There are lots of sites that explain it. And it is also good to look at two different books or websites because if one explanation doesn't make sense to you a different one will!
Here's a cool chart with Russian letters and their English analog (near equivalent):
http://www.travelto.spb.ru/alphabet.html
And here's a cool list where all the words in Russian are the same as in English and it covers every letter of the alphabet!
http://www.alphadictionary.com/rusgrammar/alphabe…
If you use the chart linked above, you should be able to read every one of the Russian words on the second chart!
If you sound them out slowly, you will see that you can!
And they give you clues like crossword puzzle clues to help you out!
Here's one of the words:
Америка
Note: the backwards N is an I (i). (regular N =N).
A = A
M = m
e = e
p = r
и = i
k = c
a = a
Read that from top to bottom and you have learned another Russian word!
A/leKcaHgp says
You just cannot learn the language until you memorize the alphabet. 33 letters are not too difficult, are they?
Zippey says
If you don't learn the alphabet first, it will be harder later.
nusias9 says
Definitely the alphabets and their sounds.
If there are combination of letters that have a particular sound learn those as well.
Example in French: eau within a word makes a particular sound. In addition, it also sound just like au, aux, and eaux.
I'm not sure what this is exactly called, but it's the best way to start if you want to be able to pronounce the words correctly.
FußballMeister says
Learn the alphabet, don't worry it's easy. I'm no genius, and I learned it in about an hour.
unfit_commander says
You need to learn the alphabet first, but it is pretty easy. It will only take you a week or two, then the fun begins.