Learn Russian

Would you like to find some resources to help you learn Russian? I'm taking the learning of Russian very seriously, and I have a great teacher.

I love Russian. Once you get past the different alphabet, you might just love it too. They leave out little words, like "a, the, is". I find that spelling and pronunciation actually follow rules (with a few exceptions of course) - great for us new students trying to learn Russian.

I've been asking other Russian students what resources they found the most helpful. I've asked; I've looked inside; I've read online; I've read books; I've read reviews; I've bought; and I've used, so here's what I found. I hope it helps you speak Russian too. In a short time, I'm actually speaking Russian now.

Once I get more fluent, I'll have 285 million more people I can speak with and travel to 16 more countries and be able to speak with the local people, without depending on my English tour guide for everything.

Free Russian Resources

Free Russian Keyboard

Of course if you want to learn Russian, you will have to be able to type Russian. After hours of searching and trying numerous frustrating options and downloads, the Virtual Cyrillic keyboard worked out the best for me. It is so easy to use. I choose the phonetic keyboard, because the cyrillic letters correspond to the way they sound in English with the English keyboard I'm used to.

A note to the WordPerfect frustrated - when you copy from this Russian website (and others), do not just "Paste" your Russian letters (and get ??garbage??). Instead, try this - under "Edit", use the "Paste Special" option and then choose "unicode" - and then breathe a sigh of relief if you've been cursing your word processing program.

Free Russian Alphabet

You can't get away from it. To learn Russian, you'll need to learn your Russian Alphabet. The Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters: 21 consonants, 10 vowels, and two letters without sound - soft sign and hard sign

You might think you know some of the letters, but don't be fooled. Here's an easy to read site that also gives you the phonetic sounds of the Russian alphabet. Try printing this page out as a reference chart to study with.

While the above website provides a good summary reference of the alphabet, it probably won't help you to read all the Russian letters with their proper pronunciation. To do that, check out An Introduction to Russian next. It will help you learn to recognize, read and pronounce the Russian letters in a logical order - gradually building on reading skills as you go through it. You'll be able to begin reading Russian, but of course you'll still have to get a larger vocabulary and learn your Russian grammar so that you can speak to people.

Free Online Russian Dictionary

I like freetranslation.com the best as a free online Russian-English Dictionary. I use it all the time.

Free Russian Vocabulary and Phrases

My favourite free resource is Before You Know It Lite - Learn Russian. If you want to learn Russian, this is a great place to start. It's actually a free language learning program that teaches you vocabulary for 13 or more different topics or lists. I'm really glad I found this one, since it has helped our pronunciation a great deal, and our memory of new vocabulary words. The audio and graphics are very clear, and the program is very easy to use. You can even change the audio to "slow - turtle mode", so that you can hear all the syllables in the word more clearly.

The program does not time out, it's yours forever. You could copy it to a disk, and load it on a computer that is not online. Just choose "Russian", or one of the languages you want, and the link will be sent to you by email.

I have to admit, I asked for all the languages, since I am language greedy. In fact, if you're not sure which language you want to learn, this is a great free way to test the water, and pick your favourite language, or let your children tell you which language is their favourite. It's also great if you want to learn basic conversation from more than one language.

Languageguide.org is another excellent site for practicing vocabulary. It's more comprehensive, but perhaps not quite as user friendly for memorizing and practicing vocabulary as "Before You Know It".

Languageguide.org provides free Russian vocabulary practice including audio and graphics so you know what the word is.

Here's the categories you'll cover: alphabet, numbers, greetings, time, writing, the body, women's and men's clothing, fruits, vegetables, family, farm animals, African animals, sea animals, pets, birds, mammals, insects, reptiles and amphibians, colors, space, landscapes, weather, plants, the sea, the house, den, bedroom, utility room, dining room, bathroom, kitchen, jobs, business, electronics, baby, car, art, games, school, money, computers, kids, land travel, travel, construction, music, the farm, camping, communications, food, fantasy, the city, science, military and medicine.

Free Online Russian Grammar

This is my favourite free Russian grammar resource. Stephen VanZuylen summarizes the Russian grammar so understandably, and writes like one student, who's figured it out, to another student just learning. You can find his great Russian grammar summary on the Indo-European Languages website.

After learning new grammar points, I really like referring to the simple summary in the applicable lesson from the index of 52 Russian lessons provided through Auburn University (Alabama)

The Russian Program at George Washington University, Washington D.C., gives you a chance to practice your grammar skills with online practice exercises.

Here's some other sites that give good free online Russian Grammar information:

The Cornell University, New York, Russian Program More specifically, I recommend trying their link to Beginning Russian Grammar

The Alpha Dictionary Site

Resources to Buy

Russian Dictionary

Remember that a Russian dictionary is not going to teach you grammar. You'll need to have different resources for that, like: a grammar book, a verb book and some audio tapes or cd's. However, in order to read Russian or improve your vocabulary, you'll probably find you need to have one or more dictionaries on hand.

The English-Russian, Russian-English Dictionary - by Kenneth Katzner is a well-recommended dictionary. However, it is larger than a pocket size, and is more of a reference book.

If you're looking to carry your Russian dictionary with you, you might prefer The Oxford Russian Dictionary - it is smaller, and generally cheaper, than the first one.

Russian Verbs

Of course, one essential part of speech to master is the verb. Verbs are the action words in the sentence, like "run" and "speak".

The Russian dictionaries above will only give you verbs in their "infinitive" form. If you want to know how to conjugate them, and use them in a sentence, you'll need a reference book that only deals with verbs.

With a few verbs you can say many things, but believe it or not you've got more than 500 to learn. The same verb has many different conjugated forms depending on the reason the verb is being used, so a verb reference book is a good place to start.

After spending a long time using 501 Russian Verbs - by Thomas R., Jr. Beyer from my local library (which is a very good resource), I've finally chosen The Big Silver Book of Russian Verbs by Jack Franke as my first choice. Both are about the same price, but the Big Silver Book is generally a little cheaper, and has a very user-friendly lay out. It provides five or more examples of how to use each verb using actual every day situations, as well as how it might be used in Russian idiomatic expressions.

Russian Grammar

Some beginning students, who didn't want to be overwhelmed at the start, have enjoyed using - The New Penguin Russian Course: A Complete Course for Beginners - by Nicholas J. Brown. This may not explain every aspect of Russian grammar, but it gives a good foundation for beginners.

Another helpful, fun to read Russian grammar book, that I have enjoyed is - The Complete Idiot's Guide to Learning Russian - by Christopher Froehlich Both beginners and those with some knowledge of the Russian language may benefit from this grammar book. It's written in an entertaining style, as if someone is speaking to you personally.

Would you like to practice your Russian grammar skills? Then you might like to try this one - Schaum's Outline of Russian Grammar - by James S. Levine. It is laid out so that you can practice your grammar with numerous exercises.

Are you a serious Russian language student? Then one highly recommended Russian grammar book is - A Comprehensive Russian Grammar - by Terence R. Wade. This reference book gives over 500 pages of Russian grammar explanations.

Along with the Comprehensive Russian Grammar reference book, I recommend you also get A Russian Grammar Workbook - also by Terence R. Wade, so that you can practice the points of grammar in the reference book. The workbook is over 200 pages.

Russian Audio

The Pimsleur method is another famous method of learning to speak Russian. The idea is that every language has about 2,500 or less commonly used words, and if you learn those first, you will be able to speak in many settings quickly - many have gained a quick vocabulary this way. It uses Graduated Interval Recall, the Principle of Anticipation and Backwards Build-up Drills. For many, Pimsleur is the preferred method to becoming conversational in the least amount of time.

The Pimsleur method is excellent for those who are audio learners. In other words - you can hear something and parrot the sounds easily. However, the Pimsleur series does not usually contain a written copy of the text. So if you are a visual learner - where you have to see what you are learning - you might find this series frustrating at times. That being said, if you try it, it's recommended that you only spend half/hour a day listening to the lessons - that's it.

The Complete Pimsleur Course is not cheap, but is worth the cost if you have the funds. If you aren't sure of your commitment level, you can start with the cheap beginners package. However, if you know you're committed to learning Russian, don't bother with the beginners. Go straight to Set I, because it includes the same first lessons 1-8 that are in the beginner's set, so why buy them twice!

As an alternative, see if your local Public Library has a copy you can borrow for free, or see if you can buy a used copy from someone else.

Another series that fellow Russian students have found helpful is the - Teach Yourself Russian Complete Course (book + CD pack) - by Daphne West

Site Navigation

Go to - Specific Foreign Language Resources

Go to - Why Learn a Foreign Language?

Go to - Course Ideas

Custom Search

Albanian Arabic Dutch French Georgian German Greek Hebrew Hindi Japanese Korean Mandarin Chinese Polish Russian Spanish Tagalog Thai Ukranian