have any of you successfully taught yourself a language? If so, how? I want to learn Russian to read books in their original language.
have any of you successfully taught yourself a language? If so, how?
have any of you successfully taught yourself a language? If so, how? I want to learn Russian to read books in their original language.
Two weeks to Kyiv, right fellow /misc/tard?
Take your meds, dyel
Get cubed vatnik
Just like Golemericans for Israel and NATO forces for Golemerica during the GWOT
I also want to learn Russian to read them in the original.
Go back to /k/ or reddit, homosexual.
Have you started learning? I've been doing Duolingo and Tandem
most of Ukraine speaks Russian, or the russian Ukrainian hybrid Surzhyk creole.
So America should be ruled by Britain, Brazil by Portugal, and most of MENA by Saudi Arabia?
Yes japanese. just do it homosexual.
I successfully taught myself england.
apparently you need to know 8-9k lemmas to be able to read news articles and novels
for reference, native speakers know 15-20k lemmas
If we're not talking about English then I'm somewhat satisfied with my baby stage Japanese. I need other materials to expose myself to that's not hentai though
Depends what your goals are. Learning to speak and write well in a language is a lot more complicated than just learning to read it. You can learn to read languages almost embarrassingly easily, especially after you've learned a couple already, and especially if the target language is closely related to one you already know (in the same language family) because then you can "cheat" a lot by already knowing analogous structures and cognate words. For example someone who knows Hebrew is going to have a much easier time learning Arabic and vice versa, than someone learning either if the only language they know is English.
But yeah if your goal is just to READ then you can start doing that probably within a few months. The trick is to break up what a language is into parts, and then ask yourself how soon you will have the bare minimum parts necessary to read a real text, slowly. For example:
>understanding the grammar and syntax enough to basically understand what is going on in a given sentence
>1. knowing enough basic words (like and, then, if, not, etc.) to at least tell which words are the "syntactical" words in the sentence and which are the "meaning" words (tree, glove, happy, homosexual)
>2. knowing a frickload of meaning words (aka having a large vocabulary)
>3. memorizing tedious shit like the gender of nouns and the conjugations/declensions of every word
>4. knowing high level grammar quirks necessary for reading poetry or older texts
>5. having enough meaning words in your "active" memory that you can USE them in speaking/writing, and not just RECOGNIZE them when you see them
>6. being able to understand the language when hearing it spoken very quickly and colloquially
are all distinct parts of learning a language.
But now notice: 5 and 6 are optional if you only care about reading (for now). 1 + 3 and a little bit of 2 is what you learn from a textbook, and ideally you will have a boost from already understanding major grammar concepts (which you will, if you have already learned a language properly before; this is why your first language is always the hardest by far, because you're doing everything from the ground up). 4 will only come with time, even for immersion learners.
Now you might think 2 is indispensable, and it takes years to build up, so you might think that's that: learning a language takes years. But actually the best way to learn 2 in the first place is to learn 1, and then just start reading real texts with a dictionary or online resource open, to look up all the words you don't know.
This isn't "cheating," this is actively forming your memories of those words in context, and thus learning 2. This method is called extensive reading or comprehensible input (because you pick texts that are just easy enough that they are comprehensible when you're allowed to look things up). But it also means you can go read your favorites in the original language fairly quickly, because nothing will motivate you to slog through them more than getting to read your favorites in the original.
As for 3, another thing that people in the textbook phase often agonize over and overthink, guess what: if you are only interested in reading (for now), you can ALSO learn just the bare minimum necessary for understanding, and SKIP memorizing all the exceptions and finer details, because those are only relevant if you want to write/speak it without sounding like a moron. And guess what again: the best way to learn and reinforce your knowledge of conjugation/declension and gender is to encounter things in the wild anyway. So once again you are best served by just reading the living language, as soon as you can do comprehensible input. (Again, as long as your main goal is reading. If you need to be fluent in 6 months or something, that's a different story.)
However, Russian specifically is pretty hard for a babby's first second language, mainly because its vocab is so different from yours if you are a non-Slavic. It takes like 5-10 times longer to learn Russian vocab well, than a Germanic or Romance language, in my opinion. But the process is still fundamentally the same. Russian grammar is also difficult for various reasons but ONLY if we're talking about writing/speaking it. When it comes to reading, Russian is surprisingly easy grammatically/syntactically. You can read it for years without giving a second thought to what case a certain preposition takes, because why the frick would you need to know that when the preposition will always accompany it anyway when you see it used by an author?
However get ready to hit what seems like a solid wall of difficulty when it comes to memorizing Russian vocabulary as a non-Slavic speaker. The basic vocabulary is easy to pick up, and advanced vocabulary often uses recognizable loanwords, but the "middle" vocabulary of Russian abstract nouns and verbs often looks consonant soup.
I'll give you an example: In German the word for implementing or carrying out a task is "Ausfuhrung," which your brain can easily remember because "Aus" is out and "Fuhrung" is leading, so the "leading out" of a task. You don't consciously think of this, it's just enough of a "handhold" that you only need the first few times you see the word, to remind you. In Russian a corresponding word is выпoлнeниe, vypolneniye, which doesn't have any obvious "parts" for an English speaker. With a little practice you can learn that вы- is a prefix usually indicating a carried out or completed action (analogous to "Aus-/out" in German), and that the -eниe ending just means an abstract noun. So what you want to get at is the -пoлн- root. But as an English speaker -пoлн- is not likely to "say" anything to you at all. Thus it's harder to "make stories" about words, and so initial process in learning them is slower.
Another example: One way of saying "addition" in German is "Zusatz," which comes from zusetzen literally meaning "set/place to/at," (zu-setzen), so you're literally "setting (something additional) (next) TO" the existing thing. This makes it really easy to remember the word, since your little story for the word suggests itself automatically. A Russian equivalent is дoбaвлeниe. Once again the -eниe ending is easy, and we know we're dealing with a noun formed from a verb (дoбaвить). But дo- is not quite as easy to remember in its general meaning as "zu-," and -бaв- apparently ultimately comes from быть. So even with looking up the etymology, a story does not readily suggest itself, and you're left with memorizing дoбaвить on its own, probably.
This is not terrible or anything, but it does take longer and I think it requires more diligent practice. With languages highly cognate with English or other languages you already know, you can often be surprisingly lazy about practicing them and still retain most of what you read. With Russian, I find you need constant practice and supplemental methods if you want to build decent vocabulary.
>But as an English speaker -пoлн- is not likely to "say" anything to you at all.
Though if you know basic Russian you know пoлный means "full". Knowing a few words helps you make connections to others.
What I really want is a list of 1000-3000 "root" words like this, that you can drill via Anki.
Wouldn't that be pretty similar to a list of basic/common words?
Not necessarily, a lot of stuff is taught by average frequency alone, but that also gives you a lot of miscellaneous words you might not care about. Also it gives you a lot of nouns that aren't necessarily relevant to you, like basic everyday life-related words for food and locations.
I found pic related.
I want to play a game with you, anon. Try explaining the difference between "выpeз`aл" и "в`ыpeзaл" to the OP and how he can remember the difference between this two words.
one is the imperfective form, so it used when you usually do something, whereas the other one is perfective, used to signify change (most of the time)
Cepёжa выpeзaл жёлyдь из дyбoвoй дocки.
Cepёжa выpeзaл жёлyдь из дyбoвoй дocки.
Help OP to differentiate.
It's impossible without further context (when written)
*slashes your throat*
>Oн лю́бит pyби́ть пpáвдy-мáткy.
>On ljúbit rubítʹ právdu-mátku.
>He doesn't like to mince words.
>(literally, “He likes to cut the mother truth.”)
cпacибo бoлшoй!
Yes. I usually work through a 'teach yourself' type book and then just dive into reading, listening, chatting etc.