Go Your Own Way: Your Roadmap to Learning Russian

Russian is probably the language you think of when you hear someone talk about “Slavic Languages.” It’s the largest member of that language family. In this post, you’ll find an overview of the big concepts to keep in mind while learning this beautiful language, as well as links to more detailed explanations. Basically, this is the post to bookmark and come back to, the one to use to stay oriented in your studies. Click on the links in each section to get more information about that topic.

Note: there aren’t posts for everything yet. I’m working as fast as I can! This is a new blog, so bear with me.

Before We Get Started

There are a few things I won’t cover here: the Cyrillic Alphabet and pronunciation. The alphabet is pretty straightforward and doesn’t take that long to master if you go about it the right way (hint: it’s not reading a list over and over). If you want some suggestions for resources for learning the Cyrillic alphabet, you can find my favorites here. (coming soon)

Pronunciation is something I don’t think you can really learn from reading about it, so I think you are better off finding videos on YouTube (and there are lots). It’s also the area I struggle with most in Russian, so I’m not the person you want to learn it from anyway. Maybe one day I’ll post some links to videos to save you some legwork, but today is not that day. In the meantime, hop over to YouTube, search for “Russian pronunciation” and watch a few videos, then search for the individual sounds you struggle with. And if anyone finds a good video on the soft Л, please drop it in the comments!

The Basics

This section covers a few things that will help you get started and a few things that don’t really fit in with the rest (aka numbers) that can easily be learned in isolation, so you can start with them before you’re comfortable with the basic grammar.

Sentence Structure/Word Order - I don’t know why I struggled with this so much when I first started, but I did, so I’m spelling out for you. The order words appear in sentences is more or less the same as you would encounter in English. The big exception is that word order is less important because of the case system (see below). Both languages utilize a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) sentence structure, so just throw things out in the same order you’re used to when you’re getting started and pick up the exceptions and nuances as you go. The good news is, you’ll still be generally understandable if you’re wrong, thanks to the case system.

Personal Pronouns - There are two basic types of pronouns in Russian: personal (I, you, he, she….) and possessive (my, your, his, hers…). Both types decline and change cases, which is a bit of a bummer because you can’t just learn them in a few minutes and never think about them again, but it’s also not really a big deal. For now, when you’re just starting out, learn the personal pronouns so that you can reinforce them as you learn to conjugate verbs. Learn them in Nominative Case, which is what I think of as the “basic case,” and don’t worry about declining them until you learn the other cases for nouns.

You might as well go ahead and learn the Possessive Pronouns (in Nominative Case) now as well. It’s not very difficult and will save you a little confusion when you start learning in earnest.

Spelling Rules - There are several rules about spelling that most people pick up as they go, as these are really more details rather than big picture. BUT learning them significantly helped me work through some confusion I had early on, so I’m including them here to save you from all the “Wait. Why is it like that?” moments that I had.

Special Pronunciation Rules - This is something I recently discovered that I glossed over in my textbook and it makes such a huge difference in the ability to understand things. I don't mean what letters sound like what, but things like vowel reduction and consonant devoicing at the end of words. I know that probably sounds like gibberish, but it's worth spending the time to figure out early on. If you want my take on that, you can find it here. (coming soon)

Counting - This isn’t truly a “basic,” but it is something you can master with little to no additional knowledge, so it’s a great topic to knock out at the beginning.

Cardinal Numbers - These are counting numbers. This article (coming soon) covers 1-1000, plus some basic math phrases.
Ordinal Numbers - First, second, third, etc. They tie in well with cardinal numbers, so might as well learn them now, too.

Verbs

Ah, the real meat of any sentence. Once you’ve got the most basic of basics under control, I think the best thing to focus on is verbs. Yes, nouns are important, too (see below), but you can’t go around just naming things all day. Besides, that gets boring quickly.

In Russian, you have Tenses, Moods, and Aspects to juggle. We have them in English, too, but for some reason we only talk about tenses. I think it’s helpful to use their technical terminology, so that’s what you’ll find on this blog. If you want an in-depth discussion of the differences, you can find that here. (coming soon)

Tenses - Past, Present, and Future
Moods - Commands are the main mood to know for now.
Aspects - Perfect vs Imperfect (i.e., has the action completed or is it still in progress?) Russian is different in that it has verb pairs to indicate this. In other words, you’ll use a completely different word depending on whether the action is complete or not.
Russian also makes a big deal about Verbs of Motion. We’ll get to that later.

Nouns

If verbs are the meat of a language, nouns are the potatoes. In Russian, they are a little more difficult than in English because they change. English speakers move nouns around in a sentence to indicate what part of speech it is, but Russian speakers change the ending to indicate the same thing. Changing the ending is called declension (see below).

Cases

Cases are how Russian distinguishes the different types of speech. Remember that word order isn’t as important as it is in English (where it basically reigns supreme). That means that what we are used to indicating with word order, Russians indicate by changing word endings (that is to say, by declining the word – see my note below). I’m listing them here in what I think is the best order to learn them. Before you dive into each one, be sure to check out my Overview of Cases.

Nominative
Accusative
Dative
Prepositional
Instrumental
Genitive

Declension - You’ll hear this word a lot and, if you’ve never encountered it before, it will most likely confuse you. Declension just means changing cases/word endings. So now you don’t have to spend a lot of time like I did asking yourself “What’s the difference between cases and declension? How do I decline a word?” They go together.

Also keep in mind that more than just the nouns decline. Also pronouns, adjectives, and maybe some more types of speech I haven't run across yet.

Adjectives

If you’ve ever studied a Romance Language (or several others), you won’t be a stranger to the idea that your adjectives must match the nouns they describe. I call it the Mother/Daughter Pageant Rule. If you’re new to this game, just think of the matching costumes in my theoretical Mother/Daughter Pageant. They need to match in both style and color - er, I mean, gender, numerosity (singular/plural), and case.

Adverbs

These are very similar to English adverbs. The biggest thing is to focus on at first is recognizing adjectives vs adverbs and the endings for each in each case.

Everything Else

Prepositions - Don’t sweat these too much. Just pick them up as you go. There is some nuance about when to use each one, but that’s more than you need to know as an absolute beginner. Remember, start with the big picture and worry about the details later!

Conjunctions - You can also pick these up as you go.

Articles: This one’s easy - there aren’t any!

Alright, now that you’ve learned all the major things, you have my permission to move on to the smaller details. Maybe one day I’ll even get around to addressing a few here.

Good luck! Удачи!