Maybe you are serious with a Russian lady, maybe you are a well planned wannabe, but at some stage you will need/want to learn Russian.

Imagine being able to sit with your lady in a resaurant and freely discuss the other diners? (within earshot but not understood?) - Maybe at a family gathering you just want to blurt out the odd phrase or sentence, maybe "not here love" or "darling, dont discuss that" or something similar.

So you decide Russian is interesting for you? You want to make sense of the Cyrillic writing you see on buildings in Russia? You want to learn some more about the mysterious language with more alphabet characters than our own that make no sense?

When you are in Russia, at a cafe you will see the word кафе - when you know that the "K" is the same as a hard "K" in English, and a "Ф" in Russian is a "F" - and - it is the same word in Russian, cafe becomes кафе! - You already learned some Russian.

So then you need to learn most of the alphabet? I did it by using a table similar to the one above.

After that you know that an S is a "C", and "F" is an "Ф" a "B" is a "V" and a "ж" is the "zh" in pleasure and that a "л" is an "L"

After that you learn some words that are the same as in English! - and you recognise them! So then you take a language course of some type, I used the 'Linkword' system, for example - cow is Karova (корова) to remember it you imagine driving your car over a cow - hence - car-over - karova! - easy isnt it?

Now you already know that "karova" is cow, and "Ф" is an "F" as in CAFE or КАФЕ (because the e is an "e" and the a is an "a", and you know an "ф" is an F and a K is how we would say a "C". So already after only reading this you know that кафе is cafe!

Take a simple name like Olga, in Russian Cyrillic it may be ольга - The O is an O as you know it, the л is an "L" - the "г" is a "G" and the A is a "A" just the same! So Olga is ольга - the "ь" is not pronounced as such, so we can disregard it for now, so "ольга" is Olga!

Already you have made sense of л, (L) ж, (zh - as in pleasure) ф (F) and the familiar C that is pronounced (S) and K (that may be a K or a C in English but is pronounced K as in Kangaroo)

You are already learning Russian!

So you now see that CCCP (USSR of old) is actually SSSR?

So after a Linkword or Pimsleur CD you will know maybe 300-400 Russian words and after the link above, you will recognise them in Cyrillic.

I have been learning Russian casually for almost two years, just with one CD, the alphabet link above and my wifes input, and recently we watched a Russian film on DVD, I understood maybe 50% of the Russian, I followed it at least, (just!) and I was able to read the credits at the end, Andrei X, Tatiana X etc, only from the above!

If you want a Russian wife it is only good respect to try to learn some of her language, maybe you will be terrible but after this you will know a cafe when you see one! And maybe if it piques your interest you will be able to hold an amateur conversation in basic language within a year. That is good enough! Nobody expects you to be word and tense perfect but if you could say "I drink want" as opposed to, " I would like a drink please my darling" nobody would laugh at you as you had a basic grasp and was trying.

I can by now string a badly constructed sentence together, but I can be understood, I can have basic Russian conversations with my wife in Russian (OK, often she corrects me as to tense and nouns/adjectives) but she understands what I want to say! Yes of course native speakers can sometimes laugh at me with my Russian and I must resort to a translator, but I try, I am understood at basic level and that does buy you some respect in Russia. (Or with your woman)

I am sure most of you will understand this word........



Point of this article being, learn a little, learn from your woman, even the odd word in Russian you know can save a misunderstanding!

For those with a desire to learn more on this topic, there is an excellent topic on the forum ruadventures.com written by an American Journalist and writer we know who was based in Moscow for some time. His methods of explanation are excellent for the beginner. The topic can be found by clicking here. (Opens in a new window.)

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