This is a guest post by my friend Jamy Russell! Thank you so much for this Jeremy. Your suggestions are spot on! This is a great post.. Read on, please!

Beginner mistakes to avoid when learning Russian

Russian is tough. Ask Angelos, who’s been spending the last several years learning and perfecting his Russian. It takes a long time before you get to the point of fluency. That’s not to say that it will take you years before you can have meaningful conversations – but expecting that it will take a while is the first step.

Let’s keep it positive though: if you put in daily effort, I believe you can already have simple conversations after several months. It won’t be enough to talk to your friends about your life’s goals and aspirations. But you’ll be 90% ahead of all other people who travel to Russia and you’ll have no problem getting around, buying stuff and asking for directions.

If you can get to that stage, (after 4-6 months of daily learning), you’ll be so into it, that the rest will take care of itself.

Now, here are 5 mistakes that if you can avoid them at the start – you’ll be miles ahead of everyone else who’s starting their Russian journey.

Focus on avoiding mistakes instead of looking for the *perfect* course

A quick word on this. It’s easy to fall into the trap of looking for the perfect program, course or plan of action. Don’t do this. Do several hours of research, read some reviews, but then decide. If you just avoid common (motivation-draining) mistakes, you’ll be fine.

#1 Not learning the alphabet in the beginning (first month)

Sure, most sites offer an Englified way of writing Russian words. But it’ll never be as effective as learning the Russian alphabet.

It takes you 2 hours maximum (20 minutes per day for a week) and will provide you with massive benefits. It’s like wanting to drive a manual car, but instead only practicing with automatic transmission.

Might feel like the same thing, but in the end, you’re only getting used to the easy way and handicapping your progress.

Action tips:

  • Pick one resource for the alphabet (has to show the letters, pronunciation and examples).
  • Go through all the letters + examples once per day for 5 days.
  • Can you read a headline? If not, go through the alphabet several times more until you get it.

#2 Trying to master the case system too soon (after 3 months)

Another mistake that people tend to make is to get overwhelmed by the case system. At first Russian seems like an ‘okay’ language: not too easy with the new alphabet and all the new words, but also not as difficult as everyone says it is.

Then you learn about cases.

Every Russian noun has 6 different endings, depending on the position in the sentence. And every adjective has 18 different forms, depending on the position and gender of the noun.

This gets complicated quickly.

While it’s a good thing to be aware of this, you don’t need to focus too much on it in the beginning. Most of it will come naturally with time.

And to be honest: most Russians kind of swallow the endings of their words anyway. So if you do the same, you can ‘cheat’ this step for a while.

For example: you need to pay close attention to notice the differences in pronunciation between ‘Москви’ (genitive case: of Moscow) and ‘Москве’ (dative/prepositional case: to/in Moscow).

Don’t take this as an excuse to not practice cases at all – but introduce them slowly and surely over the course of several months, one case at a time.

Action tips:

  • In the course that you’re doing you most likely will start with the nominative case.
  • Then introduce the prepositional and accusative.
  • After that the dative or instrumental.
  • Genitive is the most difficult.
  • Learn them one at a time.
  • If you struggle with something, Wikipedia has one of the best overviews of Russian cases.

#3 Putting off speaking till you ‘get a little better’ (after first month)

Chances are, your accent will be horrible. At least in the beginning. Just accept it. Have you heard some Russians speak English? It’s nothing to worry about.

It’s perfectly understandable that you’re scared of speaking. But also realize that this fear won’t go away once you get better.

Really, the best way to get better is to speak anyway. And the feedback you’ll get will make it much easier to improve rapidly.

It’s a good idea to practice speaking as soon as possible (after you’ve learned some basic sentences in the first month). If you don’t have a Russian friend (or maybe partner), that you feel comfortable speaking with – try one of the thousand Skype lessons available. Either a paid one such as iTalki or join some Facebook groups where you teach English to a Russian speaker – and they teach you Russian in return.

Action tips:

  • Find a language partner to practice with once every week (or 2 weeks). This also helps to stay accountable:

#4 Only doing language drills – no culture (right from the beginning)

There are few people who have learned to speak Russian fluently after their teenage years, who aren’t interested in the Russian culture.

I’d even go as far to say that if you don’t have this interest in the Russian culture, then you’re not going to speak fluent Russian.

Learning a difficult skill like Russian is for the long haul. And you’re only going to keep sustained motivation if you enjoy learning more about Russia and its culture.

The good thing about Russia is that it’s a very polarizing country. You either love it or hate it. It’s a country that gets a lot of attention and few people know exactly what’s really going on inside.

One easy way to incorporate culture into your language program is to watch movies. In the beginning you watch them with English subs – so you still perfectly understand the plot. And gradually as you get better, you can switch to Russian subs until in the end you can watch it just in Russian.

It’s a funny thing, the better you get, the more you get to practice with good movies and books. Which will in turn make you even better.

Action tips:

#5 Not enough attention in improving your vocabulary (after 3 months)

I’m from the Netherlands, and learning a new language is popular here. I’d go as far to say that approximately 80% of people who do this, go for Spanish, French, Italian or German. Those countries are close and either have good weather or business relations with us.

That’s perfectly fine. But the problem comes when people take what works to learn those languages for learning Russian.

Russian is a complete different ballgame. And there is almost 0 vocabulary that is present in both languages (Dutch is close to English, so the same goes for English and Russian).

You cannot use any cognates to quickly improve your vocabulary. Apart from 100 words about shipbuilding, which Peter the 1st learned when he stayed for a while in Amsterdam and London to learn more about Western Europe’s navy.

So if you want to speak well, you must focus more on learning new vocabulary than with many other languages. One easy way to do this is with the app Anki (free app – available for PC, Android and iPhone). You can download one of the previous user-made card decks. And then set the app to give you 10 new words per day. For vocabulary it’s better to learn a little each day, instead of 200 words on a Saturday afternoon – only to forget them the next week.

Action tips:

  • Install Anki.
  • Download one of the Russian decks
  • Practice for 5 minutes every day.

That’s it. If you can avoid these 5 mistakes, I’m sure you’ll come far in the first 6 months of your Russian lessons.

Jamy Russell