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The Russian language, one of the languages of Indo-European family, emerged due to the disintegration of the Indo-European ancestral language. The Indo-European language disappeared some one thousand years ago, but left behind it new linguistic branches, one of them being Common Slavic. Common Slavic was used by Slavic tribes until the 6th century when the East Slavic, Old Russian, West Slavic and South Slavic languages appeared. In approximately the 14th century from East Slavic, three other languages appeared namely Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian. The Russian language therefore is considered part of the East Slavic group of Slavic branch of Indo-European language family. The Russian language emerged in the 14th century and developed during latter centuries under the influence of social-economic, political and cultural changes which started to define a Russian nation. Modern Russian is a concentrated form of all linguistic traits found in the Russian nation: the standard language, local (territorial) dialects, urban speech and more academic nuances. Nowadays it is an official language of Russian Federation by the decree of President RF no 1488 (12 December 2006). Russian is one of the richest and most developed languages in the world. As well as being the language of Russian nation it had great influence in creating and developing an intellectual spirit and values which resulted in world famous thinkers, artists and academics. Notable points Russian offers as a language are an unusual richness of vocabulary, plasticity of grammar forms as well as a variety of stylistic elements. Russian has one of the most complicated grammars, which can be taught for years and then still be not understood. It combines difficult understanding of future, present and past tenses, where the endings of the words change every time, complex punctuation and masculine/feminine gender of words. The Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters, which can be divided into three parts: vowel, consonants and mute letters (there are 10, 21 and 2 of them respectively). The interesting fact about mute letters is that there are no words in Russian language, which begin with these letters as they used just for sounds of the words. Also, Russian has some tricky words. Thus, one word can have different meanings in different contexts and if the person, who was not involved in conversation, accidently engaged with others, they can be lost in this conversation due to not knowing the topic. Russia has a contest called ''Russian Bear'', which is similar to the IELTS and TOEFL and examines the understating of the Russian language. The level of technical know-how is extremely high testing even the most competent students of the Russian language. States of CIS use Russian as one of the international languages. The CIS includes a number of states such as The Russian Federation, Azerbaijan Republic, Republic of Armenia, Republic of Belarus, Georgia, Republic Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Republic of Moldova, Republic of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Republic of Uzbekistan and Ukraine. Many of these people use Russian in social, political, scientific, technical and cultural spheres. Russian's influence on native tongues has been positive especially in the aforementioned fields Vocabularies have been enhanced as well as offering access to valuable information, texts and manuals. According to the magazine ''Language Monthly'', approximately 300 million people speak Russian, which brings it to the 5th place in popularity, and of these160 million among these people believe that their mother tongue is Russian. As far as dialects of Russian language are concerned, they emerged in European part of Russia in the 15th century. They consist of two major groups: North and South dialects. They are characterised by a precise isogloss. People with the North dialect have an accent on the letter 'O' and also can speak a little bit faster than people from South. As for the people with South dialect, they have an accent on the letter 'A'. Thus, people from different parts of Russia, can sometimes barely understand some words during a conversation. Moreover, in modern Russian there emerged a 'Moscow dialect'.
Most helpful customer reviews 436 of 438 people found the following review helpful. When I first started studying Russian, I had no teachers or classes or cassette tapes to help me. My eighth grade math teacher gave me a copy of the original version of The Penguin Russian Course, which was compiled by J.L.I. Fennell and published in 1961. The methodology was logical and straightforward with no spoonfeeding or watered-down grammar lessons accompanied by cutsy cartoon pictures. In each lesson, you would first memorize a list of new vocabulary words. Then you would study several concise grammar principles which were clearly explained. Third, you would examine a brief Russian text which incorporated the new vocabulary and applied the new grammar principles which you had just learned in the lesson. Finally, you would translate an English text into Russian to test yourself on the new vocabulary and grammar. At the end of the book was a key which showed the correct translation of the English text into Russian, so you could check yourself. This new version of the Penguin Russian Course is not as concise and straightforward as the first version, but it's actually better. Nicholas J. Brown has incorporated the original structure of J.L.I. Fennell's version enough that the effectiveness of the lessons is preserved, but Mr. Brown has added much more in this modern version. He has provided numerous additional Russian texts and conversations so that you can see how the vocabulary is used in context. And in this new version, the answer keys at the back of the book show the Russian-English translation as well as the English-Russian translation of the exercises. The best part of this book is the translation exercises at the end of each lesson and their corresponding answer keys at the back of the book. Translation is probably the best way to test whether or not you really understand the grammar and vocabulary taught in the lessons, and this book gives you plenty of opportunities to test yourself in this manner. Another advantage of this book is that it's small enough to carry anywhere, unlike those bulky Russian 101 textbooks used in college classes which use a slow, watered-down, almost infantile approach to teaching the language. If you want to learn Russian, buy this book and work through the lessons. The only major drawback is that you'll never really learn proper pronunciation without listening to native Russians speak the language, and this book doesn't have tapes to accompany it. Other than that, however, you won't find a better book for beginners who want to learn Russian. 200 of 203 people found the following review helpful. I used this book along with the 3 pimsleur sets on russian and now have a very strong foundation to proceed into advanced studies. This book has a good mix of grammar and texts to translate. I never felt overwhelmed. That said, I progressed on a two-steps-forward and one-step-back basis. You will too if you want to learn Russian, so don't sweat it. It's normal. I was relieved when I got to chapter 10 or so and the book said something about "you have now met X number of words and have probably forgot most of them. That's ok. Just learn them again and it will get easier." My one regret with the book: I wish there was a workbook for more exercises. The exercises in the book are good, but I had to make up my own to really become accomplished at slinging those endings the way I wanted. Stay away from this book if you are looking for nice phrases for travelers. This book will teach you only if you put the right kind of effort into your studies. I have dozens of books on Russian and this is the one that taught me what I needed to know. 103 of 104 people found the following review helpful. There are weaknesses. Dependent on your point of view, the focus on an academic type course of instruction with rigorous grammar might not appeal to some (and attract others), as stated in the introduction, one of the books objectives is to bring the reader up to UK 'A' Level standard (Roughly equivalent to the first two years of an American College course). This isn't one of those 'jaunty' conversational type courses, as reflected perhaps in the lack of an audio medium such as a CD or Cassette being available. I'd recommend this book to Russian Students and those wanting a sound academic grounding in Russian. For those whom wish to just converse in basic Russian (lets say for a tourist or business trip) it may be better to look at other courses that are combined with an Audio package. However if you have additional access to a Russian speaker or are based in Russia I'd not hesitate to recommend this book as your first choice of instruction. Again, as a single volume, and if I could have only one Russian book this would be it. No question about it. For those reasons I'd give it 5 starts for a self-contained course, 4 stars for an academic instructional course, and 2 stars if you just want a quick intro to conversational Russian. See all 100 customer reviews...
Russian (русский язык, russkiy yazyk, pronounced [ˈruskʲɪj jɪˈzɨk]) is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics of the USSR.[5] Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of three living members of the East Slavic languages. Written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century onwards. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages. It is also the largest native language in Europe, with 160 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the 8th most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers and the 4th by total number of speakers.[6] The language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language. Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels, which is somewhat similar to that of English. Stress, which is unpredictable, is not normally indicated orthographically[7] though an optional acute accent (знак ударения, znak udareniya) may, and sometimes should, be used to mark stress (such as to distinguish between otherwise identical words, for example замо́к and за́мок, or to indicate the proper pronunciation of uncommon words or names). |
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Best Book for Beginners Learning Russian from Scratch
Solid Introduction
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