How I Learned Russian 

At 60 I decided to learn Russian. Had a big impact on my life. It opened me to the “Russian world”, to other Slavic languages & to all the languages I have learned since then. --- FREE Language Learning Resources 10 Secrets of Language Learning ⇢ www.thelinguist.com LingQ Grammar Guides ⇢ www.lingq.com/en/grammar-resource/ My blog ⇢ blog.thelinguist.com/ The LingQ blog ⇢ www.lingq.com/blog/ My Podcast ⇢ soundcloud.com/lingostevepodcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/learn-languages-with-steve-kaufmann/id1437851870 --- Social Media Instagram ⇢ instagram.com/lingosteve_/ TikTok ⇢ www.tiktok.com/@lingosteve Facebook ⇢ facebook.com/lingosteve Twitter ⇢ twitter.com/lingosteve LingQ Discord ⇢ discord.gg/ShPTjyhwTN

"Москва слезам whatever" - Ha ha ha ha! This is an absolutely new view on this story!

I learned Russian at university, studied the grammar formally and everything. However I really got decent at it when I did a year abroad in Russia and had to try to use it with people in conversation! Even though I graduated with distinction in spoken Russian I felt like it wasn't anywhere close to fluency. Conversationally it was quite fluent, but like you I got into Russian because I wanted to read Bulgakov, Dostoevsky etc but I was nowhere near being able to do that. I moved to Germany after university and I learned German without doing any lessons: I tried to read articles and books and listen to podcasts, look up words, and maybe occasionally looked up grammar but didn't worry about it too much, and gradually got more and more into speaking with people. I had no idea about comprehensible input at the time but it just ended up being what I did naturally and my German is pretty fluent these days (I passed the C1 without taking any classes). In 2019, having not used Russian for close to a decade, I traveled to Kiev. I was horrified at how my Russian had degraded - I even forgot the word for Monday! I had given up on it. Then during lockdown, out of boredom, I decided to see if I could listen to something in Russian and understand it. I listened to the Comprehensible Russian Podcast with Max. I was surprised by how much I could still understand and it gave me the desire to get back into it,. That was about three months ago, and with a little listening and reading every day, and some help from Anki, it's astonishing how quickly the language came back. In a short time I was able to upgrade from listening to comprehensible podcasts for students to real podcasts for Russians. It's incredibly refreshing to not have to worry about whether I'm using the correct verbal aspect, and just enjoy the process of getting a little better every day through repeated exposure. I wish at university they'd told me how important listening was - instead we would have a "listening class" about once a week! I love the Russian lanugage and I'm determined to get to the level where I can read Dostoevsky - even if it takes years, I'm now enjoying the process of just being exposed to the language a little every day, and I want Russian to be a language I will have with me for life.

Просто пришла послушать, как человек рассказывает про изучение русского языка 🌚

As a Russian person, I'd love to encourage you to learn Russian if you have a desire for that. Don't be afraid of having an accent or something, 'cause to be honest we adore when foreigners try to speak Russian. Also, I'd utterly recommend you some Russian writers like Pushkin, Esenin, Tolstoy, Lermontov and so on and so forth. These ones are one of the best writers in Russia and you can read them and gradually acquire your Russian language by reading them.

This is my target language. I’ve been infatuated with it for about a year now, ever since taking a Russian literature course in college. I don’t know why this language is so special to me. I look forward to being fluent someday. Thank you so much for uploading this video. I love your channel! 🥰

Любопытно видеть свою культуру в такой оптике.

Your grammar light approach had a lot of influence on me as a Russian learner. A little over two years have passed and I have finally pulled out the grammar book. I can't tell you how many times I watched your other video talking about Russian. All the best.

Привет из России! Стив, спасибо за ваши видео. Вы, один из тех настоящих полиглотов, которые вдохновляют меня и многих других людей учить иностранные языки.

Короче , я начал изучать русский язык потому что я любитель классической музыки, и по моему русский народные композиторы великий. После этого , начал я интересоваться русской эстетикой, например народная и церковная архитектура, иконы, и так далее. Мой уровень русского языка увеличал в начале прошлого года, когда я основал дюжирную практику смотреть документальные фильмы, слушать радио, читать новости и смотреть видео. Когда жил я в Европе, совершил мечту путешествовать в Россию.

Крутой дед, че еще добавить

I am Lithuanian, fluent in English, taught myself basic French and learned basic Russian from school. But I really want to get fluent in Russian for the precise same reason as you, sir - I would love to read Dostoevsky in original! Brothers Karamazov especially, one of my most favorite novels of all time.

You are a hero. My respect. (I'm russian and I've been teaching English and German for more than thirty years. I wish my students were so enthusiastic about learning languages.)

I'm Japanese learning 5th language and you always inspired me a lot! Next year, I would like to learn Russian language so it's really helpful! Thank you always!

Спасибо большое за это видео! Очень интересно послушать вашу историю. 🌻

I love the sound of Russian. it has a lot of consonants but never sounds harsh. Maybe I'll learn it someday.

Вы большой молодец! Такое терпение и усердие заслуживают искреннего уважения. Удачи Вам в изучении новых языков!

I am Russian, and I recall Russian language was one of the most difficult subjects in my school growing up in Russia, maybe after maths. I still can't say I consciously understand all the cases and and other rules of grammar, but, thankfully, my native brain automatically produces the correct language and I speak it - what a miracle. I can only imagine how it is for a student of the Russian language. Such deep respect.

Thank you for sharing your experience! I am a professional Russian teacher, and a couple of my very successful students told me that they like reading on lingq, and I personally like reading with audio, I think it's a great method and absolutely crucial when studying Russian. Input is very important. Делайте побольше видео о изучении русского языка))

I am Russian, but I am still learning it. How rich and powerful our Russian language is😁

Starting learning RUSSIAN at the age of 60! I always knew learning languages would keep a person young. Now I'm sure! Great! 👍👍👍

This is so unequivocally respectful towards all of the depth of what can be found inside the Russian world. Thank you for being so deep, so kind and so respectful towards my home country! Mikhail, Moscow, and I am 34 years old.

I felt this excitement each time you reached to your bookshelf to show us your DVDs, it's so wholesome and familiar ♥ Thank you so much for this video, you're amazing, and your language learning journey is amazing! Warmest regards from Siberia, my good sir! P.S.: Chekhov is honestly the best russian writers of all time, in my humble opinion :)

I am absolutely astonished by your achievement. Russian is probably one of the most difficult languages in the world to learn, and yet, you managed to do it, IN YOUR 60"s!!! My huge respect! Моё почтение!

that's the most canadian shirt i've ever seen

Just started learning по-русски this year and watching videos like this help me stay motivated. Thanks for the upload

Вы большой молодец! Всегда интересно послушать такие истории. Увидеть свой язык и культуру чужими глазами. Спасибо.

I really enjoy this kind of video. It really contextualizes the road to learning Russian far more than a number of hours or words could.

Thanks Steve, I watched this video some two years ago I think. I tried grammar instruction (in a classroom) and it didn't really help. I tried Babbel and Duolingo, and they didn't really help. But once I started reading every day, with the help of LingQ, I saw my knowledge of Russian skyrocket. I was then able to branch off to listening to channels like Russian with Max and Russian Progress, as well as watching shows on Netflix with the help of Language Learning with Netflix, which also helped me a lot. Today, I can hold a conversation in Russian. I wish more people would follow your advice, then we'd live in a world full of polyglots!

Dear Steve, your video is a very inspiring one, as always! I am a native Russian speaker and can understand how difficult might be learning of the Russian language. But yes, after one gets a certain level of knowledge, there'll be a reward! This is what happened with my English, which I love and now happening with German, which I also fell in love with. The next step is French - the absolutely fascinating language!

You're amazing, Steve. Your channel is awesome. Thanks for your videos.

That was a wonderful story! Thank you Steve for sharing your journey with us. I appreciate it so much.

Благодарю вас за ваше усилие.

Просто супер! Я уже пять лет учу английский точно такимже способом, слушаю каждый день 1 час, в машине , дома и на работе если есть возможность. Уже много понимаю. очень вдохновляюшщее видео!

Love these types of videos where you explain how you learned various languages and the content that you used! Very helpful!!

Thank you for share your experience, Steve!

Love your content Steve.

New viewer here, вижу у Вас диски с "Собачьим Сердцем", "Иронией Судьбы" и "Братом", значит, Вы действительно взялись за русский язык серьёзно! 😄

Весьма неплохая подборка фильмов и литературы. Очень серьёзный подход к изучению языка ! Успехов в дальнейшем изучении !

As always, most interesting and insightful. Thank you for posting.

Wow! So inspiring! I come from Riga. " Москва Слёзы Whatever..." - I like that! :)

Russian is one of my favorite languages 😍

Hi steve, I am using Lingq for my russian and I think Lingq's content on russian absolutely fantastic. Thanks a lot to you and Evgeniiy(Especially I love listening him speaking on russian culture) :))

Thank you so much for creating LingQ, Steve. So far that's the only tool that i enjoy using to improve my language skills, even though it's a bit expensive due to the fact that I'm currently living in Brazil, nevertheless, I'm still enjoying it a lot. By way of the LingQ I've been able to learn and improve both French and English, and i also hope by this means to speak as many languages as you do in the future.

Soy ruso canadiense y si tuviera que aprender ruso me llevaría tanto tiempo que no creo que hubiera cumplido los estudios para nada. Prefijos, sufijos que cambian el significado de palabra por completo, inclinaciones etc. Снимаю шляпу, Стив. Llevo dos años estudiando Espanol y tus vídeos me animaron y inspiraron en esta carrera de aprendizaje. Por si acaso si estás en Toronto, hubiera sido un gran privilegio de conocerte, maestro. ¡Gracias!

My native language is Russian and hearing you talk about Russian movies and classics is so awesome. Its crazy to see how much work and dedication you put in it ! I am currently trying to learn a third language and your advises are very helpful! Also, Эхо Москвы is very popular in Russia, in my opinion. All of my friends in US told me that they will learn Russian and never did haha, because it’s so much work, so seeing you having so much effort is amazing:)

This was very helpful and inspirational. Thank you so much

Thank you for your tips! You're an inspiration.

I started learning russian 2 weeks ago. It's very challenging for me but I'm trying my best. I appreciate the video!

So proud when people learn Russian language! Reading and watching are really great methods!!!

Great video. Found this one really interesting! I’m eyeing Russian up in the future, but I’m still another 6 or 7 years away from being able to get started. Hopefully there’s thousands of Echo of Moscow lessons waiting for me on LingQ :)

I will learn Russian after Japanese and Korean ,I can't wait

Респект за "Жестокий романс" и "Собачье Сердце".

Being a Russian native speaker, I applaud you. If it weren’t my native tongue, I’d never have even attempted learning it. It’s a hot mess ;-) There’s a whole bunch of jokes going around here, starting with “Try explaining to a foreigner, why…” and then something utterly ridiculous and illogical. You having learnt this crazy language of ours is pretty inspiring, actually. Kudos!

Great, great, great job! Браво!

Your journey is inspiring , Steve :)

I am a native Russian speaker who learn English. I am existing your video about Russian language. Grate job!

6:14 You can see Sergey Chonishvili (Сергей Чонишвили) among the actors listed here. That man is a very famous actor/voice actor/narrator in Russia who, among other things, voiced Kratos in the Russian version of God of War III, Ulfric Stormcloak and Malacath in the Russian version of TES V: Skyrim, and is the official voice of Vin Diesel in Russia.

I liked this video so much! I'm a russian and seeing such good person learns russian makes me happy! Очень понравилось Ваше видео! Особая радость от того, с каким удовольствием вы рассказываете о своем опыте изучения русского! Спасибо за такое видео!

I also used to have tutoring sessions on Lingq with Evgeny about 10 years ago! I've recently started brushing up on my Russian again after a long break. I didn't know about Эхо Москвы, so thanks for the recommendation!

I was very interested to hear about your experience. I teach Russian and I have no idea how one can progress in Russian without grammar :-) For example, cases are a tool for establishing connections between words. But, of course, this does not mean that grammar should be crammed. I believe that grammar rules can be discovered while reading. I also fully agree that when learning Russian, it is very important to listen to live speech a lot.

I learned Russian 2000 - 2002 in the Russian cultural center in Jakarta. I tried to read Dostoyevski and Chekov in their original language with a dictionary next to me. I give up.... I didn't finish Chekov novel though I had made a photocopy of it. Russian is such a difficult language. 1. the cases / padzesh 2. the verbal aspects : perfective-inperfective 3. the verb conjugation. I like to learn foreign languages. I speak German and got Mittelstuffe-1 Zertifikat, which is equal to B2. But now I can only answer B1 questions satisfactorily. My German deteriorates. Now I'm learning Chinese. I got Hsk-3 in October 2019. However, I still speak German better than Chinese and Russian though I don't use it anymore.... My Chinese and Russian are more or less the same. I read Russian articles better than Chinese, but I listen to Chinese conversations better than Russian. It's easier to read Russian compared to Chinese...

You are amazing. Respect for you !

Great effort! it's impressive

Моё почтение! Немногие решаются выучить русский, а вы смогли это сделать в столь почтенном возрасте!

Thanks Steve for interesting and motivational video. I'm learn English now, but also I wanna learn French, and I do it! I wish you everything the best!

Big like! You can learn any language by listening, reading and speaking because it is how we all learn our native languages. :) Usually adults just speak to a child and when they realise that the child keeps saying something wrong they make a little exercise and ask the child to continue sentenses like "I - do, you - do, she - does, he - does ..." so it helps to remember the grammar rule. For example sometimes russian parents teach words cases to their children with this method (because cases are really hard to remember so it happenes sometimes that children use a wrong one). That's all it takes, no real grammar lessons with hard and boring learning are necessary.

Amazing job, Steve! I am a native Russian speaker, although not from Russia, but I understand how difficult is to learn Russian with it's complex grammar

Спасибо за Ваше видео. Такие эмоции помогают мне находить силы жить в моей стране и ценить ее хорошие стороны даже в настоящей политической ситуации.

Just a quick note for anyone who's about to start learning Russian: Tolstoy and Dostoyevskiy wrote in a language which is pretty much obsolete now. I definitively wouldn't recommend it for a beginner. Start with something newer if possible. Bulgakov, maybe.

I'm glad to see Брат on that shelf.

Thank you so much from Russia! You are really great! Your efforts and achievments are simply fascinating!

Thank you for this video Steve i'm French and i love Russian 😍

"Not very popular in Russia" Echo of Moscow is one of the most popular talk radio in Russia, which also has one of the largest audiences on RU-vid among other Russian radio stations.

Забавно и приятно видеть, когда изучают твой родной язык. Успехов Вам!

I love Steve, he gets me excited to learn

I'm learning russian since a few days, I speak English, german and a bit french and i hope i can find someone to practice with *~*

Very inspiring! After watching I wanted to learn russian, despite being Russian myself.

i love the 'Red' music that plays at the beginning..hehe

Thank you for your sharing! So sad to watch this video these days. But anyway I feel a warm watching it. I'm really impressed with your library. I have the same in my Moscow's flat😁 By the way I've been learning English for year and these days I'm starting to read the books by my favorite writers in original too. That's great! I can't stop enjoying it! So thank you for your video. I'm really inspired by your experience.

Красавчик!

When it comes to learning Russian, I think Languamus (polyglot Mustafa) is the best all around the world. He is amazing at learning and teaching language. Btw Steve''s motivation really inspires people

Great video!

You have such understandable accent... Nice to hear , very nice

Я посмотрел это видео, и случайно выучил русский. Реально рабочий метод. Спасибо огромное! Правда английский я забыл, ну это уже другая история...

After this video i magicaly start speaking on russian! Это оказалось так легко, что я даже и не заметил! Всем настоятельно рекомендую делать именно так как он говорит.

I'm well past 60 but have taken up the challenge to exercise my brain with learning at least some Russian. It's so different that learning only the alphabet is a stretch, tho still interesting.It's very early days but regardless of the outcome I 'm keen. And there is so much on YT there are no excuses. Your example is a boost.

9 months ago I started learning english and now I am somewhere btween b1 and b2, so I thought it will be a good idea if I learn french and after 9 months start with russian langauge.. it will be a great adventure to me Im so excited to🪆

I'm about to learn Russian. I'm a little intimated because it's not any easy language, but I'm looking forward to learning.

Thank you for your appreciation of Russian language and culture. I would rank "Собачье сердце" as the top Russian movie of all time. Echo Moskvy is a great resource for students indeed, and I would say it's quite popular among educated Russians, so only about 10 % of the people I know would support the opinion that you've quoted as "the Russians' opinion". As for the method, there are different ways of learning languages and it's important to find what suits you: some prefer listening to books for long hours without being able to understand what's going on, and some would rather discover grammar and get involved in discussions with a language teacher.

Good job, comrade! We can make use of people like you

Thanks so much your tricks helpful

I'm French and I learn spanish but anyway I love this kind of videos 😂 thanks Sir !

That exact moment when Steve knows about Russian politicians more than I do 😂

How do you quickly handle Lingqing the different cases for words? For example, комната and комнаты. I immediately recognize that the former is the plural form, but I don't want to waste so much time or emphasis on this word. Do you just mark this as known, even if you don't know the singlular version of the word by heart? Or is there a way to create sublinks? So that way if I mark комната as known then I can have an option to mark комнаты as known too. I find myself spending a lot of time creating links for similar words.

grammar isn't bad per se. it's a matter of balance. if you focus only on grammar, that's bad, if you ignore grammar that's also bad. I have been studying Russian on my own for 7 years, grammar taking up approximately 15% of my learning time and I reached a B2+ level.

How could you have learnt Russian at 60 years-old?! Russians are the greatest humanitarian citizens in this world! I decided I'll pick it up! I'm still breaking through my French, and German language learning, and I'll start off learning it after having perfected my French! I deeply believe that the Russian language will be ones of the most widely learnt languages in the world! The Danish, and the Chinese languages will be next ones!

Я так надеялся что Вы по русски поговорите, в рамках данного видео)

Стив, спасибо за Вашу работу! Я учу немецкий и английский, учу для себя, в свое удовольствие. Ваш опыт по изучению русского был мне очень интересен, так как в планах у меня работа с иностранными студентами, хочу помогать им в изучении русского языка, знакомить их со своей страной и городом, для начала в планах у меня организация русского разговорного клуба. Большой привет из России, из г.Нижний Новгород.

Hello from Kazakhstan, we speak Russian, too! 🇰🇿 Huge Respect to you, Mister Steve.