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I am selfish, I am doing this admittedly to house my Ruski learning material separate from my own desktop m/c and I'm thinking but why not share it, hence this blog! This so far seems to be an exercise in teaching ones self but then again thats how life works usually.

If my twenty year Mandarin experience is anything to go by then in a few years hence I will know many tricks and traits that can be employed to illuminate the path forward for others, to shed light upon the subject, to bring it alive. But however in these first tentative steps as self taught each nugget of information and technique is hard earned. 

I've had twenty years with Mandarin and maybe twenty months ago stumbled on the incredible old song ''Zamuchin ... etc'' which the tune of it is incorporated into the Shostakovich String Quartet no.8 a tune which I've known fr a full decade at least but only recently realised its importance.

Much here will be copy 'n paste jobs to provide easy access material for myself. In other words a folder of material that even if this existing computer goes bust I can still access my notes and in digital form for manipulation as I please.

My preference particularly at the early stages is to memorise songs, firstly 'parrot fashion' and eventually adding the words to ones vocabulary. Its vital you get the pronounciation correct.  For instance with the song 'Polyushka pole' the ''polya'' terminates with pron.''year' as in English. Its these small touches that make all the difference. You carry these with you throughout the day and can burst into song at any moment! 

Do not rush ahead too fast, as with Mandarin get the intonation correct, imagine standing in a room of Russian speakers, try to not sound out of place. A good example of a terrible student is Mark Zuckerberg with his Mandarin, a vid posted online (? where the fck else) shows him ploughing thro a whole load of spoken material but the audience is not laughing with him, its his ludicrous abandonment of tones in a VERY tonal language. Better get little bits right as the foundation of yr knowledge base than pick up too many bad habits and features of laziness. You will be better respected for it. 

With Ruski theres certainly some wonderful old material to draw from. Forget about Putin and his antics, delve behind the scenes into Russian life and some v interesting material emerges. I first started Ruski with ten lines of memorised dialogue so that I cld speak with Russian short wave radio amateurs. Theres many threads to follow and for instance for a contrast I suggest watching Chekhovs play 'The Cherry Orchard' with a young Judy Dench (an ex tv production in English) its very worthwhile. 

Its all about memory, everything must be carried in your own mind and retrievable from memory. For this I use my usual daybook / diary and I recycle waste packaging material as crib notes to carry around with me. So far next to no cost and thats how I intend it to remain.

I am not the cleverest of men, certainly no educational 'whizzkid' but I do have curiosity and gain great pleasure for picking up a few simple words. This work will also I'm sure help with memory, no wonder old folk shuffle into old age the grey darkening veil descending often far too quickly, therefore we must fight it!

First step is to write down and memorise the alphabet, wiki is first port of call for this. Pen and paper are our best friends. Some letters are the same as English (ie a, m, o, e, t,) but most are not. With practice notice how bl crops up and can modify the sound. My method and standard of learning is what I term 'The Riverboat Captain', initially to simply bark a few commands and understand basic vocab in return as if stranded deep within the country and had to pick it up quick. 

example : привет ... for hello.

p, r, i, v,e,t. ... what cld be simpler! 

copy the alphabet by hand from say wiki ... also russianforfree.com is v useful.

You need to burn these transpositions into your mind, at first attempts note Ruski H sounds n and Ruski и sounds i ... look ahead see in your minds eye the correct Ruski sound for each letter. Once you see them in your mind 'you have them' so to speak. Note the e in the above is what I term from my mandarin work as a fourth tone or falling tone, sounding like the y in Eng ''yet''. Play it thro a few times on goog translate, get the feel of it.

I'm a keen cook so I need to know the word for potato, ie картофель

k,a,r,t,o,f,e,l.

Ruski p becomes our r, ruski л becomes phonetic l.

Thats the first hurdle getting to where you can sight read and in a basic manner make the approx correct sounds. 

Its that easy!

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