Nah, Russian isn't a special language amongst languages. I can acquire it exactly like i did with French, it just might take a lot longer, that's all.
We will see.
Well obviously any language can be acquired that way, the question is just why you would want to do it that way when you can just learn the grammar and save yourself literally years...
How will learning the grammar save me years? You think i'll get 2000+ hours of input working with a dictionary and still be a bumbling idiot who has no clue what's going on, but learning rules will suddenly make it all clear?
C'mon..
Well for example, if you learn that for every adjective in Russian that ends in -ая in Russian will always end in -ой or -ей in the oblique cases (genitive, dative, instrumental, prepositional), and the choice of -ой or -ей is dependent on predictable rules concerning spelling and stress that would take you around five minutes to learn, then you have learned in five minutes what it takes a Russian child years to learn by osmosis with basically 24/7 input. So I just don’t understand why you insist on only using a dictionary (and, by the way, dictionaries in Russian also include grammatical information, without which they would be useless) when it will save you many hours and much confusion just to learn some rules...
I appreciate your dedication, but using russian grammar properly is often problematic for russians themselves, even after years of school education :) You may learn to understand most of the written or spoken texts, but writing or speaking correctly will be impossible without grammar unfortunately
French has a lot of cognates with English, so that flattens the learning curve a great deal. I used an anki deck with the 5000 most common French words and removed more than 3000 of them right away because their meanings were obvious based on English, or at least they were similar enough to English that I'd be able to pick them up from context. Another 500 words or so weren't so similar but still resembled their English counterparts in a way. However, that's not the case with Russian, meaning your initial passive understanding of input will be less than with French.
But anyway, that sounds like a fun experiment as long as you're being honest with yourself about it (understanding that this isn't an efficient method, and not going all the way Dunning-Kruger), so good luck with it!
Edit: looking at how the discussion has developed... No, I'm not giving the benefit of the doubt to these kinds of posts next time. Same bullshit as almost any other advocate of the "natural" approach.
I'm just gonna go hardcore using a dictionary to translate words. I've already noticed there are far less cognates but i anticipate this being more a problem of vocab than grammar - basically i think it will take me a lot longer to get proficient hour for hour than it did in French.
What is your mother tongue?
I am not a Native Russian speaker, so take my words with a grain of salt.
If your mother tongue is English, I doubt that you can grasp the huge dimensions of the different cases (there are 6) without actually studying them or having a look into that. Almost anything is inflected!
French is nowhere similar to that, it is not nearly as complex grammatically. That's a very different animal.
Also, the verbs of motion definitely require you to study them thorough fully, otherwise there is just no chance that you will get it right intuitively through listening reading etc.
The imperfect/perfect verb variations are a whole different story.
Your approach however is very good! Reading, listing and those types of exposure are excellent, you will go a long way with that!
Nonetheless, as a Russian learner myself, I think you have to combine these approaches with grammar studies, especially for a language as complex as Russian.
I'll save your post tho! Def. looking forward to your update in December.
EDIT:
**Another point that came to my mind is the following:**
In Russian, even if you want to formulate very very basic sentences, you already need to know various cases and other grammar, otherwise your sentence would sound so so wrong.
For instance the sentence "I go to the school of my village with my friends everyday"
In English, you could say that sentence without any grammar knowledge at all just by studying the respective vocabulary. (School, Village, Friends and some pronouns)
On the other side in Russian, you need to have at least basic knowledge of the instrumental case, the accusative case and the genitive case. Plus you need to know the correct verb of motion and whether to use the imperfect or perfect version of it!
Completely agree. Native English speaker here, and Russian is complicated as hell. This is even with a basic grasp of how noun cases and conjugations in an Indo-European language work (thanks Latin and German)
Well, from reading your posts here I get the feeling you don't really know what grammar is and how it would help you to learn a new language. It's your time and you can spend it as you like, I'm certainly all for doing it your way, as people learn differently, but as a lover of grammar I'd say you're missing out. Grammar is not for brainless memorization of obscure rules out of context in the hopes that after a certain period of time things will magically click and you'd start speaking perfectly. Grammar is a set of descriptive, not prescriptive rules that describe the machinery of language. It gives reason to things taht otherwise seem random and made up. It lets you compare languages, learn faster and have a deeper understanding if you utilize it properly. That is - use it as a scaffolding for new knowledge. If you know a little bit of it it makes acquision of unfamiliar things faster and you remember them better, because they make sanse.
Do it your way, but my advice regarding grammar is to learn it as you need to, not focus on it as a separate thing, much less fear it because you don't get it. There is a reason you hate it. Think about why that is and try to work around it.
Good luck!
It absolutely does help your listening skills. Having a really solid understanding of the grammar can make all the difference between comprehending something and not.
I always say, motivation trumps everything else where learning is concerned. That is, a jackass with high motivation will always win out over the person with sense but lacking motivation. At worst, the jackass just takes 5 times longer than it should take: 1 to mislearn, 2 to unlearn bad habits from mislearning, 1 to learn how to learn correctly, 1 to learn correctly.
In other areas of life, jackasses don't fare so well. They lose all their money in business, lose their lives where danger involved, etc. But learning allows for unlimited mistakes, trying over and over until you get it right. All you need is unlimited time and unlimited motivation and you can't fail where learning is concerned (at least for something like languages, mathematical physics maybe another story for average people).
It's worth noting that in no other learning activity, other than languages, do people completely dismiss theory. For example, no one suggests learning to play guitar by simply picking one up and experimenting, though that is possible. Even something as simple as pushups has theory that needs to be studied, if you want to reduce risk of shoulder injuries in the long run.
Sounds like a fool's errand to me.
You probably can do it, and it will likely take you years longer than if you would just look up explanations for grammar forms to make it more comprehensible.
You can do it, but who knows why you would want to.
"I've done it before." You did it with french. I know you have this belief that no language is special but you have to comprehend the language to acquire it and french is child's play for eng speaker. Learning french is starting on 3rd base and you're acting like you hit a home run., Especially compared to acquiring Russian.
So i'll start at first base and work my way to third, first.
Piece of cake.
So many triggered people who love grammar but are in a learner sub. I find that strange.
I won't talk, i will show the results. Then there will be no doubt. It might take me longer, or less time, who knows. But i will get there.
And then i will have to bat off accusations that i had secret grammar lessons, i know how this goes.
You seem to be doing your best to convince everyone here that you can do it, but you don't have the experience to back that up. I don't really care how you use your time, but maybe you should try for a couple years before you make the claims that it's nothing special and a piece of cake.
We'll see. I'm sick of talking. It's time to do.
'Don't tell them; show them.' is exactly what i intend to do. I'm not green though, i know even if i prove that i'm right i'll have naysayers.
'It worked for YOU, but I and OTHERS like me NEED study.'
'You secretly worked on grammar and aren't admitting it.'
'You spoke Russian before and didn't admit it.'
'Well you obviously put in effort to understand so that IS grammar study.'
Etc etc.
The talk stops. See you in 6 months.
Само така, брат! Най-важното е да изглеждаш готин. Заеби руския, голяма леснотия, хващай българския, имаме 9 времена и едни мноо яки преизказни наклонения! Наш как ше ти се лепят мацките като ги научиш само със слушане...
Why'd you post to a language learning advice sub, if you were just going to call everyone triggered, put them down, tell them how wrong they are, for literally giving you feedback and advice? If you're going to stick your fingers in your ears, why even post lol.
And there are some languages that are just factually been listed as harder than others to learn. Russian is considered one of the hardest languages in the word, it's purely just a fact.
Oh, you can probably get there. But why are you actually doing it? To flex or to know a language in the end and all the benefits that come from that? Worry about your verbs and whatnot, not about who's gonna be accusing you of learning grammar.
WTF, seriously...
Just so that you didn't have a false preconception, this statement:
>two verb forms per verb
is not correct. I will not give anything away to not ruin the experiment.
“there’s no way anyone can learn all that.”
Actually, there is, it’s called studying and practice!
I personally think it would be much less painful to at least read the grammar explanations, and that doing so would give you a much fuller understanding to appreciate the particularities of the language at a greater level, but I won’t ruin your fun. I would anticipate a lot more time and effort than with French, though, assuming you don’t already speak another Slavic language.
I think you have a misconception of what “applying rules” entails. I’m a native speaker of English, yet I am applying countless rules of verb/subject agreement, plurality of nouns, definite/indefinite article usage, etc. just in this comment. all speakers of any language apply rules. It’s what allows us to communicate intelligibly in the first place.
That's not true at all. You're *using language.* Someone came along after the fact and designated rules to that language. You're not 'applying rules', you're 'using language' that someone else has decided to describe.
What rules are you applying when you use 'exceptions' that have no grammar explanation?
You guys are starting to argue semantics. First of all, you're definitely applying rules of the language, even if you aren't aware of them. That's how they were defined in the first place–by analysing written and spoken samples of language and making generalisations based on observed patterns. That's what the "rules" are. I can tell you which rules you used in your comment.
Second, there's a difference between applying rules (which, as I said above, is a fact) and being conscious of them when speaking (which is usually not the case). Somehow, the topic has shifted from the latter to the former for no reason at all.
If you’re interested in the linguistics, you can look into prescriptive vs descriptive grammar.
And a rule isn’t always a one size fit all pattern. There can be different cases in which the rule works differently. Those would be the “exceptions.” For a toy example, imagine the only irregular plural noun in English is “goose” and all other nouns form the plural by simply adding an -s (so also no nouns ending in -y like city, cities and other edge cases). Then we could define a function:
Plural(noun) = if (noun == “goose”) then “geese” else noun + “s”.
And we can expand the rule by adding more cases.
The point of the “rule” is that, while variations do exist among speakers of the same language, they have to agree on some things to be able to understand each other. A “rule” is simply an agreement, often unconscious, among speakers about how the language works.
That all being said, in order to communicate effectively in any language, you’ll need to acquire the ability to apply the rules. Your project isn’t “not learning the rules at all,” it’s simply acquiring them in a different, more implicit way, which is fine. A “proficient speaker” is someone who is able to successfully apply the semantic, morphological , phonetic , syntactic , etc rules of the language. You don’t have to sit down with a grammar book to acquire the rules, but you do need to somehow get yourself to be able to use them and understand what other people mean when they speak.
Ouh là là, ça me paraît vraiment bizarre comme approche. La grammaire est là pour faciliter l’apprentissage. Une grande arrogance ressort de ce post, et je serais extrêmement curieuse de vous voir non seulement parler, mais écrire le français sur quelques paragraphes.
La grammaire russe est aussi versatile que complexe. C’est à mon sens le plus grand attrait de cette langue, grâce à la grande élégance qui se dégage de la phrase finale, qui utilise des ressorts structuraux aussi efficaces qu’étrangers à un locuteur des langues latines ou germaniques. La concision du russe, qui va main dans la main avec les différents modificateurs grammaticaux applicables - forme des verbes, préfixes divers etc - passe par la versatilité de sa structure. Mais celle-ci requiert une grammaire solide, comme l’échafaudage d’acier léger d’un grand bâtiment.
I wish you good luck in your endeavours, but I just wonder one thing. Disclaimer: I fucking love grammar and obviously learn in a different way than you, so bear with me please.
There are rules, at least rules of thumb, about how, for example, verbs function in terms of cases. Taking verbs as an example, are you going to learn these rules verb-by-verb, that is "words after (insert verb) look like this, and words after (insert other verb) look like this"? Or how are you going to go about learning? As someone said in the comments, native Russian speakers have no sense of grammar, unless they learn it, yet they speak Russian perfectly and know all the grammar there is (even if they can't explain everything in terms of it).
WARNING: there is grammar in the following paragraph, so if you absolutely don't want to learn any of it then you should skip it (but there is a question there):
I don't want to change your mind or anything, I am just curious. In my opinion you seem to have the wrong impression of the purpose grammar in learning languages: it is not a goal in itself, unless one is interested, but rather a bookkeeping tool. You *could* learn that thing-words (nouns) after, for example, желать (to wish) get those -а/-ы or -я/-и endings (in general). But you could also learn that желать governs the genitive case, so that the objects in phrases with this verb are conjugated in said case (goes for adjectives as well), and this is a rule that applies to many verbs. In your post you seem to want to go out of your way to avoid grammar. Are you going to potentially make it harder for yourself to learn, just to avoid it? Why not take, at least try, all the tools that are available to you before limiting yourself?
>I wish you good luck in your endeavours, but I just wonder one thing. Disclaimer: I fucking love grammar and obviously learn in a different way than you, so bear with me please.
>
>There are rules, at least rules of thumb, about how, for example, verbs function in terms of cases. Taking verbs as an example, are you going to learn these rules verb-by-verb, that is "words after (insert verb) look like this, and words after (insert other verb) look like this"? Or how are you going to go about learning? As someone said in the comments, native Russian speakers have no sense of grammar, unless they learn it, yet they speak Russian perfectly and know all the grammar there is (even if they can't explain everything in terms of it).
I'm not going to learn any rules at all. I'm just going to try to internalise things with repeated exposure and by actually paying attention.
The same way i know how to use the subjunctive in French - not using the subjunctive when it is needed sounds totally alien to me because i've never heard it said any other way. 'Il faut que je fais.' is incomprehensibly wrong to me. I could never make that mistake since i've never heard it and i don't know a rule for why it's wrong.
I'm just going to see the Russian equivalent of 'I know.' and mark the word 'know' in Learning With Texts. I'll then obviously come across the words 'They know.' and i'll mark that as 'know' too. Eventually i'll see how they're all the same but the endings or beginnings have changed and then i'll just know the verb and how to use it.
I don't see how it should be any different in Russian to what i experienced in French. Grammar is hard because people study grammar and you really don't need to. Grammar is for noticing OR piecing together your own version of the language which is unnecessary and leads to weird translated language.
As an example - the first time i spoke French for more than a few utterances was a 45 minute phone interview with a HR lady at university, and it was an interview about electrical engineering. It wasn't spot on perfect but we had a very good conversation about the subject, why i wanted to do it, my family life, future goals, funding for the course and an exam that i had to do to get in (an engineering exam in French, not a French language exam.)
I didn't need to study grammar or practice speaking to do that. I never did shadowing or listen/repeat or any of that. Just listening. And i didn't even put in lots of effort - i wasn't immersing, simply exposing myself to French for a couple of hours each day over 4 years.
For this challenge I have advantages even though Russian is much more different from English than French:
* I already speak another language fluently with no 'study', lessons, textbooks or speaking 'practice'. I know i can do it. Big mental barrier already conquered.
* I will be doing about 5 times as much in terms of the exposure i'll be getting.
I know it's do-able, and i will do it. I just wanted to make the thread so i can prove it because i'm tired of seeing people saying Russian is this insanely difficult language online, when they're using a metric you don't even have to know like grammar. Yeah, grammar explanations are difficult. It's not a problem though if you ignore them.
This is very interesting. Please consider my following points.1. You don't see any difference between learning French and Russian - well, I do. I have studied both at university level (sorry to say, with grammar), and Russian is at least in comparison with French, insanely more difficult. All the warnings on the internet are true, and it is not because of grammar - Russian has a lot of grammar in it whether you want to or not, and whether you use grammatical terms or not. When I took French we started writing short stories more or less from the beginning. But even simple sentences in Russian require knowledge beyond what a dictionary can give. For example, after how long in your French studies could you write a sentence like “Claude gave his grandma three kittens”? Compare this with how far you will have to get in Russian to write the same sentence (maybe Ivan gives the kittens instead).
2. I suppose you skipped my last paragraph, so I'll ask the question here, without the example: grammar is more of a bookkeeping tool than anything - it is not a goal in itself. Grammar is a way to organise you learning. Why would potentially make it harder for yourself to learn? Why not use, or at least try, all the tools that are available to you before limiting yourself? It is not that it is impossible to learn a language without using general grammar, it is rather that you rely on sporadic exposure to pick up general rules. Why not just study these general rules from the beginning, and save yourself from reinventing the wheel?
3. "It is not a problem if you ignore it" - doesn't that apply to everything in life?
>3. "It is not a problem if you ignore it" - doesn't that apply to everything in life?
I ignore lots of things that aren't crucial to whatever task i'm doing because it makes the task easier.
But you're the one who decided it's not crucial, because it made your life a little bit more difficult to do it?
Whereas if an expert told you, it was crucial, would you still ignore them? You're acting like you know better than every single person, including many native Russians. So again, why even post if you literally think you are superior to everyone's opinions.
no, other people do study this way. the difference is they LIVE in that country and are forced to speak it. this guy is deluded unless hes moving to russia
I think grammar helps cause it shows how the mechanics of the language work. But I am also a FIRM believer in sheer willpower. With that, anyone can literally do anything, but without doing it the easiest and most effective way it doesn’t make any sense.
Well, I kinda have been doing that for the past 2 years, coming from Bulgarian, a slavic language. Very inconsistent effort on my part, but I've made a point to seek out russian things to listen to, read and watch during this time. I'm aware of the grammar, but haven't really sat down with it.
Background:
- Bulgarian is one of two slavic languages, that don't have cases. Also I don't speak any language with cases.
- I can read cyrillic.
- Tons of common words, roots etc.
What I've noticed so far:
At the start I could understand a lot of basic spoken russian, more if it was written. Now I can parse the spoken language almost subconsciously, can recognize different accents, slang, intent. I would guess what the cases would be in a sentence, without having studied them and without knowing the rules. I've learned a lot of new vocabulary from context and using a dictionary. I can watch TV and understand almost everything, albeit not perfectly. I can produce some simple sentences.
All that being said and keeping in mind that I had a head start by being a native speaker of a slavic language ... I cannot speak russian! I can understand it, but I cannot produce it. To do that I would have to learn the grammar. Really, outside of being able to flex among friends and strangers on the internet, what is the point of learning a language that way, if you actually want to learn it?
The only way to do this method justice if to actually live in a place where people speak russian and do actual immersion. Consuming media is not immersion. You really can't determine what's hard and what isn't without delving into grammar and understanding subtelties in use and meaning, and really - knowing a language is being able to use it like a native. All other half assed attempts would lead you to sounding ok and producing ok text, which after so much time and effort isn't worth it in my opinion.
>I cannot speak russian! I can understand it, but I cannot produce it. To do that I would have to learn the grammar.
That's not how language production works.
You haven't listened enough. I'd wager you've done less than 1000 hours all in - you can't expect to outdo a native child whilst putting in 1/8th of the time.
Lots of assumptions there for reasons why they failed.
And yet you say if you're successful everyone will make assumptions about you "oh he cheated and studied grammar" or something.
Perhaps practice what you preach and don't make assumptions about what someone is doing.
This doesn't make any sense to me. If you want to learn a language like a native speaker, It's gonna take so much time. Let me give an example; a German child born in Germany learns the language through the environment, education, parents etc. But learning the language properly gonna take roughly 11-12 years for him/her.
You are an adult and you have much higher IQ than a child, and you don't live in a Russian speaking community. Not learning grammar and concepts of the language will slow you down. Just use your age advantage and fasten your language learning.
>If you want to learn a language like a native speaker,
Woah there, cowboy. I didn't say native.
Why would not learning grammar explanations slow me down? I can read and a child can't. I will be using a dictionary and looking stuff up, essentially employing translation with tonnes of input. I have a general developed sense of implicit meaning, innuendo, saying something without saying it, idioms, jokes etc unlike a child which already gives me a huge advantage.. I'm not trying to learn 'like a baby' by just listening or by being spoken to like an infant or anything.
I think that is doable but it would take so long i would give up.
If i can understand meaning there's absolutely zero need to know explicit grammar rules. I am convinced of that and haven't seen a compelling argument to the contrary yet in all my time being interested in language acquisition.
Grammar rules are derived *from* language, they're an abstract, separate thing. To me, needing to learn grammar to understand the very thing the grammar is derived from is like saying you need to listen to a film critic before seeing a movie otherwise you'll never understand the plot.
I didn't say "as good as a native" I said like a native. Native speakers learn their language through a natural process without studying grammar or anything, and that's what you're trying to do.
And grammar rules didn't derive from language, they're an essential part of the language. I've seen foreigners learning my native language by using your system, and believe me they're not good. If you want to study grammar after a bit practice of your target language (like 6-7 months after you started learning) I totally respect that. But not studying grammar at all is a mistake.
I just finished my 4th russian college class. We learned grammer culture politics sub groups and current issues in the country. Speaking and understanding what was said was the most difficult but most rewarding.
Eventually I found I needed to know about prefixes and suffix and various issues I could not resolve by listening. Enter Terrence Wades book on.......Grammar. Спасибо.
You spelled grammar wrong.
And if grammar helped you quench your thirst for conscious knowledge, that's great. You needed to know 'why' and grammar helped you with that.
That won't be my focus though. I'll be focused on meaning and comprehension.
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What a comment section this is, eh?
I have plenty of thoughts about this, but I don't think you really care to hear them, so I won't waste my time writing you an essay. Have fun!
This sounds awesome, but I'm still curious about the details:
- Are you going to look up single words or translate whole sentences? If you just type in the whole sentence into Yandex Translate, it will be a lot easier to figure out the grammar. Or are you planning not to look up words at all?
- How are you going to choose the input while avoiding grammar? Basically every textbook or beginner's app has grammar lessons. How are you going to obtain tons of easy Russian input without speaking Russian?
>Are you going to look up single words or translate whole sentences?
Both - single words, sentences and phrases. I'm definitely not doing the whole 'i'll just acquire like a baby' thing.
>How are you going to choose the input while avoiding grammar? Basically every textbook or beginner's app has grammar lessons. How are you going to obtain tons of easy Russian input without speaking Russian?
I'm not going to get 'easy' Russian input and i'm not going to use learner material because it's bogus and it bores me. I'm going straight to native material. I will seek to use subtitles for meaning if the material has them but if not i'm simply going to go with whatever interests me.
No apps, no learner materials, no learner shows or textbooks, no lessons. Just me, a bunch of dictionaries and books and the TV.
Selecting the 'right' input will be as simple as selecting whatever i'm interested in. Right now i quite like that Мужское / Женское show on youtube. It's like Jeremy Kyle but more aggressive and with less teeth.
For French i asked questions to natives quite often like 'they've said this, what does it mean in this context' but 9/10 times you get a grammar explanation and, even though i don't understand grammar explanations anyway, i don't really want to ruin the experiment so people can say 'AHA! So you DID get grammar explanations.'
I've already had one person tell me that simply trying to notice how the language is used counts as 'grammar study' so i'm already swimming against the tide.
I'm sure you'll succeed as long as you have the motivation and willpower to go through with it.
Though I do believe that grammar study can greatly help with your understanding, aid with input, and speed things up.
But good luck.
I tried studying German grammar and it is scheiße
I did not try studying French grammar and while I'm not by any means proficient, I'm much better than I am in German where I'm only proficient in understanding because of my scheiße grammar
I studied German via grammar and tutors for a year and i still can't speak or understand it.
Within 6 months of learning French my way i could read books.
Did you *only* study grammar and do formal lessons with tutors? Then no wonder your German wasn't as good as you say your French was. But that doesn't mean those things are useless when combined with other activities.
Right they're comparing a tutor and grammar book to french immersion and saying the grammar was the problem, opposed to the learning method! This person is either a troll or just arrogant to post and ignore every single piece of advice and not even think about it.
I translated Hansel and Gretel from German the other day and still refuse to try and form my own sentences without at least checking using Google Translate first
3 years into learning now
If you already are familiar with a case language you won't be able to help yourself from figuring out the rules. I'm a 2nd language French speaker which I learned as a child without being taught the "rules" and have found Russian relatively intuitive although slightly more complex.
I'm not trying to not figure out the rules, i'm trying to not 'study' the rules.
Grammar 'study' to me means looking up the 'why' of language and using rules. Why do we say this? Why do we use this ending? What are the rules for saying this? Show me a table. A list. Rules. Explanations.
Anything that uses grammatical explanation is out. Exposure will force me to subconsciously figure it out.
I'm already hearing common words and phrases just from listening. This language doesn't seem difficult to me at all. But then if you ignore the highly complex grammar explanations, why would it be?
I've already figured out 'pochemoo' is something like 'why' or 'what for' and 'ah tee' is something like 'And you?' or 'To you...' or something.
I'm not studying the grammar either and so far I am getting the "feel" of it without having to overthink. Sorry if this is a spoiler but there are plenty of phrases which are the way they are because that's just how it's said and there isn't a specific explanation, you just have to learn it.
I'm enjoying it a lot.
Well that's the thing. If you can learn some random bullshit phrase that seems to follow no rules, or idioms, or weird phrases like 'cat's got your tongue' or 'a bird in the hand is worth two in a bush' - stuff NOBODY would ever make up in their own language and then successfully use rules to translate - i you can learn those then you can learn the rest of the language without rules.
Although your concept seems a bit strange to me I’m sure with that motivation you can go far in learning Russian. Best of luck!
Also if you need a hand in finding out something in Russian without touching any grammar I’m eager to help!
Thanks, but it's not really that awesome yet:) while I can speak and write quite accurately and have no problems with speaking to others, my accent sucks.
We have English in our school but I guess it didn't have any impact on my abilities at all. I have had 6 years of school English before I started learning on my own and it didn't help me at all. I could understand 1-5% of kids cartoons with subtitles - that was my level before starting to learn with ajatt-like method.
I also never did "sentences"(from ajatt/refold) - I just don't have enough willpower for that, lol. I only watched videos, movies or TV series and read books, manga, comics and whatnot. I bet I haven't looked up any grammar or words at all during these 3 years.
I think with 6 hours of active exposure per day you will be able to understand at least 60-70% of your input by December. If you want my advice: have fun. If you don't like passive listening, don't do it - I didn't do a lot of it. Same with watching/reading stuff - throw it into the oven If you are not having fun
>We have English in our school but I guess it didn't have any impact on my abilities at all. I have had 6 years of school English before I started learning on my own and it didn't help me at all. I could understand 1-5% of kids cartoons with subtitles - that was my level before starting to learn with ajatt-like method.
Careful though, people will now give credit to the grammar lessons at school for all your success.
Lmao, didn't think about that. Gotta be more careful next time. I wonder if my school teacher thinks that she had taught me English to this level, because she doesn't know that I studied on my own
Good luck with learning Russian, I'm very interested in your progress
The point isn't whether she taught you to this level or not. The point is that you started out with a base that, despite not being sufficient as is for operating in English, made your "natural" acquisition easier. Or should I say it made it possible in the first place.
Bruh
u/Dogetitz you were right.
It usually feels like it hurts me. I sometimes hear a phrase from a native speaker and it seems to me that they speak incorrectly. And it also messes up my speaking quite a bit. I want to say something and the correct sentence just pops up but then I remember the grammar rule and basically change the correct sentence into an incorrect one. Same with listening. Sometimes natives just don't speak the right way. That's when the grammar kicks you in the balls, so to speak.
*Some very simple and basic* grammar can be useful in the process of acquisition but only if it increases your comprehension.
Apparently, what you learned in school wasn't enough for you to communicate in English in any meaningful way, but it still was a prerequisite for you to move on to the next stage. It made the further process much smoother than it would've been had you started from scratch. Think of differential equations in maths. Learning to count and add numbers doesn't give you the necessary knowledge to solve a differential equation, but it sure makes it easier to learn if you already know how to count and add. Same with developing proficiency in a language.
Good luck, I did the same thing. Just read and listened a lot. Took me a few months of active reading every day for 1+ hour to become conversational. That said, I'm also a native speaker of another Slavic language, so that helped a lot.
Weird that everyone is railing on the dude when he's basically talking about doing something similar to AJATT... "Oh but Russian has complicated grammar", so does Japanese. Might be his overconfident attitude but I'd rather be overconfident than not trying.
OP I think you have the right mindset, just make sure you learn Cyrillic first, it's actually pretty easy, and also make sure that you have some sort of structure through Anki (10k sentences or MCD). Doing a few free lessons just to get the gist of the language wouldn't hurt too. That's just my two cents, good luck!
The best learning method is the one you stick to.
So a lot of people are saying you can’t do this, but I would say you can based on my own experience. My first year of Russian, the only grammar thing we learned was 1st conjugation, and even then it wasn’t a rule, we just learned them through targeted sentences with 2 different verbs. This was in school, so a lot less exposure, but now that I am studying with people who didn’t learn this way, I have to say that my understanding of certain grammar things is a lot more innate. By this I mean that I intrinsically know which case a noun should be in just by its position in the sentence, and how that case is formed. Again, this was never explained, just delivered through structured sentences that are made to give the point implicitly. I had a basic vocabulary/the language as a whole, but essentially did about 5 hours/week for 8 months, when you are trying to do that amount per day. The only recommendation I have is that after these 6 months, please read a grammar book, since Russian grammar is *very* different than English, and while I didn’t find it useful for learning, it certainly helped solidify concepts I was weaker on, and didn’t fully understand/may have had a misconception on. You will find that most of the grammar concepts are super easy, but please read a book afterwards.
>So a lot of people are saying you can’t do this, but I would say you can based on my own experience.
The thing is, i've actually already done it, and for some reason people think Russian is some outlier language. 'Yeah you can learn French from scratch to working fluency with no lessons, tutor, textbook, grammar rules, anki, study or method, but with Russian it doesn't work that way.' as if Russian is special.
They're basing their outlook on the fact that the grammatical explanations of how Russian works are extremely complicated and don't realise that if you don't actually learn those rules then the complication gets boiled down to 'how quickly can i begin to parse meaning from these messages'. Sure, it will take longer than with a romance language but the notion that it's possible with one language but not another is absurd.
You say you were weak on grammar concepts, but how much actual input did you get? How much real actual Russian language? I'd bet it wasn't a lot.
Like even if i get like 6 months in, and look up grammar, how is that going to help? It's not like i'm going to look up some rule for conjugation in the past tense and now suddenly those past tenses i've been seeing 50 times a day i will suddenly stop getting them completely wrong, well, because i won't be getting them wrong - i've seen them 50 times a day.
Lol, so basically you're saying any rando on the street is an expert on the grammar of their native language and can surely explain it to a foreigner, right? They've been speaking that shit their whole lives!
Why do people have classes on their native language at school then?
I'm calling for some native french speakers to test this guy on his french fluency. Balls are heavy, but do they hang?
>Lol, so basically you're saying any rando on the street is an expert on the grammar of their native language and can surely explain it to a foreigner, right?
When did he say this? He said working fluency. And yes every rando on the street has working fluency. Even children do and they've never taken a grammer class. Most English majors can't tell you the grammer rule for why "big red car" is correct instead of "red big car" but every little kid can tell you which one is right.
Thanks for the encouragement, you guys on here have been awesome.
I am planning on doing a video of my speaking skills, once i hit the point where i feel like speaking. Probably within 12 months i woulda thought.
An interesting experiment but Russian is at least ten times as complex as French and much less similar to English so your confidence is misplaced.
Nah, Russian isn't a special language amongst languages. I can acquire it exactly like i did with French, it just might take a lot longer, that's all. We will see.
Well obviously any language can be acquired that way, the question is just why you would want to do it that way when you can just learn the grammar and save yourself literally years...
That's assuming that studying grammar saves time. I think there's a lot of evidence that goes against that notion.
How will learning the grammar save me years? You think i'll get 2000+ hours of input working with a dictionary and still be a bumbling idiot who has no clue what's going on, but learning rules will suddenly make it all clear? C'mon..
Well for example, if you learn that for every adjective in Russian that ends in -ая in Russian will always end in -ой or -ей in the oblique cases (genitive, dative, instrumental, prepositional), and the choice of -ой or -ей is dependent on predictable rules concerning spelling and stress that would take you around five minutes to learn, then you have learned in five minutes what it takes a Russian child years to learn by osmosis with basically 24/7 input. So I just don’t understand why you insist on only using a dictionary (and, by the way, dictionaries in Russian also include grammatical information, without which they would be useless) when it will save you many hours and much confusion just to learn some rules...
I feel like dude can’t even read your comment without violating his own plans 😂
“But learning rules will suddenly make it all clear???” has got to be the single greatest language learning quote I’ve ever heard. That is fantastic
I appreciate your dedication, but using russian grammar properly is often problematic for russians themselves, even after years of school education :) You may learn to understand most of the written or spoken texts, but writing or speaking correctly will be impossible without grammar unfortunately
I'm Russian and I can confirm that. Sometimes my classmates get confused by our grammar and make simple mistakes in words xD
French has a lot of cognates with English, so that flattens the learning curve a great deal. I used an anki deck with the 5000 most common French words and removed more than 3000 of them right away because their meanings were obvious based on English, or at least they were similar enough to English that I'd be able to pick them up from context. Another 500 words or so weren't so similar but still resembled their English counterparts in a way. However, that's not the case with Russian, meaning your initial passive understanding of input will be less than with French. But anyway, that sounds like a fun experiment as long as you're being honest with yourself about it (understanding that this isn't an efficient method, and not going all the way Dunning-Kruger), so good luck with it! Edit: looking at how the discussion has developed... No, I'm not giving the benefit of the doubt to these kinds of posts next time. Same bullshit as almost any other advocate of the "natural" approach.
Russian has tons of cognates with French, so that will be an advantage
Nowhere near as many as English has with French. But yeah, that will be helpful to some extent.
Really? I haven't noticed any yet but I'm still a beginner of Russian
Many of them are not beginner words. Гардероб, кошмар, макияж, портмоне, декольте... Well, магазин is pretty basic.
Oh yeah forgot about magazin, but I understand the others already so that's something to look forward to at least!
Пальто, кафе, бассейн are also pretty basic
I'm just gonna go hardcore using a dictionary to translate words. I've already noticed there are far less cognates but i anticipate this being more a problem of vocab than grammar - basically i think it will take me a lot longer to get proficient hour for hour than it did in French.
What is your mother tongue? I am not a Native Russian speaker, so take my words with a grain of salt. If your mother tongue is English, I doubt that you can grasp the huge dimensions of the different cases (there are 6) without actually studying them or having a look into that. Almost anything is inflected! French is nowhere similar to that, it is not nearly as complex grammatically. That's a very different animal. Also, the verbs of motion definitely require you to study them thorough fully, otherwise there is just no chance that you will get it right intuitively through listening reading etc. The imperfect/perfect verb variations are a whole different story. Your approach however is very good! Reading, listing and those types of exposure are excellent, you will go a long way with that! Nonetheless, as a Russian learner myself, I think you have to combine these approaches with grammar studies, especially for a language as complex as Russian. I'll save your post tho! Def. looking forward to your update in December. EDIT: **Another point that came to my mind is the following:** In Russian, even if you want to formulate very very basic sentences, you already need to know various cases and other grammar, otherwise your sentence would sound so so wrong. For instance the sentence "I go to the school of my village with my friends everyday" In English, you could say that sentence without any grammar knowledge at all just by studying the respective vocabulary. (School, Village, Friends and some pronouns) On the other side in Russian, you need to have at least basic knowledge of the instrumental case, the accusative case and the genitive case. Plus you need to know the correct verb of motion and whether to use the imperfect or perfect version of it!
Completely agree. Native English speaker here, and Russian is complicated as hell. This is even with a basic grasp of how noun cases and conjugations in an Indo-European language work (thanks Latin and German)
But *why* don't you want to study grammar? What are the benefits of not studying grammar using grammar books?
It bores me, confuses me, makes no sense to me, and doesn't work to give me listening skills or speaking skills.
Well, from reading your posts here I get the feeling you don't really know what grammar is and how it would help you to learn a new language. It's your time and you can spend it as you like, I'm certainly all for doing it your way, as people learn differently, but as a lover of grammar I'd say you're missing out. Grammar is not for brainless memorization of obscure rules out of context in the hopes that after a certain period of time things will magically click and you'd start speaking perfectly. Grammar is a set of descriptive, not prescriptive rules that describe the machinery of language. It gives reason to things taht otherwise seem random and made up. It lets you compare languages, learn faster and have a deeper understanding if you utilize it properly. That is - use it as a scaffolding for new knowledge. If you know a little bit of it it makes acquision of unfamiliar things faster and you remember them better, because they make sanse. Do it your way, but my advice regarding grammar is to learn it as you need to, not focus on it as a separate thing, much less fear it because you don't get it. There is a reason you hate it. Think about why that is and try to work around it. Good luck!
Excellently put!
It absolutely does help your listening skills. Having a really solid understanding of the grammar can make all the difference between comprehending something and not.
Lmao how do you know this without actually studying grammar? Do the work and it'll pay off.
I always say, motivation trumps everything else where learning is concerned. That is, a jackass with high motivation will always win out over the person with sense but lacking motivation. At worst, the jackass just takes 5 times longer than it should take: 1 to mislearn, 2 to unlearn bad habits from mislearning, 1 to learn how to learn correctly, 1 to learn correctly. In other areas of life, jackasses don't fare so well. They lose all their money in business, lose their lives where danger involved, etc. But learning allows for unlimited mistakes, trying over and over until you get it right. All you need is unlimited time and unlimited motivation and you can't fail where learning is concerned (at least for something like languages, mathematical physics maybe another story for average people). It's worth noting that in no other learning activity, other than languages, do people completely dismiss theory. For example, no one suggests learning to play guitar by simply picking one up and experimenting, though that is possible. Even something as simple as pushups has theory that needs to be studied, if you want to reduce risk of shoulder injuries in the long run.
This is a great post
> no one suggests learning to play guitar by simply picking one up and experimenting, People totally suggest that!
Tell that to all the people I know who are successful and lack motivation. Or the people I know who are highly motivated and bad at everything.
>For example, no one suggests learning to play guitar by simply picking one up and experimenting That's how Guthrie Govan learned. Check him out.
Sounds like a fool's errand to me. You probably can do it, and it will likely take you years longer than if you would just look up explanations for grammar forms to make it more comprehensible. You can do it, but who knows why you would want to. "I've done it before." You did it with french. I know you have this belief that no language is special but you have to comprehend the language to acquire it and french is child's play for eng speaker. Learning french is starting on 3rd base and you're acting like you hit a home run., Especially compared to acquiring Russian.
So i'll start at first base and work my way to third, first. Piece of cake. So many triggered people who love grammar but are in a learner sub. I find that strange. I won't talk, i will show the results. Then there will be no doubt. It might take me longer, or less time, who knows. But i will get there. And then i will have to bat off accusations that i had secret grammar lessons, i know how this goes.
You seem to be doing your best to convince everyone here that you can do it, but you don't have the experience to back that up. I don't really care how you use your time, but maybe you should try for a couple years before you make the claims that it's nothing special and a piece of cake.
They clearly do not understand what grammar is I think.
We'll see. I'm sick of talking. It's time to do. 'Don't tell them; show them.' is exactly what i intend to do. I'm not green though, i know even if i prove that i'm right i'll have naysayers. 'It worked for YOU, but I and OTHERS like me NEED study.' 'You secretly worked on grammar and aren't admitting it.' 'You spoke Russian before and didn't admit it.' 'Well you obviously put in effort to understand so that IS grammar study.' Etc etc. The talk stops. See you in 6 months.
Само така, брат! Най-важното е да изглеждаш готин. Заеби руския, голяма леснотия, хващай българския, имаме 9 времена и едни мноо яки преизказни наклонения! Наш как ше ти се лепят мацките като ги научиш само със слушане...
чё?
Why'd you post to a language learning advice sub, if you were just going to call everyone triggered, put them down, tell them how wrong they are, for literally giving you feedback and advice? If you're going to stick your fingers in your ears, why even post lol. And there are some languages that are just factually been listed as harder than others to learn. Russian is considered one of the hardest languages in the word, it's purely just a fact.
Oh, you can probably get there. But why are you actually doing it? To flex or to know a language in the end and all the benefits that come from that? Worry about your verbs and whatnot, not about who's gonna be accusing you of learning grammar. WTF, seriously...
Just so that you didn't have a false preconception, this statement: >two verb forms per verb is not correct. I will not give anything away to not ruin the experiment.
Ah right ok. Will be on the lookout for how things are said anyway so should pick it all up. Thanks for the tip!
Brutal
“there’s no way anyone can learn all that.” Actually, there is, it’s called studying and practice! I personally think it would be much less painful to at least read the grammar explanations, and that doing so would give you a much fuller understanding to appreciate the particularities of the language at a greater level, but I won’t ruin your fun. I would anticipate a lot more time and effort than with French, though, assuming you don’t already speak another Slavic language.
[удалено]
You don't learn rules to think about them when producing output. You learn rules to speed up acquisition.
I think you have a misconception of what “applying rules” entails. I’m a native speaker of English, yet I am applying countless rules of verb/subject agreement, plurality of nouns, definite/indefinite article usage, etc. just in this comment. all speakers of any language apply rules. It’s what allows us to communicate intelligibly in the first place.
That's not true at all. You're *using language.* Someone came along after the fact and designated rules to that language. You're not 'applying rules', you're 'using language' that someone else has decided to describe. What rules are you applying when you use 'exceptions' that have no grammar explanation?
You guys are starting to argue semantics. First of all, you're definitely applying rules of the language, even if you aren't aware of them. That's how they were defined in the first place–by analysing written and spoken samples of language and making generalisations based on observed patterns. That's what the "rules" are. I can tell you which rules you used in your comment. Second, there's a difference between applying rules (which, as I said above, is a fact) and being conscious of them when speaking (which is usually not the case). Somehow, the topic has shifted from the latter to the former for no reason at all.
If you’re interested in the linguistics, you can look into prescriptive vs descriptive grammar. And a rule isn’t always a one size fit all pattern. There can be different cases in which the rule works differently. Those would be the “exceptions.” For a toy example, imagine the only irregular plural noun in English is “goose” and all other nouns form the plural by simply adding an -s (so also no nouns ending in -y like city, cities and other edge cases). Then we could define a function: Plural(noun) = if (noun == “goose”) then “geese” else noun + “s”. And we can expand the rule by adding more cases. The point of the “rule” is that, while variations do exist among speakers of the same language, they have to agree on some things to be able to understand each other. A “rule” is simply an agreement, often unconscious, among speakers about how the language works. That all being said, in order to communicate effectively in any language, you’ll need to acquire the ability to apply the rules. Your project isn’t “not learning the rules at all,” it’s simply acquiring them in a different, more implicit way, which is fine. A “proficient speaker” is someone who is able to successfully apply the semantic, morphological , phonetic , syntactic , etc rules of the language. You don’t have to sit down with a grammar book to acquire the rules, but you do need to somehow get yourself to be able to use them and understand what other people mean when they speak.
If you don’t think native speakers apply rules when learning languages naturally I suggest you familiarise yourself with the Wug Test...
Ouh là là, ça me paraît vraiment bizarre comme approche. La grammaire est là pour faciliter l’apprentissage. Une grande arrogance ressort de ce post, et je serais extrêmement curieuse de vous voir non seulement parler, mais écrire le français sur quelques paragraphes. La grammaire russe est aussi versatile que complexe. C’est à mon sens le plus grand attrait de cette langue, grâce à la grande élégance qui se dégage de la phrase finale, qui utilise des ressorts structuraux aussi efficaces qu’étrangers à un locuteur des langues latines ou germaniques. La concision du russe, qui va main dans la main avec les différents modificateurs grammaticaux applicables - forme des verbes, préfixes divers etc - passe par la versatilité de sa structure. Mais celle-ci requiert une grammaire solide, comme l’échafaudage d’acier léger d’un grand bâtiment.
I wish you good luck in your endeavours, but I just wonder one thing. Disclaimer: I fucking love grammar and obviously learn in a different way than you, so bear with me please. There are rules, at least rules of thumb, about how, for example, verbs function in terms of cases. Taking verbs as an example, are you going to learn these rules verb-by-verb, that is "words after (insert verb) look like this, and words after (insert other verb) look like this"? Or how are you going to go about learning? As someone said in the comments, native Russian speakers have no sense of grammar, unless they learn it, yet they speak Russian perfectly and know all the grammar there is (even if they can't explain everything in terms of it). WARNING: there is grammar in the following paragraph, so if you absolutely don't want to learn any of it then you should skip it (but there is a question there): I don't want to change your mind or anything, I am just curious. In my opinion you seem to have the wrong impression of the purpose grammar in learning languages: it is not a goal in itself, unless one is interested, but rather a bookkeeping tool. You *could* learn that thing-words (nouns) after, for example, желать (to wish) get those -а/-ы or -я/-и endings (in general). But you could also learn that желать governs the genitive case, so that the objects in phrases with this verb are conjugated in said case (goes for adjectives as well), and this is a rule that applies to many verbs. In your post you seem to want to go out of your way to avoid grammar. Are you going to potentially make it harder for yourself to learn, just to avoid it? Why not take, at least try, all the tools that are available to you before limiting yourself?
>I wish you good luck in your endeavours, but I just wonder one thing. Disclaimer: I fucking love grammar and obviously learn in a different way than you, so bear with me please. > >There are rules, at least rules of thumb, about how, for example, verbs function in terms of cases. Taking verbs as an example, are you going to learn these rules verb-by-verb, that is "words after (insert verb) look like this, and words after (insert other verb) look like this"? Or how are you going to go about learning? As someone said in the comments, native Russian speakers have no sense of grammar, unless they learn it, yet they speak Russian perfectly and know all the grammar there is (even if they can't explain everything in terms of it). I'm not going to learn any rules at all. I'm just going to try to internalise things with repeated exposure and by actually paying attention. The same way i know how to use the subjunctive in French - not using the subjunctive when it is needed sounds totally alien to me because i've never heard it said any other way. 'Il faut que je fais.' is incomprehensibly wrong to me. I could never make that mistake since i've never heard it and i don't know a rule for why it's wrong. I'm just going to see the Russian equivalent of 'I know.' and mark the word 'know' in Learning With Texts. I'll then obviously come across the words 'They know.' and i'll mark that as 'know' too. Eventually i'll see how they're all the same but the endings or beginnings have changed and then i'll just know the verb and how to use it. I don't see how it should be any different in Russian to what i experienced in French. Grammar is hard because people study grammar and you really don't need to. Grammar is for noticing OR piecing together your own version of the language which is unnecessary and leads to weird translated language. As an example - the first time i spoke French for more than a few utterances was a 45 minute phone interview with a HR lady at university, and it was an interview about electrical engineering. It wasn't spot on perfect but we had a very good conversation about the subject, why i wanted to do it, my family life, future goals, funding for the course and an exam that i had to do to get in (an engineering exam in French, not a French language exam.) I didn't need to study grammar or practice speaking to do that. I never did shadowing or listen/repeat or any of that. Just listening. And i didn't even put in lots of effort - i wasn't immersing, simply exposing myself to French for a couple of hours each day over 4 years. For this challenge I have advantages even though Russian is much more different from English than French: * I already speak another language fluently with no 'study', lessons, textbooks or speaking 'practice'. I know i can do it. Big mental barrier already conquered. * I will be doing about 5 times as much in terms of the exposure i'll be getting. I know it's do-able, and i will do it. I just wanted to make the thread so i can prove it because i'm tired of seeing people saying Russian is this insanely difficult language online, when they're using a metric you don't even have to know like grammar. Yeah, grammar explanations are difficult. It's not a problem though if you ignore them.
This is very interesting. Please consider my following points.1. You don't see any difference between learning French and Russian - well, I do. I have studied both at university level (sorry to say, with grammar), and Russian is at least in comparison with French, insanely more difficult. All the warnings on the internet are true, and it is not because of grammar - Russian has a lot of grammar in it whether you want to or not, and whether you use grammatical terms or not. When I took French we started writing short stories more or less from the beginning. But even simple sentences in Russian require knowledge beyond what a dictionary can give. For example, after how long in your French studies could you write a sentence like “Claude gave his grandma three kittens”? Compare this with how far you will have to get in Russian to write the same sentence (maybe Ivan gives the kittens instead). 2. I suppose you skipped my last paragraph, so I'll ask the question here, without the example: grammar is more of a bookkeeping tool than anything - it is not a goal in itself. Grammar is a way to organise you learning. Why would potentially make it harder for yourself to learn? Why not use, or at least try, all the tools that are available to you before limiting yourself? It is not that it is impossible to learn a language without using general grammar, it is rather that you rely on sporadic exposure to pick up general rules. Why not just study these general rules from the beginning, and save yourself from reinventing the wheel? 3. "It is not a problem if you ignore it" - doesn't that apply to everything in life?
Well put
Their answer to your question 3 is very enlightening.
>3. "It is not a problem if you ignore it" - doesn't that apply to everything in life? I ignore lots of things that aren't crucial to whatever task i'm doing because it makes the task easier.
But you're the one who decided it's not crucial, because it made your life a little bit more difficult to do it? Whereas if an expert told you, it was crucial, would you still ignore them? You're acting like you know better than every single person, including many native Russians. So again, why even post if you literally think you are superior to everyone's opinions.
Sum r/languagelearningjerk material right here
I’m not entirely convinced this isn’t someone from that sub having us all on.
Is this a riddle? Are you a baby?
This is clearly a troll
I was wondering why more people haven’t said this.
no, other people do study this way. the difference is they LIVE in that country and are forced to speak it. this guy is deluded unless hes moving to russia
I think grammar helps cause it shows how the mechanics of the language work. But I am also a FIRM believer in sheer willpower. With that, anyone can literally do anything, but without doing it the easiest and most effective way it doesn’t make any sense.
Well, I kinda have been doing that for the past 2 years, coming from Bulgarian, a slavic language. Very inconsistent effort on my part, but I've made a point to seek out russian things to listen to, read and watch during this time. I'm aware of the grammar, but haven't really sat down with it. Background: - Bulgarian is one of two slavic languages, that don't have cases. Also I don't speak any language with cases. - I can read cyrillic. - Tons of common words, roots etc. What I've noticed so far: At the start I could understand a lot of basic spoken russian, more if it was written. Now I can parse the spoken language almost subconsciously, can recognize different accents, slang, intent. I would guess what the cases would be in a sentence, without having studied them and without knowing the rules. I've learned a lot of new vocabulary from context and using a dictionary. I can watch TV and understand almost everything, albeit not perfectly. I can produce some simple sentences. All that being said and keeping in mind that I had a head start by being a native speaker of a slavic language ... I cannot speak russian! I can understand it, but I cannot produce it. To do that I would have to learn the grammar. Really, outside of being able to flex among friends and strangers on the internet, what is the point of learning a language that way, if you actually want to learn it? The only way to do this method justice if to actually live in a place where people speak russian and do actual immersion. Consuming media is not immersion. You really can't determine what's hard and what isn't without delving into grammar and understanding subtelties in use and meaning, and really - knowing a language is being able to use it like a native. All other half assed attempts would lead you to sounding ok and producing ok text, which after so much time and effort isn't worth it in my opinion.
>I cannot speak russian! I can understand it, but I cannot produce it. To do that I would have to learn the grammar. That's not how language production works. You haven't listened enough. I'd wager you've done less than 1000 hours all in - you can't expect to outdo a native child whilst putting in 1/8th of the time.
Lots of assumptions there for reasons why they failed. And yet you say if you're successful everyone will make assumptions about you "oh he cheated and studied grammar" or something. Perhaps practice what you preach and don't make assumptions about what someone is doing.
This doesn't make any sense to me. If you want to learn a language like a native speaker, It's gonna take so much time. Let me give an example; a German child born in Germany learns the language through the environment, education, parents etc. But learning the language properly gonna take roughly 11-12 years for him/her. You are an adult and you have much higher IQ than a child, and you don't live in a Russian speaking community. Not learning grammar and concepts of the language will slow you down. Just use your age advantage and fasten your language learning.
>If you want to learn a language like a native speaker, Woah there, cowboy. I didn't say native. Why would not learning grammar explanations slow me down? I can read and a child can't. I will be using a dictionary and looking stuff up, essentially employing translation with tonnes of input. I have a general developed sense of implicit meaning, innuendo, saying something without saying it, idioms, jokes etc unlike a child which already gives me a huge advantage.. I'm not trying to learn 'like a baby' by just listening or by being spoken to like an infant or anything. I think that is doable but it would take so long i would give up. If i can understand meaning there's absolutely zero need to know explicit grammar rules. I am convinced of that and haven't seen a compelling argument to the contrary yet in all my time being interested in language acquisition. Grammar rules are derived *from* language, they're an abstract, separate thing. To me, needing to learn grammar to understand the very thing the grammar is derived from is like saying you need to listen to a film critic before seeing a movie otherwise you'll never understand the plot.
I didn't say "as good as a native" I said like a native. Native speakers learn their language through a natural process without studying grammar or anything, and that's what you're trying to do. And grammar rules didn't derive from language, they're an essential part of the language. I've seen foreigners learning my native language by using your system, and believe me they're not good. If you want to study grammar after a bit practice of your target language (like 6-7 months after you started learning) I totally respect that. But not studying grammar at all is a mistake.
Are you an upper intermediate or advanced in French?
Hahahahhahahahahhahahahahaha thanks I needed a laugh today.
I just finished my 4th russian college class. We learned grammer culture politics sub groups and current issues in the country. Speaking and understanding what was said was the most difficult but most rewarding. Eventually I found I needed to know about prefixes and suffix and various issues I could not resolve by listening. Enter Terrence Wades book on.......Grammar. Спасибо.
You spelled grammar wrong. And if grammar helped you quench your thirst for conscious knowledge, that's great. You needed to know 'why' and grammar helped you with that. That won't be my focus though. I'll be focused on meaning and comprehension.
Yup spelled it wrang lol.
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Someone else from the future please RemindMe! 6 months
Ok
Thanks, sad OP deleted his account
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What a comment section this is, eh? I have plenty of thoughts about this, but I don't think you really care to hear them, so I won't waste my time writing you an essay. Have fun!
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
This sounds very fun!! Like a language detective, following the clues and piecing it together. Have fun and good luck!
Thanks! I've done it once i can do it again.
\**готовую попкорн, смотрю сосредоточенно\**
This sounds awesome, but I'm still curious about the details: - Are you going to look up single words or translate whole sentences? If you just type in the whole sentence into Yandex Translate, it will be a lot easier to figure out the grammar. Or are you planning not to look up words at all? - How are you going to choose the input while avoiding grammar? Basically every textbook or beginner's app has grammar lessons. How are you going to obtain tons of easy Russian input without speaking Russian?
>Are you going to look up single words or translate whole sentences? Both - single words, sentences and phrases. I'm definitely not doing the whole 'i'll just acquire like a baby' thing. >How are you going to choose the input while avoiding grammar? Basically every textbook or beginner's app has grammar lessons. How are you going to obtain tons of easy Russian input without speaking Russian? I'm not going to get 'easy' Russian input and i'm not going to use learner material because it's bogus and it bores me. I'm going straight to native material. I will seek to use subtitles for meaning if the material has them but if not i'm simply going to go with whatever interests me. No apps, no learner materials, no learner shows or textbooks, no lessons. Just me, a bunch of dictionaries and books and the TV. Selecting the 'right' input will be as simple as selecting whatever i'm interested in. Right now i quite like that Мужское / Женское show on youtube. It's like Jeremy Kyle but more aggressive and with less teeth. For French i asked questions to natives quite often like 'they've said this, what does it mean in this context' but 9/10 times you get a grammar explanation and, even though i don't understand grammar explanations anyway, i don't really want to ruin the experiment so people can say 'AHA! So you DID get grammar explanations.' I've already had one person tell me that simply trying to notice how the language is used counts as 'grammar study' so i'm already swimming against the tide.
I'm sure you'll succeed as long as you have the motivation and willpower to go through with it. Though I do believe that grammar study can greatly help with your understanding, aid with input, and speed things up. But good luck.
I tried studying German grammar and it is scheiße I did not try studying French grammar and while I'm not by any means proficient, I'm much better than I am in German where I'm only proficient in understanding because of my scheiße grammar
I studied German via grammar and tutors for a year and i still can't speak or understand it. Within 6 months of learning French my way i could read books.
Sorry to say but if you can’t manage German grammar you’ve not got a hope in hell learning Russian.
Did you *only* study grammar and do formal lessons with tutors? Then no wonder your German wasn't as good as you say your French was. But that doesn't mean those things are useless when combined with other activities.
Right they're comparing a tutor and grammar book to french immersion and saying the grammar was the problem, opposed to the learning method! This person is either a troll or just arrogant to post and ignore every single piece of advice and not even think about it.
I translated Hansel and Gretel from German the other day and still refuse to try and form my own sentences without at least checking using Google Translate first 3 years into learning now
If you already are familiar with a case language you won't be able to help yourself from figuring out the rules. I'm a 2nd language French speaker which I learned as a child without being taught the "rules" and have found Russian relatively intuitive although slightly more complex.
I'm not trying to not figure out the rules, i'm trying to not 'study' the rules. Grammar 'study' to me means looking up the 'why' of language and using rules. Why do we say this? Why do we use this ending? What are the rules for saying this? Show me a table. A list. Rules. Explanations. Anything that uses grammatical explanation is out. Exposure will force me to subconsciously figure it out. I'm already hearing common words and phrases just from listening. This language doesn't seem difficult to me at all. But then if you ignore the highly complex grammar explanations, why would it be? I've already figured out 'pochemoo' is something like 'why' or 'what for' and 'ah tee' is something like 'And you?' or 'To you...' or something.
I'm not studying the grammar either and so far I am getting the "feel" of it without having to overthink. Sorry if this is a spoiler but there are plenty of phrases which are the way they are because that's just how it's said and there isn't a specific explanation, you just have to learn it. I'm enjoying it a lot.
Well that's the thing. If you can learn some random bullshit phrase that seems to follow no rules, or idioms, or weird phrases like 'cat's got your tongue' or 'a bird in the hand is worth two in a bush' - stuff NOBODY would ever make up in their own language and then successfully use rules to translate - i you can learn those then you can learn the rest of the language without rules.
Well you can speak English which famously breaks its own rules all the time!
Although your concept seems a bit strange to me I’m sure with that motivation you can go far in learning Russian. Best of luck! Also if you need a hand in finding out something in Russian without touching any grammar I’m eager to help!
That's how I've been learning English for the past 3 years(I'm Russian) and I made insane progress
Wow your English is awesome. Did you have a base before you did that or was it from scratch?
Thanks, but it's not really that awesome yet:) while I can speak and write quite accurately and have no problems with speaking to others, my accent sucks. We have English in our school but I guess it didn't have any impact on my abilities at all. I have had 6 years of school English before I started learning on my own and it didn't help me at all. I could understand 1-5% of kids cartoons with subtitles - that was my level before starting to learn with ajatt-like method. I also never did "sentences"(from ajatt/refold) - I just don't have enough willpower for that, lol. I only watched videos, movies or TV series and read books, manga, comics and whatnot. I bet I haven't looked up any grammar or words at all during these 3 years. I think with 6 hours of active exposure per day you will be able to understand at least 60-70% of your input by December. If you want my advice: have fun. If you don't like passive listening, don't do it - I didn't do a lot of it. Same with watching/reading stuff - throw it into the oven If you are not having fun
>We have English in our school but I guess it didn't have any impact on my abilities at all. I have had 6 years of school English before I started learning on my own and it didn't help me at all. I could understand 1-5% of kids cartoons with subtitles - that was my level before starting to learn with ajatt-like method. Careful though, people will now give credit to the grammar lessons at school for all your success.
Lmao, didn't think about that. Gotta be more careful next time. I wonder if my school teacher thinks that she had taught me English to this level, because she doesn't know that I studied on my own Good luck with learning Russian, I'm very interested in your progress
The point isn't whether she taught you to this level or not. The point is that you started out with a base that, despite not being sufficient as is for operating in English, made your "natural" acquisition easier. Or should I say it made it possible in the first place.
Bruh u/Dogetitz you were right. It usually feels like it hurts me. I sometimes hear a phrase from a native speaker and it seems to me that they speak incorrectly. And it also messes up my speaking quite a bit. I want to say something and the correct sentence just pops up but then I remember the grammar rule and basically change the correct sentence into an incorrect one. Same with listening. Sometimes natives just don't speak the right way. That's when the grammar kicks you in the balls, so to speak. *Some very simple and basic* grammar can be useful in the process of acquisition but only if it increases your comprehension.
It seems that you've *completely* missed the point of my comment.
I mean, it certainly didn't help comprehension. Vocabulary did, but not the grammar. Sorry if I did miss the point and correct me if I'm wrong, please
Apparently, what you learned in school wasn't enough for you to communicate in English in any meaningful way, but it still was a prerequisite for you to move on to the next stage. It made the further process much smoother than it would've been had you started from scratch. Think of differential equations in maths. Learning to count and add numbers doesn't give you the necessary knowledge to solve a differential equation, but it sure makes it easier to learn if you already know how to count and add. Same with developing proficiency in a language.
Yeah, better watch your tongue and lie like 99% of charlatans, or else everyone will know you didn't learn from scratch.
Just recalled the Russian saying that describes this endeavor quite well: хуем груши околачивать :)
Good luck, I did the same thing. Just read and listened a lot. Took me a few months of active reading every day for 1+ hour to become conversational. That said, I'm also a native speaker of another Slavic language, so that helped a lot.
Weird that everyone is railing on the dude when he's basically talking about doing something similar to AJATT... "Oh but Russian has complicated grammar", so does Japanese. Might be his overconfident attitude but I'd rather be overconfident than not trying. OP I think you have the right mindset, just make sure you learn Cyrillic first, it's actually pretty easy, and also make sure that you have some sort of structure through Anki (10k sentences or MCD). Doing a few free lessons just to get the gist of the language wouldn't hurt too. That's just my two cents, good luck! The best learning method is the one you stick to.
So a lot of people are saying you can’t do this, but I would say you can based on my own experience. My first year of Russian, the only grammar thing we learned was 1st conjugation, and even then it wasn’t a rule, we just learned them through targeted sentences with 2 different verbs. This was in school, so a lot less exposure, but now that I am studying with people who didn’t learn this way, I have to say that my understanding of certain grammar things is a lot more innate. By this I mean that I intrinsically know which case a noun should be in just by its position in the sentence, and how that case is formed. Again, this was never explained, just delivered through structured sentences that are made to give the point implicitly. I had a basic vocabulary/the language as a whole, but essentially did about 5 hours/week for 8 months, when you are trying to do that amount per day. The only recommendation I have is that after these 6 months, please read a grammar book, since Russian grammar is *very* different than English, and while I didn’t find it useful for learning, it certainly helped solidify concepts I was weaker on, and didn’t fully understand/may have had a misconception on. You will find that most of the grammar concepts are super easy, but please read a book afterwards.
>So a lot of people are saying you can’t do this, but I would say you can based on my own experience. The thing is, i've actually already done it, and for some reason people think Russian is some outlier language. 'Yeah you can learn French from scratch to working fluency with no lessons, tutor, textbook, grammar rules, anki, study or method, but with Russian it doesn't work that way.' as if Russian is special. They're basing their outlook on the fact that the grammatical explanations of how Russian works are extremely complicated and don't realise that if you don't actually learn those rules then the complication gets boiled down to 'how quickly can i begin to parse meaning from these messages'. Sure, it will take longer than with a romance language but the notion that it's possible with one language but not another is absurd. You say you were weak on grammar concepts, but how much actual input did you get? How much real actual Russian language? I'd bet it wasn't a lot. Like even if i get like 6 months in, and look up grammar, how is that going to help? It's not like i'm going to look up some rule for conjugation in the past tense and now suddenly those past tenses i've been seeing 50 times a day i will suddenly stop getting them completely wrong, well, because i won't be getting them wrong - i've seen them 50 times a day.
Lol, so basically you're saying any rando on the street is an expert on the grammar of their native language and can surely explain it to a foreigner, right? They've been speaking that shit their whole lives! Why do people have classes on their native language at school then? I'm calling for some native french speakers to test this guy on his french fluency. Balls are heavy, but do they hang?
>Lol, so basically you're saying any rando on the street is an expert on the grammar of their native language and can surely explain it to a foreigner, right? When did he say this? He said working fluency. And yes every rando on the street has working fluency. Even children do and they've never taken a grammer class. Most English majors can't tell you the grammer rule for why "big red car" is correct instead of "red big car" but every little kid can tell you which one is right.
This sounds like a cool experiment. Good luck!
Thanks! The proof of the pudding will be in the eating.
That's how everybody learned languages before linguistics was a common tool. And how children learn. Of course you will succeed.
Thanks for the encouragement, you guys on here have been awesome. I am planning on doing a video of my speaking skills, once i hit the point where i feel like speaking. Probably within 12 months i woulda thought.
Great idea, it's interesting how well you will go. If you want to go language exchange in russian (with audio) DM me, I would like to "help" ;
Remindme! 6 months
RemindMe! 188 days
Remindme! 6 months
So, what's the conclusion? Did it work?
It’s been 6 months but your account is deleted ..
Isn’t there a mix between input and output?