Still learning French, and now starting Russian

[tomgosse]

I guess what my question comes down to is this: "is it better to read something leisurely that you enjoy and understand the majority of, or is it better to push yourself into more advanced lectures, despite the fact that you don't understand it as well and despite the fact that you become frustrated with it? I'm leaning towards the first option. I just hope that after doing the first option for a long time, the second option will become easier, but I'm not sure if it works like that, hence my frustration. It's probably also a question of personality type—my mood, being as precarious as it is, has days where my self confidence is harder to find than Ferris Bueller in a high school, thus my inclination to continuously read lots of what I enjoy and find relatively easy to read.

Like you, I lean towards the first option. And that goes for my native English as well as French.

[tastyonions]

Just read little bits of advanced stuff alongside the easier things. Take on a page or two of some eighteenth century philosophy or Proust or whatever, look up all the words, then put it down until the following day. Then do the same thing the next day, and the next day, and so on. After a consistent month it will magically seem easier.

[BOLIO]

Just found your log. It has been a great read. While I do not have a burning desire to study French, I really appreciate your logging your efforts. Now your new Russian journey...I will be following with great interest as I will begin my own Russian journey very soon. I am an intermediate Spanish learner who will soon dedicate 30 - 60 minutes each day towards Russian studies.

All the best with your studies,

BOLIO

[Xmmm]

Just read little bits of advanced stuff alongside the easier things. Take on a page or two of some eighteenth century philosophy or Proust or whatever, look up all the words, then put it down until the following day. Then do the same thing the next day, and the next day, and so on. After a consistent month it will magically seem easier.

After four months of Russian, I started reading Zamyatin (We) and Bulgakov (Heart of a Dog). About a page a day, with 50% comprehension and a big headache at the end. But it did get easier.

I remember when French first came out on lingvist.io, I raced through that course and immediately downloaded the audiobook for Le Comte de Monte Cristo and started reading/listening to that. The first chapter consists entirely of nautical terms: "cast off the jib, hoist the hook line, belay the terrapins" or whatever. Gibberish! But by chapter 31 things were moving along nicely and my comprehension was pretty good ... maybe 75%? Any time he's not on a boat or giving a speech about his exotic travels, it's pretty lucid.

If it's something you can picture yourself reading in English, I would say go for it. If it's something you would never read in a million years in English (for me this would be Proust, for example), don't touch it.

[Tristano]

Já.

[Fortheo]

Just read little bits of advanced stuff alongside the easier things. Take on a page or two of some eighteenth century philosophy or Proust or whatever, look up all the words, then put it down until the following day. Then do the same thing the next day, and the next day, and so on. After a consistent month it will magically seem easier.

Thanks. I was actually doing that for a while unintentionally solely because I'd get fed up with the difficult texts after a few pages haha.

Just found your log. It has been a great read. While I do not have a burning desire to study French, I really appreciate your logging your efforts. Now your new Russian journey...I will be following with great interest as I will begin my own Russian journey very soon. I am an intermediate Spanish learner who will soon dedicate 30 - 60 minutes each day towards Russian studies.

All the best with your studies,

BOLIO

Thanks for stopping by BOLIO. I actually used to lurk around your spanish log on the old site, so it's cool to see you here. My russian journey will be a very long one as I'm only doing 30 minutes a day, but maybe I'll dedicate more time to it next year or something.


Quick update

French:

I did a few hours of skype calls with my friend. My output still needs a lot of work, which is to be expected considering I almost never speak; but I did manage to make myself understood, albeit with some mistakes and an annoying accent, on a variety of subjects.

I'm on season 3 episode 5 of les frères scott, and I understand practically everything in the show, but every once in a while there's an episode with a lot of slang (typically party scenes) that I struggle with.

In terms of reading, I finished that Musso book and started this one:



I think I'll stick with Musso books for another book or two because I find his books to be at the perfect level for me—not too easy, but not too hard. I've also been doing my manga reading in French. I read 8 volumes of a manga called kids on the slope and I loved it. I'll probably watch the anime in french sometime soon. Seriously, if you're a manga or anime fan, you may as well read/watch it in in your target language because, unless you read it in the source language (Japanese), you'll be reading a translation either way. Also, it's just a really great source of colloquial language and slang. I pick up a ton of useful phrases from manga.

Russian:

I'm on disk 2 of the Advanced Michel Thomas. My Motivation is really lacking with this course, so I'm dragging my feet a lot, but I'm still doing a little each day and still learning from it. I also started Assimil last week and I think I'll try to maintain a pace of 2 lessons a week. There are times where I want to focus a lot more on Russian, but then I remember that it's just my side language for now and I can't commit much more energy to it right now—there will be time in the future to really pay attention to it. Until then, 30 minutes a day will have to do. The plan for now is to keep doing Assimil at a pace of 2 lessons a week while I finish up the Michel Thomas advanced and vocab course, then I'll do Hugo's Russian in 3 months along side of Assimil. Ideally, when I'm towards the end of Assimil and Hugo's, I'd like to start getting into easy native materials, but that's still a long ways away for me.

[blaurebell]

Ideally, when I'm towards the end of Assimil and Hugo's, I'd like to start getting into easy native materials, but that's still a long ways away for me.

Not to want to scare you, but there is no such thing as easy Russian native materials. Even kid's books tend to have hairy grammar and way too much vocabulary. To prevent disappointment, expect to be reading with a dictionary even after finishing a couple of courses. There are so few cognates in Russian, that there is just an enormous amount of vocabulary to learn! Impossible to put all of it in a couple of courses. Learning with Texts makes reading with a dictionary way less annoying though! I can't imagine what it was like for my dad who was doing the same thing with a paper dictionary

[Xmmm]

Ideally, when I'm towards the end of Assimil and Hugo's, I'd like to start getting into easy native materials, but that's still a long ways away for me.

Not to want to scare you, but there is no such thing as easy Russian native materials. Even kid's books tend to have hairy grammar and way too much vocabulary. To prevent disappointment, expect to be reading with a dictionary even after finishing a couple of courses. There are so few cognates in Russian, that there is just an enormous amount of vocabulary to learn! Impossible to put all of it in a couple of courses. Learning with Texts makes reading with a dictionary way less annoying though! I can't imagine what it was like for my dad who was doing the same thing with a paper dictionary

I agree with blaurebell. I'm eighteen months into Russian and have read 6000 pages, but when I pick up The Head of Professor Dowell, LingQ tells me that roughly 15% of the words are words I've never seen before. This makes it 'easy' reading for me, because when I pick up Azazel by Boris Akunin, LingQ tells me that 25% of the words are words I've never seen before. Russian has a lot of words!

I think probably the best advice to give someone starting out in Russian is what blaurebell said. When you're done with the courses, get yourself some L/R tool like LingQ or LWT or Readlang. And be prepared to use it for a couple years.

[Fortheo]

Not to want to scare you, but there is no such thing as easy Russian native materials. Even kid's books tend to have hairy grammar and way too much vocabulary. To prevent disappointment, expect to be reading with a dictionary even after finishing a couple of courses. There are so few cognates in Russian, that there is just an enormous amount of vocabulary to learn! Impossible to put all of it in a couple of courses. Learning with Texts makes reading with a dictionary way less annoying though! I can't imagine what it was like for my dad who was doing the same thing with a paper dictionary

Ah, I'm not afraid. The good thing about approaching Russian as slowly as I am is that my expectations are very, very low, and I have no ego in regards to my abilities, so I won't really be deterred easily. I probably shouldn't have said "native materials" because I'll be reading translations for a while before hand. Actually, I'll likely coax my friend into reading Mangas for me in Russian. Honestly, Mangas and comics are my favorite way to bridge the vocabulary gap between courses and "real" books in the target language. The images allow me to infer the meaning of a lot of the vocabulary, plus if it's a series I've already read then that makes it twice as easy to infer the meaning of vocabulary. Basically, I'll just be reading lots of stuff like this for a while after assimil and Hugo's:





I guess I should have said my plan is more like this: Assimil/Hugos>manga in russian> translated young adult series in Russian> modern russian. That's still a whiles away for me, though. We'll see how I feel once I get there.


Thanks for visiting Lilly. I was actually just reading your log and for a while I thought it was strange how we seem to be interested in the same languages—German, French, Russian, and Spanish—then I saw that you're interested in Japanese as well, which is a language that I actually spent a solid year and a half studying when I was about 18 and I'd love to get into it one day. It's just interesting that we're drawn to the same languages . If you mention that you're also interested in Norwegian, then I'll be convinced that you're some kind of alternate me from an alternate time line.

I agree with blaurebell. I'm eighteen months into Russian and have read 6000 pages, but when I pick up The Head of Professor Dowell, LingQ tells me that roughly 15% of the words are words I've never seen before. This makes it 'easy' reading for me, because when I pick up Azazel by Boris Akunin, LingQ tells me that 25% of the words are words I've never seen before. Russian has a lot of words!

I think probably the best advice to give someone starting out in Russian is what blaurebell said. When you're done with the courses, get yourself some L/R tool like LingQ or LWT or Readlang. And be prepared to use it for a couple years.

Ah, yes, you do bring up a good point with those tools. The one downfall about using comics and manga to learn vocab is that you can't as easily look up the unknown words as you can with tools like LWT or ReadLang. Although, as I said above, the images from manga and the fact that I'll be reading mangas that I've already read before give me a big boost in being able to pick up the vocabulary. I fully expect to have several problems, though, but I'll cross those bridges when I get there. Thanks for stopping by Xmmm, your log was one of the logs that motivated me to study Russian a while ago, so it's cool to see you around.

[Ani]

I think you are way closer to reading anything you want happily and comfortably in French than you think. I've put in 3000 pages since we discussed La Délicatesse and they just keep getting faster and easier. It's been a huge change from last year (started reading my first book in French in December 2015 and read about 5000 pages in 2016).

How are the Musso books content wise? Good reads?

You'll have to keep a list of "easy" Russian material. I won't get there until next year at least but I like your strategy with translated children's books and manga. (Wonder if they've translated Magic Treehouse into Russian?