Russian, Piano, Chess, Reading, and other stuff; Maybe Navajo too?

[Deinonysus]

I got enough of an overview of Inuktitut to sate my curiosity, and for about the past month or so I've shifted focus from language learning to other interests, such as piano, chess, programming, and working on my phonemic English alphabet. The only language activity I've maintained has been Duolingo French, but to be honest I'm past the point of diminishing returns so I think I would need to go through FSI to make any significant improvement. But I just don't have the attention span for it right now. I'm continuing to have low motivation for language learning (not that that's a bad thing, I've made lots of progress in my other interests!).

The thought popped into my head that I could study Russian whenever I wanted, and since I couldn't think of a good reason not to, I started learning it. It's been on my list of languages to learn for a long time but I have never spent a significant amount of time on it.

But, I think this is a good time for me to study Russian. Since it's available on my favorite casual resources (Duolingo, Pimsleur, and Assimil), I can grind through it without relying much on motivation. And since it's Indo-European and spoken in Europe, it's related to the languages I know best (English, French, and German) linguistically and culturally, but it's not so similar that I'll get bored.

Russian is highly inflected, but I don't think there is anything that will be that new to me:

• Gender – Seems easier than German; it has the same three genders, but gender seems more consistently guessable from word endings than in German.
• Cases – There are only two extra cases on top of what German has, and one of them (instrumental) is also in Inuktitut. Declension will probably be a bit harder than German because the words themselves change, not articles (article? what is article?).
• Aspect – The aspect system seems a bit intense but compared to Inuktitut and Navajo it's practically Esperanto. French also makes a distinction between perfective and imperfective, but only in the past tense and the verb root doesn't change.

The two biggest challenges will probably be pronunciation and learning vocabulary. But with Pimsleur I won't have to think about pronunciation too much, and I don't think I'll worry too much about power-learning vocabulary at the beginner stage.

I have gone through about two weeks of Pimsleur Russian in the past. I redid the first lesson today (it's free through the app) and I think I'm going to give their subscription service a try. I really like how you can see the full vocabulary list for each lesson. With the CDs I would have to guess the spelling based on pronunciation and try my best to look up words after my commute.

I'm in the process of learning the Russian keyboard layout. I have learned the home row so far. It shouldn't take me more than another day or two to learn the rest of the layout and be able to type slowly but accurately. Until then I'm only doing Duolingo on my phone.

Russian checks off a lot of boxes for me:

• There is plenty of top-notch classical music in Russian, as well as classic literature and short stories in particular
• The Cyrillic alphabet is super cool!
• The hard/soft consonant system is very similar to the broad/slender system of Irish. Irish pronunciation has always been very challenging for me, but after spending significant time on Russian it should be much easier.
• It's the second most used language on the internet, eighth largest language in the world by number of native speakers, and one of the six official UN languages.
• Without a Balto-Slavic language in my repertoire I'm missing one of the three major branches of Western Indo-European languages
• Access to learning resources for languages spoken in and around the former USSR, including Tuvan.

I'll be studying Russian until I get bored and switch to something else, so let's say between a couple of weeks and a year.

[Deinonysus]

Русский

I have started to get comfortable typing slowly in Russian. I just did a bit of Duolingo typing on my laptop and it's slow but I'm sure it will get faster with practice.

A couple more reasons to learn Russian that I thought of:

• Hungarian's vocabulary is around 20% Slavic, so if I get my Russian to a good level that could make Hungarian more transparent down the line.
• It could also help with Icelandic. Not because of shared vocabulary, it will just seem easier by comparison.
• Apparently one of the most fun things about learning Russian is complaining about how hard Russian is. I've seen a few lists of how to learn Russian and they generally dedicate at least one step to curling into a ball and weeping. This should be even more fun than complaining about German. However, complaining about Chinese does seem like it might be even more fun than complaining about Russian; I may need to investigate at some point.

A copy of Assimil Russian is on its way. I'm also getting a copy of The New Penguin Russian Course, since that seems to be frequently recommended and not too expensive.

Diné Bizaad

I'm not sure what I'm going to do about Navajo. I may need to take a break from Russian in a few months if I want to get through Rosetta Stone Navajo before my subscription runs out in September. I will probably be able to keep going with Pimsleur and Duolingo and just scale back on Assimil. But I think it's still to early for me to study Russian concurrently with anything else.

I'm more interested in Inuktitut than Navajo, and there are plenty of other high-priority languages I'm neglecting, so it might make sense to let my RS subscription expire without doing it, but that would seem like a waste. Maybe I should have gotten a hard copy instead of a subscription.

Piano

I got a Henle Urtext edition of Bartók's Gyermekeknek (For Children), Book 1. Its a great collection of easy piano pieces based on Hungarian folk melodies (often from field recordings by Bartók himself). Book 2 is based on Slovak folk melodies. I already have a wonderful illustrated edition with many of the pieces from Book 1 along with the lyrics of the folk songs in Hungarian, but unfortunately it only selections, and doesn't have fingering, and since I'm a beginner I need to make sure I get the fingering right. That's why I got the Henle Urtext; my piano teacher said that they generally have the most authoritative fingering.

Chess

I've been playing chess tactics on my phone for years, and I've gotten pretty good at it. I'm hovering at around 1600 on Lichess and 1300 on Chesstempo (their tactics puzzles are way harder). But I have never played many games, and in particular I have no idea how to go about openings and endgames.

I do have a book on openings for beginners that I've gone through, so I know the basic principles. I don't think I need to start memorizing specific openings yet. I've been playing some games vs. Stockfish and I think I'm starting to learn some traps to watch out for. I played a few level two games today and it seems that if I can avoid blundering a major piece for 15-20 moves I automatically win.

Chesstempo has some endgame training that I should probably start getting into. You can play two endgame tactics a day on their free plan. I might want to get a premium plan at some point.

[Deinonysus]

Русский

Assimil came in earlier than expected. I did the first lesson last night. Хорошо!

I'm also continuing with Duolingo (with a physical keyboard when available). They changed the format a lot. I notice that they shifted from heavy overlearning to a spaced repetition strategy. Before, you would go through each lesson twice to get to level 2 to 3, three times to get from level 3 to 4, and four times to get the skill from level 4 to gold, and it was better to spread out the lessons rather than get them to level one. But now you only do each lesson once for each level, so it is much quicker to get a skill gold. So I think the best strategy now is to get skills gold quickly and then review them when they crack for spaced repetition.

I like Pimsleur "Deluxe" because you can see how the lesson's vocabulary words are spelled when the lesson is over. But it is an expensive add-on; it increases the subscription price 15 to 20 Freedom Dollars a month, a 33% increase. It's fairly basic functionality and I don't think it they should charge extra for it. It should take me around 8 months to get through all five levels, taking into account that I commute less in the summer and can only finish three lessons a week. So that's a total $40 extra just so I don't have to guess how words are spelled. Is that really worth it? I'm not sure, especially considering that I am multitracking and all of my other resources use text. Maybe I'll start out using "Deluxe" and switch down to the audio only plan once my written vocabulary gets a bit bigger.

Piano

I've learned movement 1 of Gyermekeknek but I still need practice to get more comfortable. I started learning the second movement as well. I already know the third movement, "Elvesztettem páromat", very well, but this edition has a slight fingering difference that I want to learn.

Chess

I've been doing tactics, playing some games vs Stockfish, and watching chess videos on YouTube. Maybe reading would be a better use of my time than learning about chess, which I don't even play in real life. I love reading books but I have trouble finding the time for it. It almost feels like a waste to spend time on a board game when I could be reading instead. But chess stuff is low effort; I can sit and watch chess videos at night when I'm too tired to focus. Maybe it's okay.

[Deinonysus]

I skipped my Assimil lesson last night in order to go to bed super early. It was the right call, I needed the sleep.

I am strongly considering starting to do Navajo concurrently with Russian. It would be a real shame to let my Rosetta Stone subscription expire without finishing it. But first I want to get through The Navajo Verb. I think I will absorb the language much better when I know how verbs are put together. It seems random at first because there are a huge amount of rules, but I think it will be less daunting once I know what's under the hood.

I'll try to see if I can still get through an Assimil lesson every night while I'm reading The Navajo Verb. If not, it isn't a big deal if I delay Assimil Russian. Navajo has a time constraint, Russian doesn't.