Interested in learning Russian? Read our honest RussianPod101 review.

As you should have noticed from the video, Ukrainian and Belarusian are a lot more similar to each other than they are to Russian.

Both Belarusian and Ukrainian share more vocabulary in common with Polish than with Russian.

As I already speak intermediate Russian, I found the grammar pretty easy to follow in Ukrainian and didn’t spend much time focussing on it.

Instead, the challenge for me was learning the vastly different vocabulary and understanding the slight pronunciation differences between Ukrainian and Russian.

Learning beginners Belarusian was pretty straight forward after Russian and Ukrainian.

The vocabulary in Belarusian was similar to the vocabulary I had learnt in Ukrainian earlier in the year and even better, the spelling in Belarusian is more phonetic than the other two so it was the easiest of the 3 to read. (All use Cyrillic alphabets but this takes just a couple of days to get used to)

If you are learning Russian (or Ukrainian or Belarusian) before you arrive, I recommend trying italki (all languages), Mimic Method (Russian), Vocabooster (Russian & Ukrainian) and Glossika (all languages), to build on these competences.

You can read my full reviews of these language resources here italki, Mimic Method, Vocabooster and Glossika.

Early in 2018, I traveled to Lviv in western Ukraine to learn Ukrainian for a couple of weeks.

Lviv is truly a beautiful city and you can see how my time went in my Lviv winter 2018 video below!

Later at the beginning of the summer, I traveled to Minsk, the capital of Belarus for 10 days of Belarusian language tuition.

It was a bit frustrating that Belarusian is no longer widely spoke in the capital and so I struggled to apply my Belarusian outside of the classroom.

All the same, I had a fantastic time in Minsk and a series a travel vlogs from both summer and later on in the winter of 2018 are almost ready for publication so you can also get a taste of what to expect if you visit Belarus.

A region that does still speak more Belarusian is Grodno and I also was there during the first half of 2018.

I spent a large part of the summer 2018 in Odessa, Ukraine, a city very dear to my heart. Even though the official language of Ukraine is Ukrainian, Odessa remains a predominantly Russian-speaking city.

There I got the chance to practice my Russian for a couple of months and managed to push it on a notch even though I didn’t take any formal classes.

Michael

Michael has been an avid language learner and traveler for many years. His goal with LanguageTsar is to discover the most fun and effective ways to learn a language. He is currently learning Japanese, French and Indonesian.

languagetsar.com/

So how did I use it to become conversational in more than 10 languages?

In the video below, I’ll run you through my experience with iTalki.

You can get $10 starter credit towards your first language lesson by clicking here!

I really encourage you to get a tutor and regularly schedule one-to-one lessons consistently in order to have regular and personalized contact with the language.

I’ve found that the best tutor for you, is not necessarily the one with the most pedagogic qualifications but instead it’s the one that motivates you the most and you find the most interesting to converse with.

Learning a language to fluency is a long process that takes several years normally. It’s essential to enjoy the process of getting there in order to maintain the necessary motivation, especially in the intermediate phase of learning a language.

Scheduling private lessons with a tutor in the language you’re learning is an effective part of the strategy that will speed up your path to fluency.

Best of luck on your language learning journey!

If you’re interested in some FREE starter credit than sign up with my link here and get $10 credit towards your first lesson with iTalki!

Michael

Michael has been an avid language learner and traveler for many years. His goal with LanguageTsar is to discover the most fun and effective ways to learn a language. He is currently learning Japanese, French and Indonesian.

languagetsar.com/

So how did I finally manage to learn Russian? In this article I’ll outline the materials I used and the scoop on how I really learnt Russian.

Firstly why learn Russian? In this video I explain the benefits that I’ve enjoyed from having learnt the Russian language.

Here are 7 tips for getting started with Russian:

1. Classes with a private tutor online (X2 hours/week)

2. Nail pronunciation first of all (one month)

3. Learn Cyrillic alphabet (one week)

4. Learn the first 500 words and phrases that are useful to me personally

5. Build in contact with the language and country before I arrive there

6. Purposely travel to the country itself and apply what I’ve learnt

7. Build on my base in Russian to learn the language over the long term

Private Online Classes

Where to find online tutors …

In order to start learning Russian before arriving in a Russian-speaking country, I typically took 2 hours of private tuition per week with a teacher that I found on italki.com. The classes were via Skype so I was able to take them no matter where I was located and I got really great personalized contact with the teacher (which I prefer one-to-one private tuition over group classes).
In the lessons with my italki teacher, we focussed on the words and phrases that are useful to me in my personal situation. Most language courses and lesson plans aren’t personalized enough and end up trying to teach the learner vocabulary that is not relevant to their needs.

People who are traveling extensively or have location independence need to emphasize specific vocabulary for the situations that they are likely to encounter. For example, everywhere I travel to almost the first thing I need to ask for is the wifi code in the cafe, restaurant or apartment that I’m in. The word for ‘socket’ is important as I will need to find it in order to plug in my laptop. Focussing on these scenarios and not on standard templates is a lot more effective as they are tailored to my individual needs.

Pronunciation

Pronunciation is something that you need to get down right from the beginning so you need to prioritize this at the beginning. The course I recommend you use is the Mimic Method. You can watch my review of using it below.

1. The first step is to identify the sounds in Russian and how they differ from my native tongue (English) or the other languages that I speak

2. Next, I practiced making these sounds with a native speaker (my teacher from italki)

3. I recorded my pronunciation and reviewed it before every class for 10 minutes

Pareto Principle

By focussing on the most important words and structures, I implicitly apply the 80/20 rule of the Pareto principle. The principle states that as a rule of thumb approximately 80% of the effects come from 20% of actions that you undertake. By placing specific attention to these 20% of actions should bring about dramatically faster progress in learning Russian.

VOCABULARY

Many language learners recommend using spaced repetition systems like Anki for memorizing vocabulary. I am personally not a fan of flash card systems. Normally I use a mnemonic (personalized memory aid) if I’m struggling to remember an important word.

I find it more effective to deliberately apply the vocabulary and grammatical structures that I’ve learnt until they are internalized.

This way they are used in a personalized context. Context is king for remembering new words!

1. Listen to and read Glossika Russian daily for 20 minutes

2. Use ‘Vocabooster Russian’ to learn the first 600 words in Russian

3. Increase my comprehension of more complex vocabulary with LingQ

4. Make a deliberate effort to apply new useful vocabulary in the Russian Skype classes with my italki teacher

5. Update: We recently reviewed RussianPod101 and think it’s pretty good for beginners and intermediate learners.

GRAMMAR

I am definitely not a grammar ‘nazi’ and as such don’t get particularly excited about the prospect of learning about cases and syntax. With this in mind, I’m going to get a general overview of the language’s grammar and pay attention to the most important structures only.

1. Begin by reading the Wikipedia page for the Russian language

2. Focus on the most important structures only in my classes with my Russian teacher by using subsitution drills

3. Pay attention to trends that are occurring in the language

A course I really like for intuitively improving my knowledge of the grammatical structures and vocabulary of a new language is Glossika and I will be using Glossika Russian daily for about 20 minutes during this period.

As I will not be located in Russian-speaking cities, I will have to build up some spontaneous natural conversation in Russian before I arrive there. This will include friends that I already have who can speak Russian and partaking in Russian cultural events outside the country.

Michael

Michael has been an avid language learner and traveler for many years. His goal with LanguageTsar is to discover the most fun and effective ways to learn a language. He is currently learning Japanese, French and Indonesian.

languagetsar.com/

But now I am reaping the fruits of my linguistic labor. In video 1 below, I explain the impact it’s had on my life.

And now in video 2 I outline why you should learn Russian, especially if you would like to travel extensively in Eastern Europe.

Related: Russian vs. Polish

If you’ve learnt Russian or any other Eastern European language then let me know about your experiences in the comments section below.

Michael

Michael has been an avid language learner and traveler for many years. His goal with LanguageTsar is to discover the most fun and effective ways to learn a language. He is currently learning Japanese, French and Indonesian.

languagetsar.com/

Esperanto is the most widely spoken constructed language in the world created by Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof in 1873. Zamenhof was born in this town, Białystok, Poland, which at the time was located in the Russian Empire. Białystok at the time was a mix of Polish, Yiddish, Russian, Belarusian and German.

Zamenhof was a real polyglot speaking many languages from the Germanic, Slavic and Latin language groups and he believed that the main reason for animosity between the various ethnic groups in the city was the fact that they spoke different languages so he set about constructing his own and that language has become the most successful and widely spoken ‘conlang’ or ‘constructed language’, Esperanto.

Now that sounds great, doesn’t it? Michel Thomas, another famous Jewish polyglot who survived the Second World War and also born in modern day Poland, believed that spreading languages would reduce inter-ethnic warfare. Who isn’t in favour of reducing tensions between ethnic groups and avoiding the horrors of war?

But that brings me to the central myth for the creation of Esperanto, statistical studies show that having a common language does not predict the likelihood of war between various groups at all. There are many wars in Europe where a common language does not prevent conflict, like the former Yugoslavia or Northern Ireland.

So are there other reasons that have developed for learning the language?

EASY TO LEARN?

Esperantists often put forward the argument that as Esperanto is easier than other languages to learn then that’s a good enough reason to learn it.

I often hear people say that because they speak Latin then they find it easier to learn other languages. But the problem with this argument is that learning any language is going to make it easier to learn the next one in my experience and the time you spend learning Esperanto or Latin could have been invested in learning another language like German, Russian, Indonesian, Swahili … so by learning Esperanto or Latin, you are not spending the time learning the language that presumably you are really interested in.

Basically Esperantists ignore the ‘opportunity cost’ in terms of the time they spend on learning or using Esperanto that could have been spent on another language.

Global Lingua Franca

A goal of Zamenhof was that Esperanto would spread to become a neutral global lingua franca that would cross social classes. But we don’t need to create a new language in order to achieve that (if you actually think that that’s a noble goal in the first place).

There are many regional lingua franca (Spanish, French, Arabic and Russian are examples where the language is spoken in the former colonies as well as the metropole) and now English is becoming a global lingua franca.

So why bother learning Esperanto for this purpose? It’s not really completely neutral anyways and now superfluous as a global lingua franca.

So what do you think of Esperanto? Worth the hassle or utter folly? Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below.

Michael

Michael has been an avid language learner and traveler for many years. His goal with LanguageTsar is to discover the most fun and effective ways to learn a language. He is currently learning Japanese, French and Indonesian.

languagetsar.com/

Steve is a big fan of the pioneering research of Dr. Steven Krashen and his comprehensible input theory.

This basically means that one needs a lot of input (listening and reading) in the new language in order to make effective progress. This ‘input’ should be understandable and at the same time challenging in order to speed up the learning process.

You can go and take a look at Lingq by clicking here!

Lingq actually covers all 4 competences (speaking, writing, reading and listening) and is available in over 20 languages, including Russian, Ukrainian, Spanish, French, English, Chinese, German, Portuguese and Italian.

PRICE

Lingq has a premium option at $10/month or a plus option at $39/month. The plus options offers you 3,000 points per month.

Points are used for tutored services like writing correction and live conversation and to buy premium lessons.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

LingQ is structured as a series of lessons featuring a very short texts in your foreign language.

I tried out the program for Ukrainian in early in 2018 as I was learning Ukrainian in the city of Lviv.

You can read through the lesson or listen to the lesson spoken by native Ukrainian speakers, or both.

The lessons are organised so each one builds on the previous lesson making the acquisition of new vocabulary more natural.

Words are color-coded depending on the option you click on to say how well you know them. These are called lingqs. It’s a novel way to track how you are progressing with vocabulary building.

There are 4 categories to click on:

1. New

2. Can’t Remember

3. Not Sure

4. Learned

There are libraries with 1000s of texts in the various languages offered. You can also import your own texts to the platform.

You can choose to learn via flashcards, cloze tests, dictation and multiple choice which are designed to utilize spaced repetition learning to be more effective. This means that the vocabulary chosen is timed so that you are reminded of it just before you are likely to forget it according to scientific research.

LingQ also has an option to pay for a language tutor on the site and a community tab where you can connect with other learners of your target language.

THE PROS

1. Lingq is definitely effective at reminding me of vocabulary just before you’re likely to forget it and its integration with flashcard apps is terrific.

2. It’s a useful complementary platform and the fact that you can input your own texts increases its value to the language learner.

3. It helps you identify exactly the kind of vocabulary that you are likely to forget. I found this very revealing.

4. The option of booking the language tutor through the site removes the necessity to look elsewhere for one (a tutor is something I always recommend to language learners).

THE CONS

1. It can be a bit boring to use (you should choose carefully the texts so that they are interesting for you personally) and the interface does not look that modern.

2. It’s ultimately a complementary platform not a one-stop shop for learning a language.

I would recommend this platform to anyone no matter what their level in the language if they want to build their vocabulary and while it’s not the one course/platform/app you will need to learn a language, it definitely will speed up the learning process and help you go further faster in your target language. The addition of the language tutor option means that LingQ is moving towards becomes a platform on which possibly you could learn a language from zero to fluency in the near future.

If you have used Lingq then write me a comment below about your experience with the platform.

Michael

Michael has been an avid language learner and traveler for many years. His goal with LanguageTsar is to discover the most fun and effective ways to learn a language. He is currently learning Japanese, French and Indonesian.

languagetsar.com/

I tried out Speechling in Russian as that was the language where I thought it would be most effective for me to test it. My current level of Russian is intermediate (somewhere around B1/B2 on the European Common Framework for Langauges).

Pronunciation is a competence that I recommend that you focus on in the beginning of learning a language as it is really hard to correct engrained mispronunciations later on (takes a lot of time to correct) and it will really help with building your confidence in your new language as it will be easier for you to be understood by native speakers and you will also be able to pick out the words a lot quicker in the new language.

PRICES

The freemium version allows you to have 35 sentences corrected per month without paying for anything.

The premium version cost $19.99/month and for that you’ll get unlimited reviews of your pronunciation in any of the languages offered.

There is a 10% discount available for Language Tsar readers with the code: Tsar18 which you can use when paying for the premium version. You can download the app on your phone or go to the desktop version of Speechling here.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

Speechling is primarily a pronunciation training tool that can also indirectly teach you some vocabulary and grammar when you do the exercises.

Primarily it gives you listening and speaking practice in a controlled learning environment. Firstly, when you open the interface, you’ll select the language you want to learn and your current level (A1, A2 or B1/B2 options).

Then you listen to sentences (the difficulty depends on the level you’ve just selected) spoken by a native speaker of the target language (you’ll also see a transcription in your target language – Russian in my case – and a translation into English).

The audio is typically spoken at a fast native like pace so there is also the option of slowing the audio down (just click the button beside the tortoise icon).

You then record yourself speaking the sentence. Once you are happy with your recording, you then press ‘send’ and your recording is sent to your coach for review and feedback.

The coach should respond with 24 hours with feedback and help you by pointing out mistakes or difficulties in your pronunciation.

When you leave the ‘study’ mode, there are several options in the ‘toolbox’ tab to choose from, namely: dictation, listening practice, flashcards, multiple choice quiz and fill in the blank.

These are variations on the same learning process and allow you to mix up the type of drill or exercise you are doing with the same sentences.

Moreover, Speechling provides a ‘community’ element with a dedicated Facebook page for language exchanges. This is a handy option for you to connect with native speakers of the language you’re learning.

THE PROS

1. Uses sentences instead of individual words so that you are also exposed to the prosody (‘flow’) of the new language and not just the individual sounds separately.

2. Easy to use interface layout which is aesthetically pleasing to the eye.

3. Feedback from a native speaker teacher which is vital for correcting mistakes quickly.

4. You will also pick up some of the vocabulary and grammar even if the software is designed primarily for pronunciation so a valuable bonus to a language learner.

THE CONS

1. Speechling doesn’t give training on how to identity and distinguish the sounds in your new language or how to actually make them in your mouth. I recommend using the Mimic Method to learn important first step in pronunciation this and actually these 2 products complement each other very well, I find. Check out the Mimic Method here!

2. Speechling does not fully replace the value in having a dedicated language teacher who can give you feedback in real time. For this I recommend iTalki. Check out iTalki here!

So overall, I would rate Speechling as a very useful service for improving your pronunciation in a foreign language (with the qualifications that I’ve outlined above). The feedback even if not in real time that I received from my coach was invaluable for helping me improve my pronunciation in Russian and I became a lot more aware of my intonation as well as my pronunciation of the individual words.

In short, while Speechling is not a panacea for all of the difficulties of learning good pronunciation in a foreign language, it does bring you a long way along the path to speaking clearly with a reduced accent in the language you are learning so therefore I can recommend trying out the freemium version first and if you are making progress then up your game by investing in the paid version of the service.

Remember your 10% discount code as a TsarStyler: Tsar18

Good luck with your pronunciation and please comment below to let me know how Speechling (or other products) helped you with making progress in your foreign languages.

Update (September 2018): Speechling has recently expanded beyond dictation addeding listening comprehension, multiple choice, fill in the blank and flashcards to their platform. They have also added an entirely offline module for premium users who can download a huge chunk of the sentence collection (about 10,000 sentences) with access to audio books and Anki decks.

Michael

Michael has been an avid language learner and traveler for many years. His goal with LanguageTsar is to discover the most fun and effective ways to learn a language. He is currently learning Japanese, French and Indonesian.

languagetsar.com/