How do you read Russian?

Answer 1

If you haven't investigated Russian before, a page from a Russian language book will immediately strike you in several ways:

• Some words look almost English, others are a mystery.
• Some of the letters look "okay" other letters look "funny".
• The numbers are the same.
• The page seems to have sentences and punctuation just like English.

Most obviously - the letters:
Russian letters are in the Cyrillic alphabet. Long story short - some of the letters are more like Greek than English. Each letter represents a sound, you can find lots of guides on this pronunciation online. Two of the letters are indicators of hard and soft sounds of letters preceding them. Concentrate on the printed letters, not the hand written, first as these are more easily learned. Learn the Russian alphabet, it makes Russian/English dictionary searches easier.

Now the sentences:
Russian sentences are arranged pretty much like English, and read left to right just like English.

Vocabulary:
The vocabulary is a hurdle. Words in Russian often transliterate into English words, and you get them right away when you sound them out. If you are familiar with French, you'll find French sounding and meaning words among the Russian, as well. Then, there are the pure Russian words, the spelling will give you no help in understanding them, you have to learn them as vocabulary. By the way, the nouns are sex based so you have to modify adjectives to comply with the nouns' sex, just like French.

Grammar:
Russian grammar is a problem for English speakers, as the verbs have declensions that we do not enjoy in English. I suspect that a lot of English speakers of Russian come across sounding like Tonto or Tarzan to native Russian speakers because of this. The reading of Russian is therefor made more complex by different verb forms for words, which indicate other aspects besides number and past, present, and future.

Technical Russian:
Technical Russian is easier, as it deals a lot with borrowed words (unlike Chinese where no words were borrowed and new words were invented for everything), and one or two words will get you pretty far into understanding charts and graphs as the numbers are the same.

There are often Russian newspapers available to practice on in ethnic communities. It is a feeling of accomplishment to pick one up and know what the headline is about, even if your skills aren't up to the text of the story. Do not worry about the jokes or humor, in addition to the vocabulary there is a wealth of cultural references that make many, if not all, of them incomprehensible.