What is the fastest way to learn conversational Russian?

Russian is an East Slavic language native to the Russians in Eastern Europe. It is an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and is used widely throughout the Caucasus, Central Asia, and to some extent in the Baltic states. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages, one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages alongside, and part of the larger Balto-Slavic branch. Russian was the de facto language of the Soviet Union until its dissolution on 26 December 1991. Russian is used in an official capacity or in public life in all the post-Soviet nation-states. Large numbers of Russian speakers are residents of other countries like Israel and Mongolia.

Russian is the largest native language in Europe and the most geographically widespread language in Eurasia. It is the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, with over 258 million total speakers worldwide. Russian is the seventh-most spoken language in the world by a number of native speakers and the eighth-most spoken language in the world by total number of speakers. 

The language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second-most widespread language on the Internet, after English. Russian is one of the official languages (or has similar status and interpretation must be provided into Russian) to, International Atomic Energy Agency, World Health Organization

International Civil Aviation Organization, UNESCO, World Intellectual Property Organization, International Telecommunication Union, World Meteorological Organization, Food and Agriculture Organization, International Fund for Agricultural Development, International Criminal Court, International Monetary Fund

International Olympic Committee, Universal, Postal Union, World Bank, Commonwealth of Independent States, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, etcetera. 

The Russian language is also one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station – NASA astronauts who serve alongside Russian cosmonauts usually take Russian language courses. This practice goes back to the Apollo-Soyuz mission, which first flew in 1975.

Russian is written using the Cyrillic alphabet, with the Russian alphabet consisting of 33 letters. The current Russian spelling follows the major reform of 1918, and the final codification of 1956. An update proposed in the late 1990s could not be formally adopted/implemented.

Russian is a rather homogeneous language, in dialectal variation, due to the early political centralization under Moscow’s rule, compulsory education, mass migration from rural to urban areas in the 20th century, and other factors. The standard language is generally used in written and spoken form almost everywhere in the country, from Kaliningrad and Saint Petersburg in the West to Vladivostok and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the East.

1. Find conversation partners for yourself to start talking, in your neighbourhood, by attending a Russian get together, by shopping in a Russian grocery shop,  volunteering for the Russian community around yourself. In absence of all these, you could find one online at Hellotalk, Italki, Conversationpartner, Languagepartner, Tandem both as paid and free help.

2. Don’t feel shy to make mistakes. Beginners must give away the inhibition of making mistakes. If it’s going to deter you to talk; you will never be able to talk! So I suggest,  embrace your mistakes, know its okay to make mistakes during learning, and trust yourself to be better with each passing day.

3. Join a group course. I recommend all serious learners of Russian to opt for classroom study, online or offline, but in group sessions. In this manner, you would have multiple people to learn with and you won’t feel awkward making mistakes around them.

4. Maintain a journal or a diary conversation. When you are learning a new language you need to gradually step up your learning. The first step should be starting to talk in small sentences that help you convey the same meaning as the complex ones. Fill your diary or journal with connectors, fillers, commonly used phrases instead of just words!

5. Read aloud. Read the newly acquired vocabulary loudly to yourself in the mirror or to your pet or a plant to feel secure while making mistakes in pronunciation. Try talking in sentences as though you are conversing with someone. Read the transcript of, the audio clips you have heard numerous times before, and try to talk along with the audio picking on accent and pronunciation.

6. Shadowing. To stay interested in learning Russian by keeping it light! Watch Russian movies with subtitles in English or your native tongue(if available)and enable Russian titles to movies in English and your native tongue(if available). Speak up the dialogues as if you were the original speaker, maintaining the tonal variation, pitch, accent and pronunciation.

One of the rewards or advantages of learning a language such as Russian is that it opens new horizons and gives the possibility to communicate and interact with Russian language speakers. Another reward is that one gets to read, understand and appreciate Russian literature, which contains many interesting and significant masterpieces.

So at first it may be hard or challenging to learn Russian, but as one studies and gets to know the language better and better, the language and the literature will more and more reveal their meanings and beauty!

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