Learning Russian language: The Russian Learners' Society

I'm going to start teaching myself Russian once exams are over, but I'm not sure which book to buy and whether I should get the book with or without cassettes.

Usually I use the Hugo In 3 Months ones, which is what I used to learn Dutch and it was a lot easier than the usual style books which teach you bits of vocabulary and conversation without teaching you any grammar. I have the French and German ones too and although I haven't actually had the chance to do those properly (I might pick up one over the summer, probably French) they seem similar so the Russian one probably would be too... If anyone knows any better ones, though, that would be good.

Second thing is that I can get the book with or without speech cassettes/CDs. Now I learned Dutch without them but I never learned any pronunciation, so I can't actually speak it, just read and write. However, they are pretty expensive and even if I did use them I would still probably be able to learn as much as I want to before September. So I don't know whether to go to the extra expense.

I'm going to start teaching myself Russian once exams are over, but I'm not sure which book to buy and whether I should get the book with or without cassettes.

Usually I use the Hugo In 3 Months ones, which is what I used to learn Dutch and it was a lot easier than the usual style books which teach you bits of vocabulary and conversation without teaching you any grammar. I have the French and German ones too and although I haven't actually had the chance to do those properly (I might pick up one over the summer, probably French) they seem similar so the Russian one probably would be too... If anyone knows any better ones, though, that would be good.

Second thing is that I can get the book with or without speech cassettes/CDs. Now I learned Dutch without them but I never learned any pronunciation, so I can't actually speak it, just read and write. However, they are pretty expensive and even if I did use them I would still probably be able to learn as much as I want to before September. So I don't know whether to go to the extra expense.

I'm going to start teaching myself Russian once exams are over, but I'm not sure which book to buy and whether I should get the book with or without cassettes.

Usually I use the Hugo In 3 Months ones, which is what I used to learn Dutch and it was a lot easier than the usual style books which teach you bits of vocabulary and conversation without teaching you any grammar. I have the French and German ones too and although I haven't actually had the chance to do those properly (I might pick up one over the summer, probably French) they seem similar so the Russian one probably would be too... If anyone knows any better ones, though, that would be good.

Second thing is that I can get the book with or without speech cassettes/CDs. Now I learned Dutch without them but I never learned any pronunciation, so I can't actually speak it, just read and write. However, they are pretty expensive and even if I did use them I would still probably be able to learn as much as I want to before September. So I don't know whether to go to the extra expense.

Colloquial Russian by Svetlana le Fleming and Susan E. Kay... Highly recommended, can be covered rapidly, and it covers the fundamentals of Russian grammar quite meticulously. Students with no experience of the Russian language use this book at Cambridge University. Terrence Wade also has two very useful books on the market: ??A comprehensive Russian grammar? and ??A Russian grammar workbook? which complement each other. Excuse any apparent drunkenness!

I have a few grammar questions I think.. Might post later on.

Later on... .

1

What does this sentence mean ?

он ещё смотрит в окно

I know what the words individually mean, I think this is something i'm not interpreting, i have a funny feeling the accusative case is being used here.

2

Which leads me on to the next question. I was introduced to the accusative case last and it says

(b) The direct object of a sentence is expressed in the accusative case

I think i'm having difficultly understanding what is the direct object, is it something that is having something done to it ?

3

Lastly, hard and soft noun endings, how can you tell what is hard and what is soft ?

Ive been using pimsleur's tapes for pronunciation and a delightful little book for vocab and grammar by A.A Haywood.

Yeahh I knoww, I has more powers now I got to send the PM's to the people we wanted as new little modlets too You should subbbb, the box ain't the same with out you.

Question 1: Yeah I pretty much assumed when i read the sentence that is what it was, the accusative makes sense there, now that you tell me.

Question 2: Again that makes sense.

Question 3: The reason I bring it up is that the book talks of the nominative plural for nouns.

' Masculine and Feminine nouns with hard endings take ы; those with soft endings take и '

Then they have the examples

стол: смолы
трамвай: трамваи
деревня: деревни
автомобиль: автомобйли
парта: парты
дверъ: двери

There's abit about soft and hard consonants in the front under pronunciation, Do you have to take in account of that when you're making nouns plural in the nominative case ? Or do you just hope that the noun ends in a vowel and can easily be changed ?

x

One last question about nominative plurals, is the semi-vowel й considered a soft vowel and therefore takes и in the ending ?

If I want to say "with my friends", would that be с моя друзьями? I'm not entirely sure what case they should be in.
Thanks

In this case, you need to use the instrumental case, so you got the noun right, but the preposition has to be "моими", because it's a plural noun (it would be "мои" in the nominative rather than "моя" anyway), so "с моими друзьями".

Ah ok. Isn't the plural of мои, мой? I don't really understand why it's моими