As is typical, my blogging started lagging in the latter half of my language study. Apologies! I have been slowly but steadily plugging along in Russian. I sadly barely eked out more than my 10 minutes a day goal. Most days, my entire Russian study was an episode or two of Russianpod101 while I showered (Language pro tip: get a bluetooth shower speaker that will match with your iPad/phone/etc. Multi-task getting clean and learning a language! Bonus: the rushing water helps cover up the sound of you mangling the language as you repeat after your podcast/Pimsleur/etc.).
Russianpod101, like all the languagepod101 series, is a bit cheesy and stilted, but it does provide good listening practice and some decent dialogues. It really helped me out this month. The Russian series is one of the better ones languagepod101 offers. Plus, the hosts actually seem to enjoy each other’s company, which is not always true (I’m looking at you, Frenchpod101. You guys sound like you can barely tolerate each other, and every overly-scripted second is sandpaper against the skin.)
My clear favorite resources for learning Russian continue to be Russian Made Easy and Living Language. Those are what I turn to again and again, and what I will return to again next year (I’m a big fan of re-listening to podcasts. It’s great review, and often you make connections that you didn’t make the first time through).
I am satisfied with my Russian study this year.Am I even close to fluent? Bahahahahaha NO. I clearly have not put in the hours to be even conversational. But I am now familiar with all the cases (though there is plenty more to know about each case), I can use the past tense (a thankfully simple tense), I can talk about where I am from, my job/nationality, my family, how old I am and things I liked, etc. It’s pretty basic stuff, but it’s more than I knew before.
The best thing, though, is that I developed a true love of Russian this year. That is huge. I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before, but I had previously contemplated giving up Russian for a time. I had toyed with the idea of making 2017 the last year I studied Russian annually – I’d probably come back to it again at some point, but I wouldn’t study it every year. And now I could see myself committing to a six-month push one day, especially if I develop plans to actually go to Russia (which I hope to do one day). I certainly plan to study it again next year, probably for another 2-month stretch in January/February.
But for now, до свидания Russian. And 你好 Chinese!
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