#Im pretty sure that specific tiktok was recorded at the game im referring to

[aclownsclownery]

I discovered that my school's marching band has an (unofficial) tiktok and I'm losing it at this comment

For context, the person commenting is from my school's "rival school" and our football team absolutely destroyed them the last time we played them

[russianwave]

привет friend! im having a but of trouble :( i dont know what to study after learning cyrillic alphabet (for almost a month now)... should i do grammar next? or is it too soon?

Привет!

I’m sorry to hear that you’re having trouble. I would say that with grammar it’s never really too early to start (and I do know there are people that really like to nail down some basic grammar points), but you might benefit more from already having a bit of a vocabulary - or rather building up grammar and vocabulary at the same time. This is really a personal preference thing, although I would say I did focus heavily on vocabulary and wish I had studied more grammar alongside it.

A skill you’re going to need to practice a lot is listening though. This means introducing Russian music to your playlists (or having exclusively Russian music playlists). It means watching videos in Russian (without subtitles!) even if you don’t understand what’s being said. Finding beginner podcasts will help you a lot, as will introducing a lot of Russian youtube channels that focus on teaching the language. Listening is the skill which will really help the other skills fall into place. It’s also the skill you need to practice the most (as in it takes you longer to make developments in it compared to other skills). The earliest you start developing your listening skills the better.

When you listen to the language a lot you’ll be able to hear it as actual words rather than a rush of noise. Russians can drop sounds, shorten words, and speak very fast. Getting used to hearing Russian without understanding it, and accepting that you don’t understand it will make it a lot easier. You’ll begin to develop the skill of being able to pick the words apart, and slowly pick up grammatical constructions and vocabulary. You’ll get a feel for the way Russians play about with their words, and just get used to different talking speeds. When we have subtitles we tend to focus on reading, making it more of a reading exercise than training our ears. That being said ‘Easy Russian’ can be a pretty good resource. 

I’ve been watching a playthrough of someone playing ‘Thief: Master Thief’, because even the in-game audio is in Russian (not all games Russians have access to work that way). While I don’t understand what’s being said I have found that just listening to it has helped a lot, and I have been picking up some vocabulary (and insults) here and there. Game playthroughs aren’t everyone’s cup of tea though, so I mean finding the content you like will make this a lot easier.  

I have a Russian Cases cheatsheet [here], I think having this handy and referring to this as you’re developing your vocabulary would help you a lot. Because being able to understand the Cases will really make a lot of things easier for you.

If you’re struggling with knowing what to do then I would recommend using a resource that has a more structured course to go through. This will make the process less daunting and can give you specific areas to focus on. 

The New Penguin Russian Course: A Complete Course for Beginners is a really good book. You can find a free (and legal!) PDF version on Archive.Org [here]. It’s slightly dated in its references but the explanations, exercises, and the texts it gets you to read are really interesting. 

Real Russian Club: From Zero to Fluency [here] this covers a lot of really good points, and she has a lot of other great videos on her channel. 

Russky.Info [here] is designed to go from A0 to A2, there’s a lot of content to learn from. 

Memrise [here] has a lot of beginner Russian courses. I would recommend using the desktop version (unless you’re willing to pay for a resource, then I would say the app is worth it). They use videos of real Russian natives to introduce you to vocabulary and phrases. On the app (not sure about desktop) they have an immersion feature, which is kind of like Russian TikTok's dedicated around vocabulary. It’s very short simple videos with Russian subtitles (and the ability to switch to English) showing how words can be used in different contexts and so on. While it’s very light on grammar, I would say it’s a good way to get listening practice and learn some immediately useful vocabulary.

Busuu [here] is also a good resource. Some of it is free, but I would say if you’re using it to upgrade to a premium version. As this will allow you to post answers to some Russian questions and get feedback from actual Russians - it even lets you post recordings and to get feedback on your speaking. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really let you post any kind of writing exercise that you want but the exercises that it gives you will still be good practice.