#basically it's why and how i learned russian the extended version bc i never know what people want

[nereb-and-dungalef]

Y'know I realize I should probably just,,, have a masterpost explaining how I learned Russian in case anyone asks. Because "memorizing rock opera lyrics" isn't a lie but it's not the whole story so like. Here it is below the cut

Disclaimer Russian is the only language I've self-studied to a B2, so yeah not a lot of experience but maybe this'll still help someone somewhat. Hmu if you ever need Russian materials or anything mentioned here I am more than happy to help

Lemme start from before the beginning like

6 years ago (2016) I learned the Cyrillic alphabet to recognize the names of Silmarillion characters in fanart and realized that Finrod-Zong exists

4 years ago (2018) NAQT put out a list of Russian language short stories to read for Quizbowl. I went and read a fuckton of Gogol then Master and Margarita and Crime and Punishment landing myself in the Russian literature fandom

3 years ago (2019) I decided to solidly go at it after learning about the concept of a critical language and how speaking Russian gets you state department kudos

How I went about it:

Started making Anki cards with the list of 10000 most common Russian words. Got bored of it.

Realized I could make Anki cards from Phobs comics and started learning some absurdly niche shit. Accepted that if I was gonna be fluent in Russian I had to learn this absurdly niche shit at some point and should not torture myself over what was useful or not. 100% recommend

Did the same thing with Chekhov short stories and famous Master and Margarita quotes

Tried to get into Finrod but watched the 2010 version and didn't love it. Learned the first stanza of the Oath of the Sons of Fëanor anyway

Applied to the NSLI-Y program to study Russian abroad

Discovered Epidemia. Fëanor was the first song I memorized. Tried to speak Russian with a Ukrainian guest using words I'd learned from Fëanor. It was not pretty

Worked through the FSI fast course. 100% recommend, they have free textbooks for beginners in a metric fuckton of languages

Started using HelloTalk and making my language partners' text messages into Anki cards

Fucking everything was an Anki card, I made cards out of the airplane interface when I switched the language to Russian, so much random shit

Also shout-out to Drops, I used the free version and it fucking slapped

Had a Russian guest for a week who didn't speak English and we had a few rudimentary conversations

Discovered Последнее Испытание, memorized a few songs, started watching Evgeny Egorov concerts in class every day, went down the Russian musicals rabbit hole and started watching musicals constantly regardless of whether or not I understood anything

Started listening to music only in Russian, discovered shit like КиШ and Ария

Had a Russian dinner guest who I bonded with over Russian musicals. Decided PI lyrics were a perfectly valid way to communicate. Memorized some more

Met some Russian visitors who overestimated my Russian ability a ton and were super willing to speak with me in Russian and it was just such an ego boost, we bonded over bands and they recommended a bunch more 80s shit

Got rejected from NSLI-Y, coronavirus was declared pandemic, my phone deleted all my Anki cards, didn't do any Russian at all for like a month

Started taking italki lessons

Attended every possible virtual Russian concert (one of the plus sides of covid), would read the chat and repeat stuff other people said like "огонь!!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥" "браво! супер!!! 👏👏👏👏" and "*машет фонариком*" it was an entire vibe I loved it

Made a goal to finish Master and Margarita by Halloween

Basically spent the rest of the year getting deeper into Russian musical subculture and reading random shit, started reading Russian fanfic and got a ficbook account, got like 30% of the way through M&M by Halloween and then basically got burned out and gave up on it and started jumping around reading the first chapters of different random Russian books instead

Throw in some movies and cartoons and stuff

Discovered the Lay of Leithian rock opera and became fucking obsessed

Translated it (not very well) and subtitled the soundtrack

Got accepted to NSLI-Y and decided to get my Russian As Good As Possible before the OPI, resumed Master and Margarita and some other stuff

OPI result was intermediate high (equivalent to B1)

Subbed the LoL stream with a better translation

Went to Moldova uwu

In the first month I read Eugene Onegin and The Little Prince in Russian and finished Master and Margarita

Read Crime and Punishment and another book the next month and became totally burned out re: reading

But it's ok bc I was still doing four hours of Russian class a day and I was there for like eight months so you kinda can't not learn

Made a noun case chart to stick in my phone case. Noun case phone case. That plus a formal education in grammar plus daily practice meant I actually learned noun cases

Kept a diary (kinda). Fun to look back and see progress

Read like two more books

I also tried to make friends with locals as much as possible

Started watching interviews with Russian musical stars, realized I could understand a fuckton and my Russian was like actually useful at this point

Got back home and got advanced mid on my OPI (B2 equivalent) which was kinda just,,, yeah what I was expecting. So yeah it's language plateau time for me yeehaw but at least my Russian is functional and I can say I speak it without feeling like an imposter

Uh yeah that's all I can remember

Random advice and stuff if you care:

I uh. Probably have ADHD and. It can work to your advantage if you jump between hyperfixations. This technique works especially well with languages because there's just so much out there and no difference between reading one thirty chapter book vs the first chapter of thirty different books. You don't have to complete a single goal or finish a single thing to the end, just find a handful of things to hyperfixate on and you're set (for me it was Tolkien, musicals, ruslit, and Soviet rock, there was enough variety that I always had something new to run through)

I pretty quickly embraced not understanding a word of Russian and made up a game called "foreigner describes the plot of a Russian musical without knowing a word of Russian" that I kinda miss now that I speak it. Some people swear by only consuming things you understand but it's such a struggle to seek it out and really was best for me to just follow my interests

Your brain has a Very good mechanism for understanding the difference between registers, so don't worry about over exposing yourself to antiquated/obscure material as long as you have other input. Your brain will sort the words into their place on its own, I promise you will not go around talking like Pushkin just bc all you read is Pushkin. Worst case scenario is: all words learned from Pushkin + brain understands these are not conversation words = brain prevents you from talking at all. But as long as you have at least like 10% conversational input your brain will go "oh I heard a Pushkin word in the wild! That means we can say it now!" and since putting a word into a new box is much easier than creating a new word entirely the Pushkin (or rock operas or whatever have you) will ultimately help a lot

If language advice is telling you to stop doing something you enjoy, disregard it. Better to do something inefficient that you like than nothing at all

Have fun have fun have fun. It's ok to sometimes be tired (that's when you're learning the most) but you should never be bored on purpose

Balance reading, listening, writing, and speaking. How you do that is up to you but basically if you get tired of one type of learning or feel like it's no longer helping, try out another and mix things up. All skills feed into each other so it's good to have at least a bit of a mix.

The first few months are the most grueling, there's not as much coasting involved and every day you have to basically choose to learn. So like, try to have some sort of habit at least at first. My personal technique with Czech was to just marathon it for a month until I could actually understand a few words of natural input so idk maybe that's a good idea but time will tell. Most important is to stick with it however you can

Controversial take: passive input (things you can consume while multi tasking that don't demand full attention) is hella important. Maybe you're not in the headspace to do flashcards but you can at least listen to a musical while cooking. Passive input will get you pretty dang far on low spoon days so it's a good thing to put your stat points into. It's nice to have a textbook for active studying bc it is technically more efficient, but a fuckton of music, fanfic, podcasts, and whatever else are a must have esp if you're busy or have executive dysfunction

If you don't force grammar on yourself you might actually start liking grammar

Understand that linguistic features exist ultimately for ease of communication and not to frustrate you. If you're morally opposed to a rule, figure out why it would be helpful instead of letting frustration get in your way

All this is suggestions and if you disagree with me please go with your own instincts bc you do ultimately know what's best for you, I'm not you so I can't actually tell you how to do this

Ask yourself "what do I think would help me most right now" then go do that. Yes right now. You can do this I believe in you.

Also if any of my Russian blorbos sounded appetizing to you hmu I'll give you a reading list