To learn the Russian alphabet is very easy. You take the Russian alphabet and learn it. That’s it. I had a Thai student, a bright Thai girl, who learned it within one day. We had a lesson in the evening where I explained her the basic principles of Russian reading and writing system. The following evening, she surprised me a lot with her ability to read and to write Russian quite fluently. The only problem that remained was her pronunciation. Many Russian sounds are very difficult to pronounce for Asian people because they don’t have anything similar in their languages. However, It wasn’t a big problem because she started to pronounce all Russian sounds and words correctly after about one weed of intensive reading practice.
And it is a very good signal for those who want to start learning reading Russian. It is really much easier than you might think. The fact is that many Russian letters look similar to English ones. Anothеr good news is that in the Russian reading system, you read what you see. There are no diphtongs or triphtongs in the Russian reading system; each letter represents one or another sound. If you think Russian is difficult, let’s compare the Russian reading system with the Thai one. There are 44 consonants and 29 vowels in it. They are very difficult to learn and not less difficult to use.
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Let’s take the word ‘เเสดง [sadeng] – to show’, for example.
The reading of the word starts with the letter ‘ส [s]’ which is the second one. The first letter ‘เเ [e]‘ is read after the letter ‘ด [d]‘ which is the third one. The letter [a] is absent at all. The only letter that is read at its place is the letter ‘ง [ng]’.
Now, lets have a look at the Russian reading system.
We see that it consists of only 33 letters. They are very easy to learn, and an average student can learn it within a day or so. Now, let’s have a look and try to read the word ‘to show’ in Russian:
ПОКАЗЫВАТЬ
[pokazyvat’]
As we can see, we read exactly the same as we see. And this fact makes Russian reading system very easy to learn and very easy to use.
However, just to know alphabet isn’t enough to start reading and writing Russian. Any skill you want to master needs long and intensive practice. It is because your brain and your body aren’t enough to perform a task when you start learning something. In sport, in music and in any field, there are special exercises that help learners to get automatic skills of doing something. Strange as it may seem, buy many foreign language learners think that they can get automatic language skill very easily, quickly and without long and intensive practice. Those who think like that try to deceive the nature. I don’t know any human being who managed to do that. It is impossible. It is much better to follow the laws of nature.
The Chinese proverb says:
If you want to move a mountain, start with moving small stones.
Those learners who want to get any skill easily, quickly and without enough practice try to move the whole mountain. If you believe that you can do it, that you can get a skill without effort and without enough practice, try to find something like ’25th frame learning’ or ‘learning while sleeping’ or anything like that. If you believe that getting any skill needs long and intensive practice, you are welcome to our All Russian in Alphabet course. It consists of a reading part and of fluency part.
If you want to learn only reading and writing, enroll to our All Russian in Alphabet (Reading ) course. You will learn short and easy dialogs on each letter of alphabet, learn grammar and do speaking and writing exercises.
If you want to practice reading Russian and develop speaking fluency, enroll to All Russian in Alphabet (Complete) course. It consists of both reading and fluency sections. In the reading section you will learn reading with dialogs and in the fluency section, you will practice to understand spoken Russian and develop fluency while learning Russian tongue twisters, riddles, songs and Russian slang.
So, what are you waiting for? Enroll to our Reading and Fluency courses and start reading and speaking Russian like a native Russian. Good luck! Удачи Вам!
