D3 for work, and Russian out of pure (seemingly masochistic) interest.
I'm a native English speaker and Russian would be my fourth language. Perhaps I'm simply approaching the limits of my language ability, but the grammar rules with cases that I've learnt so far are doing my head in. It's very discouraging. I don't intend on becoming completely fluent, and so I'm trying to find shortcuts to be fuzzy about the volume of grammar rules to keep in mind.
I'm also learning Russian at the moment! I'm a native English speaker and am presently dealing with the current global events while cooped up in Siberia.
What have you found difficult? What resources are you using? For me, I tried memorizing the rules for cases, but it was a complete waste of time: it was trivia disconnected from any usage of the language. What is (slowly) working for me is focusing on a single phrase with common words (e.g. в сибири, два пива).
Aside from the obvious resources (a good app/textbook; Anki), I have really learned a lot of the fiddly bits from this YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/russiangrammar
Thank you for sharing your experiences and the YouTube channel recommendation.
I've been alternating between the interactive lessons on http://learnrussian.rt.com/ and "The New Penguin Russian Course". I've been enjoying the former a lot more because there's audio to accompany written content, which helps when I try to enunciate words. There are also tests, which helps me measure retention. The latter book feels more like dry reading to me, but coverage seems very comprehensive.
I haven't been learning for all that long, but the two things that have been regularly catching me out are:
- Knowing which "o" letters in the word are stressed, in order to pronounce it correctly (I default to reading them as "o" when they should instead be "a")
- Looking up new words in sentences is a bit harder because they often occur in conjugated forms (i.e. not only verbs, but nouns too)
Cool! There's an easy tip for "o": If it's in the dictionary as о́ then it's the stressed syllable and you say the "o", otherwise it's "a". Example word: о́вощи, the first "o" is stressed. You should include the accent mark on any flashcards you make, since it can literally change the word you are saying (сто́ит, стои́т).
In my experience, the unstressed "o" as "a" is only mostly true and varies by region. This is especially true for unstressed "o" preceding the stressed vowel.
For example, "молоко" is pronounced differently in different parts of the country. For me, the first "o" sounds more like a "ə" (think bOOk) around Moscow, and more like "a" further east.
So you actually find it difficult? I am a native Russian speaker and have also taken 3 quarters of Russian in college. Compared to English I found the grammar much easier to understand. A word is read exactly how you would sound out each letter (with a few exceptions). Ukrainian grammar is even more simple.
RE: "word is read exactly how you would sound out each letter (with a few exceptions)" nah, you write "короче", but you should say "кароче", write "остовайтесь" but read "аставайтесь" etc. otherwise you'll sound funny. Russian has a lot of exceptions.
I have no difficulty pointing out the exceptions to strict "read-as-written" in Russian, but it is definitely much more consistent than English. The cases are totally foreign to an English speaker, though. I also find the variety of Russian motion verbs to be a hurdle.
I'm a native English speaker and Russian would be my fourth language. Perhaps I'm simply approaching the limits of my language ability, but the grammar rules with cases that I've learnt so far are doing my head in. It's very discouraging. I don't intend on becoming completely fluent, and so I'm trying to find shortcuts to be fuzzy about the volume of grammar rules to keep in mind.