Language learners, I need advice.
I've learned enough Russian for people to slightly understand me, but my vocabulary is lacking. So what should I do, should I focus more on grammer or increase my vocabulary for a while?
11 months ago 路 馃憤 marginalia
If you learn vocab you can make up for grammar deficiencies with enthusiasm, but a good grasp of grammar can't help you if you don't know the word for something. 路 11 months ago
@marginalia I wanted to learn Latin for the longest of times. I think Russian is going to help me with that because it introduces things like cases 路 11 months ago
FWIW, I've found Krashen's theories extremely useful in learning Latin (which is *extremely* resistant to rote learning, e.g. this is just one word: http://latindictionary.wikidot.com/verb:ferre -- good luck memorizing that with flash cards) 路 11 months ago
My expirience with Udmurt (it is an Ugro-Finnic language) was I did not understand nothing without grammar knowledge because of extensive using different cases, suffics and terminates. In opposite, English learner will need absolute minimum of grammar to understand text. Donno nothing about Russian learning strategies though, even I was born there... 路 11 months ago
@samwise that鈥檚 what I heard from many other people as well. I guess I will work more on my vocabulary so I have more to work with. I did get some of the cases out of the way those being the genitive and instrumental cases 路 11 months ago
Couple a years ago I asked the same question, I happen to have a friend who is a russian native. According to him, a wide vocabulary is much more useful compared to grammar (at least early on), it is much more useful for having a comprehensive vocab for getting your message through compared to following grammar but struggling to find the right words. Disclaimer: I haven't been studying russian in quite a while and never actually got to test my friends advice in reality. 路 11 months ago
The usual advice for language learning is generally immersion. Find something in Russian that you want to access, and then read or listen to it. This would help with both your vocabulary and grammar. 路 11 months ago
How I do it: read some books and try to find someone that speaks fluently and try to make some conversation. ;) 路 11 months ago