© Network Russia 2010 Thinking of visiting Russia, but worried about the language? Don’t be, many people who visit Russia know very little Russian, and many Russians do speak English, though it may be with an American accent. However if you are visiting a foreign country it is always polite to know something of the language and, in Russia, it is still possible to find yourself in situations where no one has English. For a visit it is good to know how to say ‘please’, ‘thank you’, ‘how are you?’, ‘I don’t feel well’ and similar pleasantries. It is good to be able to read signs for ‘toilet’, ‘ticket office’, ‘exit to street’ etc. and to have enough knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet to read tube station names, if the map you have does not have both formats. So where do you start? The easiest way to learn the Russian language is to be born there! As an alternative, if there is a group of you, there are many Russians living in the UK and one of them might be willing to give you a basic introduction. My own experience of night school, even with a native Russian speaker, has not been very good; adult education establishments are trying to meet education targets (GCSEs), and not the needs of the students. They are also quite expensive and progress is down to the slowest, with other students possibly having different needs to you. There are a number of commercially available language courses and support material. If you are going to use any of these, it is better that you are not trying to do it on your own. After years of learning I still have great difficulty in tuning in to others speaking Russian. Language courses tend to repeat learning passages and you need random feedback to help you learn. You can tend to be able to say things, but not hear replies. So which language course? As in English, there are many ways of saying the same thing in Russian, and each course will choose only one or two of the ways for you to use. As an inexpensive introduction, the BBC Get by in Russian is quite good. It is not too long (6 sections), is aimed at someone planning a short visit and has some background information and lists of common signs (BAR, RESTAURANT).  (Warning printed letters can look completely different to hand written Russian where also the capital and lower capitals can also look like different letters.) The book tends to side step Russian grammar (probably a good thing for a beginner). The BBC also has Russian Language and People.  20 Lessons with background and some written language practice. Berlitz sell their phrase book with an audio support. There are selected phrases from the book on the audio. Inexpensive, but I found the audio a bit patronising, with lots of false praise. I have made a lot of use of the Berlitz Essential Russian. This course does not include an audio, but makes use of phonetic transcription. Penguin Books also has a course without audio. Courses without audio concentrate on the grammar. Rossetta Stone have a DVD computer based course. This is quite expensive and requires a lot of use of the mouse, which can put a strain on the wrist. If you are working alone, computer programmes are good because they do include an element of randomness. The course includes type-written (read and type), sound (listen and speak) and visual. I originally purchased an introductory version, which at the time was not expensive. Linguaphone also have a DVD computer based course. This is not expensive. It contains three films of different difficulty, with the scripts and the ability to practice different elements in random ways. I was disappointed with the traditional Linguaphone audio course. It was not cheap, did not include the support that Linguaphone used to provide and the script appeared to be unaltered since it was originally recorded for vinyl record. There are errors in the recording which indicate that no one at Linguaphone has listened to it since it was transcribed. Teach Yourself  series has at least four different books, with the main one having 20 lessons similar to the BBC language and people. A problem resulting from the course having migrated from tape is that the audio sections are too long. With tape based courses you could rewind using the count on the tape-machine. A CD does not give you that choice so, if you need to repeat a part at the end of a lesson, you end up listening to the whole lesson. Ironically this is not a problem with Linguaphone despite that course’s age. The Teach Yourself Russian Conversation has only a phonetic transcription of the words so you cannot see what you are hearing looks like in Russian; so for practice listening only. Teach Yourself Russian Grammar is a lightweight guide for someone taking their learning a little further. Oxford’s Take off in Russian is 14 Lessons broken down into sub-lessons in the book and on the CD, with 4 revision sections to test your progress. There is no guide to hand written Russian. Oxford also has a book on Russian Grammar. Nuffield Russian Project Novaya Iskra is written for schools working towards GCSE. The individual books are inexpensive and aimed at school children (e.g. What will you do when you grow up?), but the tapes (still tapes only in 2005) and the teacher’s notes, are expensive. Not much use without the teacher support. Ruslan Russian is also for formal education (requiring teacher support and containing group activities) but for a slightly older age group. Colloquial Russian is in 20 lessons and on the CD each sub-lesson is a separate track. There is a small section on handwritten Russian. This is the course currently being worked through. It does include language not met before.  It was purchased some years ago and it had migrated from tape to CD without changing the references to tape. Whilst up to date when it was written, references to technology have dated. The CD does not cover everything in the book but does cover the practice conversation pieces. Learn in your car Russian (3 levels) are designed to improve your Russian pronunciation. You may find, if you use them, that driving distracts you from them from time to time. Originally they were accompanied by a small booklet, which allowed you to follow the recording (when you were not driving). A later version includes instead a disc with PDF versions of the book; however they have not been reformatted for normal printing, so are fairly useless unless you have the facilities to re-format them. Which ever method you choose, check when it was first published, or last updated. Some of the courses that you can obtain were pre the fall of communism and changes over the past 20 years can similarly make a course dated. DC (Network Russia)