As a native Russian speaker I agree about focusing on vocab. The language is very flexible. The different ends you put on most words are the same, but like he said there are a few. You can talk like Yoda and sound normal in Russia
@icantremember I’ve just started about a week ago and the grammar is already getting in the way of learning vocabulary. I’m going to take this man’s advice if only temporarily, as I’d like to eventually speak Russian as eloquently as my native English.
@BlxckVeins you should definitely learn tenses cuz using them correctly will make your speech a lot smoother but the main focus should be vocab IMO cuz even if you know no grammar but have 1-2k common words at your disposal you will always be able to muster up a decent understandable sentence especially if you've listened to some Russian speech on a regular basis (songs, yt videos, documentaries, films, maybe radio from the app Radio Garden) and therefore knew at least some natural-sounding word combos
I am a Russian teacher with more than 4500 lessons taught. I don't hate him, I just disagree 😂 Well, actually I agree with the point that you need vocabulary and you shouldn't focus TOO much on grammar, because it really can be intimidating. Input is crucial. Good teachers would never argue with that. However if you absolutely exclude grammar, you won't be able to go past some very beginner level and won't be able to truly understand texts and speech. I can't tell you how many times I corrected students who would read some article with me and think that they understand everything. But because they didn't know certain grammar they understood sentences in an absolutely wrong way. A reader is a co-author of a text. The truth is when you don't know grammar and you "scan-read" a text and think " oh I understand what that means" you are gambling, and very often you understand the opposite of what the actual author meant. So if your goal is just to travel and have a basic communication, yes, you can skip grammar. You may not learn Russian at all. If you really hate grammar, you can skip it in the beginning, but don't skip the rules of reading and pronunciation. Read A1 texts with audio and try to assimilate the most frequently used vocab. If you don't have a specific hatred towards grammar, inject some grammar into this assimilation process and it will accelerate assimilation significantly.
Only a British lady got mad at me for asking for a tissue instead of napkin. Russian speakers really don't care about grammar when talking to foreigners. Maybe if you were to meet a PHD in linguistics and Russian literature... Those guys get upset, the only thing they know in life is grammar 😆🤣
I dare you to call her couch a couch and see what happens. >ITS A CHESTERFIELD I had a British grandmom. I also had a Ukrainian grandpa :) Literally, straight from Ukraine after ww2. Good man.
Yeah, but Russian peoples goes crazy if someone speaks English with grammar mistakes. I speak easily with English and American, and they doesn't hate me, but then I speak my wrong way English with somebody from Russia, he wants to kill me 🤣
@@pythonofsky4545 because english doesn't even have grammar. It's pretty easy to speak it correctly. At the same time even the native speakers seem to have trouble understanding difference between "you're" and "your".
@@ClySuva Yes, yes it does [Ex: "He give me apple" ...no... "gives me an apple" ... no ..."He gives me an apple"]. And no, no it isn't, it's just that there're so many immigrants and there're so many people trying to learn that we get used to the butchering...what's more, we even borrow words we like...which makes the rules even harder to figure out. Also, the American education system sucks. Honestly, grammar is what you learn best after you try learning another language only to find out that everything is different and you can't quite put a finger on WHY?
Andrej Mucic - Your comment cracked me up!! I speak bad Russian and conversational Farsi (my Farsi is much better than my Russian). Years ago, an Iranian woman gave me a nickname: “jasoos” - spy. Sometimes it’s not great for an American to be good at some languages. I don’t regret it for a second though. I love languages.
I am a retired 76 year-old and this guy reminds me of the years I spent at school learning Russian. After all that time, the only thing that remains with me is the vocabulary, and I can more-or-less follow the conversations. Which proves his point. For all sorts of reasons over the years, I have studied and lived with French, Spanish, Arabic and Afrikaans, all in addition to the Russian, and I think the main lessons have been: 1. Not knowing the right word will kill a conversation, while not knowing the grammar adds to your attraction as a foreigner. 2. No-one composes a new sentence from scratch - it’s all mostly cliches. If you are tying yourself in knots trying to work out the grammar of a sentence, you are not speaking the language as a native as they mostly avoid complicated constructions. Just learn the cliches and exclamations and you will be right 90% of the time. If you learn to say some quotations, words of songs or proverbs reasonably well, no-one will know how much you know of the language. 3. Don’t be afraid - open your mouth and speak! Hesitate, mumble and stutter if you must, but try to keep going. In the end you will get the rhythm of the language, and once you have that, the words will sort themselves out. Repeat what people say to you all the time - always repeat the question. 4. Use your body to supplement your words: point, make faces, act out the point you are trying to make. It’s a bit like doing your own sign-language while you talk, and it helps people understand you better.
Those are some good tips. I did French in school and hated it, but as an adult I've managed to - just about - get by speaking French with the few people I've met who don't also know some English. I once spoke to a guy for about an hour where my level of French was comparable to his English, so we were kind of talking in Frangish/Angçais. It probably helped we were both a bit drunk. When I travel, it's pretty likely that people my age in other countries will speak English (actually an ex of mine from Romania probably knew grammatical rules better than I did), but I don't want to have to rely on that!
I always loved Russia. I’m living in Moscow for more than a year.. I understand almost everything but I cannot speak because I’m always worried with grammar. I get ashamed and then I don’t speak :(
@@mys245 actually you should speak, people understand if you are a foreigner and will be patient with you, so don't get ashamed, that's one of the fastest ways to learn things, is to practice them.
Another top tip here that may help the discouraged...I've been living in Ukraine, Russian-speaking part - for 12 years. I'm a Brit. Me Russian is more than conversational but definitely not 'accurate'. I've not studied it academically but I did casually study it to some extent, early doors when I moved over. What I'd say is that the extent to which you need to worry about grammar depends on your aim and your 'pride' in not sounding weird, but mostly to avoid ambiguity. In Russian the ending changes help to pin point precise meaning so without changing them, or by changing them wrongly, it can sometimes cause ambiguity - but mostly not, since the context and accompanying gesticulations are usually enough to clear that up! But for example they are used to distinguish between object and subject in a sentence and if you don't do it, it makes it difficult for them to get what you mean. The good news is that there are some aspects of Russian that are easier than English - no articles, fewer tenses, largely phonetic and basically no fixation with the verb 'to be' most of the time. Also they have a lot of borrowed words from French, German, Latin/Greek which can help out. If you learn the alphabet, not difficult as Bald says here, it's surprising how many words you'll recognise when you start reading directions, public notices and so on. The words for things like toilet, bus, shower, hotel room, telephone, cafe, coffee, tea, sugar and so on will all be familiar to speakers of European languages. The bigger issue, if you have the vocab you need, is the pronunciation - by which I'm specifically referring to the stressed syllable. This is close to critical. Getting this wrong renders your language very difficult to understand, as it does in English actually. But my top tip vis a vis the endings, once you're reasonably confident you have the right word and, hopefully, the right stress, is to mumble! I'm not kidding! When I started mumbling in the shops, early doors, rather than trying to articulate perfectly, the number of times I had to repeat myself dropped dramatically! Just let the ending of the word tale off into the ether and they'll fill in the gaps in their mind! That's another slight issue with the way foreign languages are taught...there's a kind of 'model' pronunciation that's held up as sacrosanct but actually that's not how people speak!
There is a German entrepreneur living in Russia (Stephan Dürr), whose farming on the area as big as Luxembourg, who said, that he learnt Russian by chatting with his colleagues and employees. And when he later came to Moscow dealing some business, they all stared at him in awe as he was German speaking some rural Russian dialect :)
@@altanbayraml6933 I would say that it definitely helps and that it's more straightforward than in English...not having some grasp of this can make communication a little hard for anything other than basics like shopping, directions etc. Just my opinion...
As a native who heard Bald's speeches I would also suggest to learn how to pronounce soft consonants (especially ЛЬ) - that will improve the speech intelligibility greatly.
He has a point. Take English as an example. “The boy throws the ball” is the proper way, but if you’re not a native English speaker or starting to learn English, saying “boy throw ball” would be perfectly understood. Language interpretation comes down to contextual factors as well. In my native language of Afrikaans, we have a saying that roughly translates to “A good listener only needs half a word”, and that really rings true when someone is speaking a broken language.
I'm from México, I work all the time with American Tourists and I can fully agree. For example in spanish to ask for the restroom you would say "¿Dónde está el baño?". But if someones come to me and says "Donde Esta Baño?" or "Donde Baño?" or everything in infinitive form I can understand perfectly what they want. It's all about context and basic wording.
As a Belgian (Dutch speaking) your Afrikaans looks a bit awkward to me but I have no problem understanding it. I can imagine its about the same when Bald speaks Russian. :) And indeed, as long as people are willing to listen you can get a long way with knowing a language somewhat.
Yes. If you don't know grammar we realize that you are a foreigner. But we will understand 95% of what you say)) grammar just allows you to put words wherever you want and not to depend on sequence of words in your sentence.
@@paramount7616 Most Germans are really chill, we know how crazy the language is. Also, German is considered a "cold" language, which means it has a lot of redundancy built in, so you can't easily mess up the meaning (we use pronouns everywhere, you can get the correct case of a noun from word order, article, noun ending, and sometimes the verb, etc). In a "hot" language like Japanese, you do a little thing wrong, and the sentence doesn't make sense any more (because pronouns are often left off, only a particle determines the role of a noun, verbs are not declinated etc). So you can follow the advice of the video as long as you are learning a "cold" language.
Me as a Czech, I have absolutely no problem to learn russian grammar...It's very similar to what we use in the Czech Republic :) That's one of the good things, when you are a native slavic language speaker, then you will find all the other european languages very easy and not that much complicated. Not counting hungarian, finnish, basque though :)
Yeah, grammar is identical and also vocabulary sometimes is pretty similar. I moved to Czechia from Russia without knowing the language, but I could understand a lot of speach and even read the text.
do u want to try to talk with me, as an exchange of our language skills. Im a Russian native speaker, and know Russian very well, even for Russian guy. And i want to advance my English to level of fluently speaking.
For me there is just one rule when learning a language. "Do it like a baby". Listen to music, watch movies listen to people and try to repeat what they said. This way you will be able to use grammar more intuitively and it'll work out just fine. (thats how i learned english and russian. I don't know anything about english grammar btw. and i'm austrian!)
Yes, I agree. I've discovered that learning how to conjugate verbs in French by sound is the easiest way to do it (like how a baby would do it). The big tables of verb endings that educators try to make you memorize are not very useful for language learners.
Most people: 'I want to learn a language to meet people and/or find opportunities'. Scottish person: I want to learn Russian to drink more alcohol haha
As an English teacher, I totally agree with Mr Bald. The modern style of language teaching emphasises learning vocab. Additionally, fluency is more important than accuracy. Hence, use the language to the best of your ability and have fun and don't be afraid to make mistakes. Accuracy comes gradually and naturally. :) By the way: In class, I use the exciting videos of Mr Bald frequently as the content motivates my students to learn English.
Heh, here in my country the approach to language teaching is still emphasis on grammar rules, rather than vocabulary and practical use of the language. And then you end up with people who have a perfect grade in English, but speak it like broken Google Translate bot, because they lack the knowledge of practical usage and vocabulary. :/
Why are you asking me to “have fun”? We live in free society and you can not just walk around asking people to do this and do that only because YOU want them to. You’re not a ☕️Cher, you’re bully!
Its the same with any language mind you wont be able to read any notices or newspapers though lol but you can have a great experience without learning the grammar
Russians that say they’re fluent in english in reality barely can put 3 words together and those who say they are “so-so” at english speak really well. My personal observation.
@T K I spoke with a lot of young russian guys and most of them barely spoke. I mean, I could understand what point they were trying to bring across, however, to my surprise the only guy who spoke fluent English said to me that he wasn't really good at english the guys that I met usually described themselves as bilinguals but I would say they had plenty of the vocabulary to pass by , but definitely not enough to have a meaningful conversation.
@@tomaskacerovsky3366 I pointed out the shirt because it was such an odd thing to see. Any shirt with just a foreign flag on a white background is an odd shirt. The israeli flag is just more odd because, as far as I know, Bald has no ties to and has never been to Israel. The same would be said if it were a Swedish or Canadian flag. If it was the UK flag, although odd, it would make sense because Bald is British. If it were a Russian or Indian flag, it would make sense because he frequents the countries despite not being tied to them.
This is precisely how i actually learned English. I'm a 20 year old kid from Bulgaria, which learned fluent English by himself, only by using in the internet and interacting with natives, i simply hated English grammar in school and i excelled in vocabulary. I now work in a fancy tea place where i have the opportunity to speak to a wideeeeee range of foreigner most of which compliment me on my vocabulary. I don't know why what i say works, but i'm sure as hell it does.
the reality is english is a flexible language, to a fault. meaning, *too* flexible: the majority of even fluent english speakers routinely make 'gramatically incorrect' statements, or written sentences. i think yours is an interesting insight, that "i dont need to know WHY i speak these sentences this way, only that it is the correct way". personally i think what ruined french for me was getting bogged down in trying to decipher the literal meanings of the words, because the grammar ruins it
This is precisely how I actually learned English. I'm a 20 year old kid from Bulgaria, who learned fluent English by himself, only by using the internet and interacting with natives, I simply hated English grammar in school and I excelled in vocabulary. I now work in a fancy tea place where I have the opportunity to speak to a wideeeeee range of foreigners, most of which compliment me on my vocabulary. I don't know why what I say works, but I'm sure as hell it does. I fixed a few grammatical errors for you :) Hope this helps.
Russian 5 year olds know have internalized the grammar OP is referring to and can use cases, genders, aspects, the whole of it, correctly. Skipping declension completely puts you on the level of a 2-3 year old.
I've noticed that Russian speakers LOVE to hear people trying to speak their language and are always super supportive and happy to help.. It seems the worse you are the more smiley and helpful they become. Unlike some...Naming no names.... THE FRENCH
You pretty much explained why my sister took 4 years of Spanish in high school but only knows 2 words today. Language teachers should take note from Bald!
@@kgbcomrade5529 yeah I took one year of Spanish in high school and still know enough to get by. I am learning Polish now and am feeling the grammar things Bald is talking about.
@@kgbcomrade5529 You’re 100% right. But in high school we were told if we didn’t take 2 years of a foreign language we wouldn’t get into college, and our only options were Mexican-Spanish or French 🥺
It's true. As a russian - I never studied russian grammar in school, neither did I understand it, and passed the EGE exam in russian with 95/100 result. The vocabulary is everything.
There are plenty of videos here on UA-cam about misleading in study FROM RUSSIAN TEACHERS EVEN IN RUSSIAN FEDERATION, let alone neighbour countries. So no strange at all that regular person can't explain grammar nor correct you're wrong even when they know correct word. They simply used to speak it that way. As born'n'raised in Ukraine(currently in Israel btw lol) I always tried to learn all of these stupid grammatic rules in both Russian and Ukrainian(which are pretty similar obviously) as hard as I could. Try to guess how much of them still are in my mind when I'm starting to speak Russian? Of course, grammar is needed to read some serious book like Tolstoy's or Dostoyevskiy's dramas but for some road sign/Cafe's menu/grocery shopping all you need is about hundred words. Any further will come along with live communications only! And, by the way, first impression from "bad speaker" usually is:"Wow! You try to communicate another language! So you should be at least both willing full an smart to even start, my appreciation!"
not gonna lie, this is what I needed to hear. I've been "trying" to learn languages for probably 20 years now, since I was 10, and never made any substantial progress because I always give up w hen it comes to grammar rules. Vocab is fun, and this has made me think I might try again.
Thats like me, i have so many attemps at learning new languages, i have tryed vietnamese, filipino, spanish, ext. But now im determined to learn german and russian.
I really do enjoy learning Russian by learning the vocabulary. I bought a list of cards with Russian words and it became something like a tradition for me to go through the cards before bed time. Of course, that itself is not enough. But reading simple books and maybe watching your favorite movies in russian or listening a podcast in russian about your favorite sport also helps a lot and is fun.
This is why the Spanish education system in the US doesn’t teach you anything. 4 years I spent focused on grammar and was left with no vocabulary, and I could never carry a conversation despite knowing the grammar perfectly
That‘s exactly the same for me here in Germany! I‘m now learning Spanish in school since more than a year, and the only thing we do is learning time forms and conjugations of verbs. Really bad. I‘m glad that I at least learn Russian on my own, that’s maybe why I‘m so good at it, especially compared to Spanish in school haha
@@niklas8279 god I find Spanish easy. Have somewhat learnt German in the past but learning Spanish was like a breath of fresh air compared to German. Latin languages are so much easier to learn than Germanic or Slav languages.
@@niklas8279 In Russia we have the same problem. Our teacher knows english grammar perfectly ,but if turn on american or british song,she would understand about 30% even less than it. All she knows is a grammar.
It’s the same with Russians learning English. They are obsessed with grammar. But really it is just a case of improving their vocabulary. Half of the English population don’t understand or use grammar correctly.
I fully agree to this. As a Russian this is exactly how I learned English. Just practice, talk to other people, watch movies - the point is sooner or later you will start picking up key linguistic patterns in how a set language works.
Hey I have a question, how easy it is for russians to understand Polish? Because for Poles Russian is about 1/3 understandable and like 85% if you know the context more or less.
@@kubajackiewicz2 I can read Polish and understand about 50%, much better if I know the context, but when it comes to someone speaking Polish, I cannot understand SHIT, unless the person speaks super slowly and makes huge pauses between words. (I'm native russian)
@@kubajackiewicz2 I've always understood about 1\3 spoken Polish; since I've learned Czech I understand from 2\3 to almost everything, but there is a kind of a mental lag, 'cause some phonetical patterns are different from russian when structually the words are almost the same, or in other cases russian equivalent of morden polish words are archaic in russian (lepszy for example). So, every time i visit Poland, I have almost zero communication problem. It is really hard to read polish, though, like really really.
Well said! Living in Uzbekistan my broken Russian, some key phrases, and an ever growing vocabulary has gotten me quite far. I knew zero when I first arrived. Trying to use grammar slows me down and, honestly, feels like a roll of the dice when choosing the right ending....people mumble the endings all the time anyway.
As a language teacher myself, I can honestly say you're totally right! That's not to belittle (the importance of) grammar, it's to emphasize the value of vocabulary where communication for its own sake is concerned.
anyone who didnt get the joke - "Извиняюсь" - is "sorry" and "Извинитесь" - is "apologize to me immediately mfkers"! so grammar can still cost you your life)
@@Soy_boy-by8ez Not exactly, it means ''aplogize'', but you you use in an official converstation with a person or just if you're adressing a word to a group of people ''Извинись is used in unofficial enviroment and only to a single person'' But ure not telling them that they're motherfuckers xD But yea, this guy really has a point, if you would want to say sorry and you'd say ''извинись'' instead of ''извините'' you will be tremendously misunderstood
Yep. You've nailed it. I majored in Russian, tortured myself over hideous grammar. Hated it, but loved reading books, translating songs, watching films. Just like adults can understand and have a conversation with a child learning their own language (but isn't perfect in his/her grammar), they can understand a foreign person learning and using new vocabulary, even if it's not perfect. I rarely study grammar in any language I am learning. It kills the joy. I prefer to pick it up through listening, observing and practicing :) I worked in a Russian language library (in the U.S.). Russians are happy to correct grammar in the middle of a conversation :)
Donna Frazier I do the same thing. Love listening, watching movies, music, and speaking Russian. I understand the grammar some but I don’t focus on it. It is better to learn vocabulary because it expands conversation. I could get by in Russia by using vocabulary more than grammar skills..
@@josepartida1711 ... It is indeed!! Hungarian is not a Slavic, but Polish & Russian both are of Slavic origins! The main difference between Russian & Polish is that Polish does not use the Cyrillic alphabet!
@@josepartida1711 Yes, Polish is a slavic, but it's real saving grace is that it does not use the Russian cyrillic alphabet. It's grammar & composition was truly the most difficult part for me!!
I also made immense progress when I stopped wasting time learning about the rules of the language and just observed how it was used in interesting stories.
Even I, as a native Russian who was taught Russian grammar for 9+ years in school and 3 more years in highschool, don't explicitly remember any rules. It's all based on intuition. It's as ridiculous as English phonetics (where you can't even spell the word "phonetics" phonetically). Если я увижу слева голодного медведя, а справа книжку по Русской грамматике, то я побегу налево.
I did that with German. I managed to learn the language, to a level where I've been mistaken, for a native speaker in a few months! The irony of the story: Some German bloke told me a while back, that my grammar is better than most germans.
I speak a few languages and its the same for ANY language. A child can speak their native language fluently before they are even aware that grammar exists as a concept. learning to speak a language fluently isn't something that you can study like other subjects, it’s more comparable to learning to ride a bike. you can't sit in a classroom and learn to ride a bike by reading a textbook, you have to get on the bike, try fail try fail try fail until you can ride it. for a language you just have to practice speaking it. You can learn grammatical rules later when you’re reasonably fluent, they will make more sense to you then, but attempting to learn the grammatical rules at the start is insane, they will be meaningless to you and will not help at the start.
Excellent remark . Europe needs rid . More to this Guy than meets the eye .agent , shill and should be very careful not to be charged as a Spy !. In remote areas filming places with Zero Russian connections .
great video!!! He is right!!! I'm a native Russian speaker (Ukrainian as well) and my approach in learning languages is pretty close to this one, but also I would recommend to read a lot of books. Here is how I study German. I took one book, read it, anther book, read it and so on. And the most important part here is google translater. I open two windows and I copy a pice of text then past it in one of the windows and I click on every single word that I don't know and the second window comes to use when google doesn't want to give me the meaning of a word by clicking on it. Then I copy the word and past it in the second. After the third or forth book the progress will be huge!!! By reading in a such way you accumulate language and see the way this language works in first hand. If you come across a word the second or third time you don't need to click on it any more 'cause you already know it! Then you see grammar structures and context that they are put in what gives you tremendous benefit for you open grammar rules and be like "aha, here it is, here how it works" even if you memorize grammar in the beginning that's not bad , I also did it, and even if you forget it never mind you recall it when you will be listening or reading something... this method I call like collecting threads and after some period of time you will be able to knit your own sweater!!! Also very benifitial thing is trying to memorize no matter what it might be, rules or words or whatever else, just try and don't pursuite the result!!! Всем фарту !!!)))
There's probably a slim chance you'll see this.. but your right I have story. So beginning of 2019. I started to have health problems. I switched careers. It gave me more time to study. I'm a strange dude(if you couldn't tell by the Handle) but I study things in depth. Well one day, I was searching the sea of videos on UA-cam and found your Moldova video. I thought it was hilarious. I subscribed. I subscribed to other Russian like channels or Slavic like channels. Note this is the beginning of 2019 And fell in love with the culture and the language. By 2021 between your channel,Sam's Russian adventures, Ushanka show, Shieh, NFKRZ, Learn Russian( what is crazy she moved to my city from Russia as a teacher in university like a few miles away), Russian Criminal and few other channels ... I learned the basics of Russian. I took to the internet, applied myself Now in 2022 I can understand most Russian. Read and write it if I try. It's because of you. Now I know I may never leave this rock known as Colorado because of my health. But because of you man, I've seen places I can never see in person. I learned about a culture, culturally I'm not supposed to. Growing up where I lived my step дедушка would blame everything on all в Советы. Бенджамин... спасибо брат seriously thank you. Know your appreciated . When you get old know you helped break stigmas, and helped people learn, and helped people feel alive vicariously through your videos and travels.
Я в целом восхищаюсь людьми, которые изучают иностранные языки. А если кто то изучает русский, это восхищает меня вдвойне. Потому что мы сами не всегда можем разобраться в нашем языке, где то, в каких то моментах немного запутаться и т.д. Браво!
Have to say, around late '19 I did the same thing pretty much. Found it very annoying that of half the letters were the same but I couldn't read it... But it was very odd at first, I don't know much for how Russians learning English must feel, but once you get it down you can really just roll through it. It is a far more natural alphabet for it's language, almost like how no one really struggles reading Italian because it was at one time Latin, yet French is way--way more complicated than it needs to be using the same alphabet.
Im also just starting to study russian (at least the basic) mostly because of him...i don't know if i will ever need it (i actually need to improve my english) but for me right now the est european culture is the most attractive
So ur tellin me even you native speakers don't even learn grammar and when us poor student who wanna join in to russian unis we have to.. why do u guys do us like dat..
@@lethall6609 as a native speaker of an East European language, that Grammar is just the biggest pain in the ass, no other language subject even comes close to such complexity, amount of rules and exceptions to those rules. More practical to just learn it through years of conversations than through studying
@@lethall6609 language is formed from a way of thinking. words in russian are flexible. and this is not a problem for native people as it has certain patterns. the words meander like a stream, but that doesn't stop us from understanding the foreigner. bald is right, grammar is not required for a foreigner to understand them in common parlance
This works! This is how I’ve learned English. I’ve abandoned 4y of grammar and started to learn the vocabulary. I’ve also learned to not focus on the single word, but to describe if i can’t remember it. Keeps conversations fluent. Next thing I’ve learned to use future, present and past so I could describe something on the timeline. 20y later I watch movies in english and live in California. American girlfriend/wife helped the progress. I think Mr. Bald would agree 😁
As a Greek speaker I can confirm it's true. The Greek and the Russian grammar is almost the same, if you say "Θέλω ενα μπύρα" instead of "θέλω μια μπύρα" people are gonna understand and frankly they are gonna be impressed that you speak any Greek at all.
Interesting. Last week I started learning Ελληνικά and immediately felt it so natural for me as a russian. Even though there are no similar words other than with greek origin.
Yes! That's absolutely true, (as a Russian teacher) I can say that 90%of the lesson concentrating on the lexical structure will really do! Then, students start intuitively use the right grammar forms and progress much faster.💪
This is exactly how I teach Russian in my videos. You are sooooo right. Grammar is not necessary. Learning the theory doesn't help, but actually gets in your way when speaking. I like to compare it with dancing. You learn to dance watching attentively and ... dancing (like a bear at first but it gets better with time, right?). You don't learn to dance learning the theory about dancing! We don't learn the language. We practice it. And to practice we need to experience it. Listening, reading, speaking and writing. After experiencing / internalizing the language quite enough we start 'feeling' its logic and we notice grammar points ourselves almost unconsciously. It's not bad to look up smth in a grammar book just to check if you got it right. But you don't need to memorise all the rules before producing the language. Happy Russian learning to everyone to does :-D
I learned GCSE Russian at night school at age 42. Then I went on to A Level Russian. It was all grammar and exam and I gave up! I just wanted the joy of learning Russian as I loved the language, culture and people. That was over 20 years ago. How I wish I had known this advice then! Might give it a go again…….
After months of learning Russian and feeling discouraged halfway through it, now I feel motivated to continue learning Russian. When it comes to Russian grammar and cases, my mind goes blank.
@@Denis-cp2zq my native language is Russian and i learn English. So we can organize a training exchange. If you are interested, add me in Skype - artemmaterik
You're completely right. In the 1980's, I made a three years study of Russian language. The teacher taught us every single grammar rule. I have the diploma and can't speak a word of Russian. I envy your perfect Russian.
His Russian is VERY FAR from perfect, and sometimes even his vocabulary is bad. But this is one of the reasons why he’s so likable on the streets there - his lack of grammar sounds pretty funny to native speakers and it automatically creates lightness and positive attitude.
I'm Portuguese and my accent is perfect a Russian told me that the Portuguese and Russian have very similar pronounce, even culturaly I felt at home in San Peterborough. Love from Portugal
Thank you!!! This is awesome, Im learning or relearning (it's been 27 years since Ive spoken a lick of Russian). I've been looking for people to talk Russian to..:D Watching your videos have been such an amazing help. i find myself repeating what you're saying to people that you speak to, and trying to retain what I hear.
@@petersarkoci9217 это нормально в России и в других странах снг. Просто там правительству наплевать на бездомных животных, и их они не забирают в приюты. Хотя сейчас они начали их стерилизовать, но это не то. Полно было случаев, как собаки нападали на прохожих.
So true, I learned Spanish just by learning vocabulary. If I say things imperfectly, so long as they understand what I'm trying to say people appreciate the effort and continue to talk with me.
Nearly a year ago, last November, I found this video and watched it, and it changed my entire life. I decided to be like, "You know what? Let's try this." with the Russian language, because I felt like i needed to give it a try. I wanted to be able to say that I tried it, then probably just live as I did before. But that's not what happened. I ended up practicing Russian for about a month and a half before that died off, but not before I decided to re-pick up my Spanish because I had done it in high school. I had forgotten most of my Spanish, but I was too hooked on language learning to care. Needless to say, because of this video, I ended up trying out those two languages along with 15 others, for a grand total of 17. I'm still shocked at how a single video did this for me. I tried to learn Russian maybe 3-4 times, and it's never picked up, but my Spanish went flying out the roof. Not even a year since I started back up, and my understanding of it is phenomenal. I just passed the fifth checkpoint test 30 minutes ago! (And I understood it way better than the fourth one!) I also started to pick up skills in reading Asian languages, so we'll see what comes of that. All this while in engineering college. (Currently in my third year) The moral of the story is, even if you think you know you aren't a language person, try a language out for a week at least, and have fun with it. At least be able to say you tried it. And just maybe something great will happen.
I took 4 years of Spanish in High School - was relatively fluent, but at that time, the US didn't have as much Spanish spoken (late 80s). In college, I took a semester of Russian. Absolutely killed my memory of the Spanish I had learned!
Beautiful thing about those Slavic languages, speaking few of them myself - grammar is really one of the least vital things. It's important if you want to perfect it, and it adds...correct flavor to your words. But overall, if you have vocabulary and can construct a sentence you can be pretty much 100% understood. The fact that in Russian, and Ukrainian for example you can construct a sentence using same words in pretty much any way imaginable. You can keep moving the words around to your heart's content, and even use improper grammar it will still make sense. It'll make more or less sense depending on the context and complexity of a sentence, but it will be understood. You are absolutely correct about your approach. In fact, this is similar to how I've learned English. I gave up on textbooks a while ago.
Second language acquisition and pedagogy expert here: don't listen to Ben! That's right, don't just listen - do! He's totally right. We don't learn grammar of our mother tongue explicitly, we learn phrases and vocabulary patterns which in turn teaches us the grammar implicitly. We learn to read through listening and copying, none of this phonics bollocks. The only time you need to learn grammar explicitly is if you need to pass a test, or are merely learning ABOUT a language. Communication is the door to new languages. Vocabulary is the key that opens the door.
You sir just spoke my mind. I am so so glad that I came to realise that learning grammar manually is almost pointless by myself. I came to this video to see if my point was correct. Thankfully it is correct. Learn vocab. Learn simple examples and phrases. You can use those phrases and stuff your vocab that you learned into them. You'll find how you subconsciously learned the grammar pattern. It's like a jigsaw puzzle. You can never solve a jigsaw puzzle without the pieces. You can never solve grammar without vocabulary
Think the key is being comfortable having sloppy grammer. You are confident and very social, and were willing to sound silly or risk looking "stupid" for not having perfect grammer. Many people probably fear this and waste time trying to be perfect instead of embracing imperfection, wich would make them learn quicker.
@@topgopnik yeah or in the US. Propably somewhere in New York. Israel has a lot of people who speak Russian and Hebrew so yeah I though you live in Israel but seems like not. Have a good day fam.
@@topgopnik oh wow, are you perhaps Jewish since I am too although I am living in England. Israel is turning to become a future socialists state so yeah I can definitely agree on that.
One who learns a language for leisurely purposes should focus on vocabulary at first, but once they are fluent, grammar should be something to worry about if they want to sound like a native.
العويس I would say in a language like Japanese, grammar is quite crucial to understanding, and I’ve seen some... interesting fuck ups where people don’t use it properly. From what I’ve heard, you should definitely focus on learning the basics of grammar when you begin, but once you feel comfortable with that, vocabulary should be a priority. Also, don’t get too caught up with honorifics because apparently even native speakers don’t know how to use them perfectly.
My favorite book on languages is "The Loom of Language", originally published in 1944. On Russian, it advises: "It is therefore impossible to give the reader who wishes to learn Russian any good advice except to take the precaution of being born and brought up in Russia."
Thanks for this, been doing duolingo for about a year and a half and happy Ive not given up, the tenses get me also - I hope it will grow on me, I practice about 20 mins daily and wont give up
Im finnish and I would tell people not to learn the finnish grammar either. Its so complicated and unrelated to any other language, and you still wont get it right until you just use the language for years. My idea learning any language, vocabulary first. If you know the words youll be able to communicate no matter how bad your grammar is.
It's interesting you say this. When I studied Czech in the Army, the instructors (Czech natives) always said, "Vocab, vocab, vocab" You'll learn grammar later and if you asked them about tenses, they just said learn vocab for now (course was 48 weeks). Like you said, if you ask where the train station is and butcher the grammar but get all the words right, they'll know what you are talking about. So this was very cool to hear from you as that's exactly what our Czech instructors said (32 years ago) :-) Love your videos !!
The thing is however, that is not the standard everyone has. Many people do not want to "butcher" their target language and sound like a toddler all the time. Many people actually want to have a reasonable command of the language and even sound near-native like. I guarantee you the vast majority of second-language learner want to actually sound good in their target language, and not just being barely understood.
I was sent this video from my Russian translator in Moldova. I had pretty much come to the same conclusion but this was super helpful to knock off any remaining vestiges that remained. Actually, it takes me to a whole new level as I was continuously trying to improve my grammar. So this really helps! Thank you.
I don't think "the grammar comes automatically" applies to slavic languages. Their grammar is completely different to english or any romance languages (spanish, italian, french, portuguese, etc.)
@@mwanikimwaniki6801 He probably means cases. Latin has cases and words change accordingly. Same thing with Slavic languages and in many other language families. Cases exist in Romance languages as well, but other than pronouns, there are no declensions. But yeah, other than that, Latin and Slavic languages have little in common when it comes to grammar.
It’s April 2024 ,After 6 months of learning russian I didn’t see much progress and tonight I saw this vidoe . The next 6 months my focus is gonna be only vocab hope I will come back here after 1 year and check how my russian is doing .
thats how i learned englisch. gramma was for exams at schools and universitys but the most important reason in learning a language is to be understood. As long as that works you've done a good job. Never had a russian friend point at me and ask "why tf arent you using the right case?" in fact most of the time any russian native speaker i've met was more shocked + happy that i was able to understand him/her and have a conversation.
I'm a Hungarian, learning Russian rn. I was good at Hungarian grammar at school, but I'd gladly omit the Russian grammar for a while as Bald suggests because speaking a hard language doesn't make learning Russian easier. 😂
@@BenefitCounterbench Well, yes and no... For example as a Hungarian it is much easier to understand most of the grammar, like cases or perfective/imperfective. Try to explain those to a person whose mother tongue is English where there is no such thing as cases. :)
I read, write, speak English. I've learned the vocabulary & phrases from the movies only. I know nothing English grammar. my mother tongue is Arabic fyi. Likewise, I'm learning French language now and I'm using the same method, vocabulary and common phrases. I'm progressing faster than my friends.
You're absolutely right mate. I always told to my friends, parents and wife, if you want to learn English, better dive into music, films with English subtitles, carefully listen to the native speech, watch yt and only then calibrate everything with grammar. Probably you won't reach the highest points in IELTS but it will surely give you a sense of confidence while travelling or communicating with good ppl abroad. Great channel! Love your vids! Greetings from Baltic States! P.S. Kids never learn grammar! They absorb incoming info like sponge! Adults are forgeting that we are all coming from a place called childhood
Absolutely great information. I compliment you on your perspective/attitude. As a Frenchman living in the US I sent my daughter to polish her French after four years of learning the language in high school, to France to live with my father's old friends son's home for a month. French grammar is horrible much like Russian. Taking to her via email and feeling her frustration, After 10 days, I told her my secret weapon. You stated it perfectly. Learn nouns and verb and put it together to create conversation and don't worry about the fancy grammar. The couple that had a daughter her age exclaimed that my daughter's personality exploded and that instead of having a timid girl they now had a vibrant person with a wonderful personality. Lots of love
Exactly, nouns and verbs! The rest is just superfluous and takes there joy out of learning a language. When I see my daughter's French homework I want to tear hair out of my bald head in frustration
Ugh. I had to move to Poland when I was 17 and learn the language AND pass my high school matriculation exam. It was super difficult. Only thing that made me feel better was that at least it wasn't Russian, which has 1 extra declination than Polish. Effing grammar....
I studied Japanese in Japan but not in a school, on the street, in restaurants and in bed with Japanese girls. I filled up notebooks worth of vocabulary and I was totally fine.
As a Chinese who studied in a UK university for years, I traveled to Turkey last year and stayed in there for seven or eight months. I totally agree with our bald about vocabulary. I have never learned any Turkish grammar, I only learned vocabularies and a few sentences, then I can speak with locals and living in Turkey with no problem at all. Even if I was forming sentences in my imaginations (based on Japanese and English grammar), most people can understand me easily. For example: ‘burada ne zaman kapat?’ (In Turkish grammar English: This place what time to close?) The word ‘Kapat’ means close, however initially I was using ‘Bitti’, which means ‘over’ in English 😂 I was certainly using wrong vocabulary and I don’t even know is my grammar correct at all. However, locals can still understand my Chinese-English-Japanese hybrid Turkish quite easily. And I can also understand them for the most of times, all thanks to learning enough vocabularies.
doubleutubefan5 yes german is quite grammar strict ( i.e they may say wth are u talking about like ben says the russians do not 😂) so you must learn german grammar, however this is not too hard. Just go through all the forms whilst you learn and it becomes easy / almost second nature. I know this as i have been learning german for 6 years ( learned in school for 4 years and the past 2 years been continuing to teach myself for fun) so yeah. It really is not as hard as you think it is . As an native english speaker learning german is quite easy as a lot of the words are connected in their origins to the words we use , making learning vocabulary a matter of mostly just spot the difference / association .
catafalque yes and the locals may be even more impressed with ur accent 😂 I don’t even do that much to maintain my german, just subbed to german youtubers, watched movies in german and listen to german music a bit , even if you don’t really know what they’re saying you can guess and it’s all about learning in a context, completely useless to learn plain vocab as it will mean nothing to you, you will get bored and give up, especially if not in a schooling/ university environment . I’m currently learning russian and i love it, such a beautiful language, but hard to even learn the alphabet 😂
catafalque i wish russian was my native language 😂 i’m trying to learn it , however even the alphabet is difficult to me, it is a very different language to english
I learn English in exact same way. Actually i didn't learn it at all, i just listen and read a lot of all kind of mean comments on youtube. I know literally zero grammar rules in English and get away with it. I can understand it well and kinda can express myself. And it cost me like zero time, i just enjoy videos and remembering new words. Easy peasy. Maybe after sometime i'll buy some lessons and learn grammar, but for now i'm okay with what i have.
@@istvanglock7445 that phrase looks correct for me. I learned English the same way. It just feels natural to say something. Sometimes I catch myself using Russian grammar with English words. 😂
I couldnt agree more on this. i learned Russian at university for one year as an elective course. They forced us with learning grammar and we barely did any conversation, this resulted in me having a bad note. In the end i learned Russian through your videos, music, movies and meeting russians in person, practising the language. Now i fully undestrand the languge, minus some words.
Aleksandr Trohhatsov hey im wondering if it is okay to drop the word i you he we and so on, like in Spanish. Like you did: so do I say я хочу or can I simply say the verb хочу?
As a native Russian speaker I agree about focusing on vocab. The language is very flexible. The different ends you put on most words are the same, but like he said there are a few. You can talk like Yoda and sound normal in Russia
@Gabriel Henrique yes but for a beginner you don't need to worry about that. People will eventuality understand you.
@icantremember I’ve just started about a week ago and the grammar is already getting in the way of learning vocabulary. I’m going to take this man’s advice if only temporarily, as I’d like to eventually speak Russian as eloquently as my native English.
@@treble8921 the enemy of good is perfect.
@@joeschmo9953 Well sir “good” has a few enemies to be sure, but that’s certainly one! 😅
@BlxckVeins you should definitely learn tenses cuz using them correctly will make your speech a lot smoother but the main focus should be vocab IMO cuz even if you know no grammar but have 1-2k common words at your disposal you will always be able to muster up a decent understandable sentence especially if you've listened to some Russian speech on a regular basis (songs, yt videos, documentaries, films, maybe radio from the app Radio Garden) and therefore knew at least some natural-sounding word combos
“Russian language teachers hate him!”
😂😂😂😂😂😭😭😭😭😭I am wheezing rynow
More like Russian GRAMMAR teachers 😂
I am a Russian teacher with more than 4500 lessons taught. I don't hate him, I just disagree 😂 Well, actually I agree with the point that you need vocabulary and you shouldn't focus TOO much on grammar, because it really can be intimidating. Input is crucial. Good teachers would never argue with that. However if you absolutely exclude grammar, you won't be able to go past some very beginner level and won't be able to truly understand texts and speech.
I can't tell you how many times I corrected students who would read some article with me and think that they understand everything. But because they didn't know certain grammar they understood sentences in an absolutely wrong way.
A reader is a co-author of a text. The truth is when you don't know grammar and you "scan-read" a text and think " oh I understand what that means" you are gambling, and very often you understand the opposite of what the actual author meant.
So if your goal is just to travel and have a basic communication, yes, you can skip grammar. You may not learn Russian at all.
If you really hate grammar, you can skip it in the beginning, but don't skip the rules of reading and pronunciation. Read A1 texts with audio and try to assimilate the most frequently used vocab. If you don't have a specific hatred towards grammar, inject some grammar into this assimilation process and it will accelerate assimilation significantly.
Russian with Evgeniy I appreciate the advice! Thankyou
😂😂😂😂
Englishman walks through Belarusian city with an israel t shirt on talking about the russian language.
Lol ikr how globalized XD
Thats why we love Bald so much :P
Mr. Worldwide
He has no manners whatsoever.
@@DataArchiveUnit He's British, he IS manners.
Only a British lady got mad at me for asking for a tissue instead of napkin.
Russian speakers really don't care about grammar when talking to foreigners. Maybe if you were to meet a PHD in linguistics and Russian literature... Those guys get upset, the only thing they know in life is grammar 😆🤣
I don't know why she would get mad at calling a napkin a tissue? especially if you are a foreign speaker. I'd know exactly what you meant
I dare you to call her couch a couch and see what happens.
>ITS A CHESTERFIELD
I had a British grandmom. I also had a Ukrainian grandpa :) Literally, straight from Ukraine after ww2. Good man.
Yeah, but Russian peoples goes crazy if someone speaks English with grammar mistakes. I speak easily with English and American, and they doesn't hate me, but then I speak my wrong way English with somebody from Russia, he wants to kill me 🤣
@@pythonofsky4545 because english doesn't even have grammar. It's pretty easy to speak it correctly. At the same time even the native speakers seem to have trouble understanding difference between "you're" and "your".
@@ClySuva Yes, yes it does [Ex: "He give me apple" ...no... "gives me an apple" ... no ..."He gives me an apple"]. And no, no it isn't, it's just that there're so many immigrants and there're so many people trying to learn that we get used to the butchering...what's more, we even borrow words we like...which makes the rules even harder to figure out. Also, the American education system sucks.
Honestly, grammar is what you learn best after you try learning another language only to find out that everything is different and you can't quite put a finger on WHY?
True that! A foreigner that knows perfect grammar is spy!
Ha ha ha. CIA?
That is what a spy would say about it.
Andrej Mucic - Your comment cracked me up!! I speak bad Russian and conversational Farsi (my Farsi is much better than my Russian). Years ago, an Iranian woman gave me a nickname: “jasoos” - spy. Sometimes it’s not great for an American to be good at some languages. I don’t regret it for a second though. I love languages.
@@obed9300 MI6 actually
Interesting!
I am Russian, and I approve this message!
I approve your approval
Yeah, if you aren't using cases you will be understood anyway. But all russians in moment will get it that you are foreigner, but this is not so bad.
@@alexview3971 They will see that mostly when you're approaching them from 50 meters against the wind.
Thanks
@@TeDynef lol
I am a retired 76 year-old and this guy reminds me of the years I spent at school learning Russian. After all that time, the only thing that remains with me is the vocabulary, and I can more-or-less follow the conversations. Which proves his point. For all sorts of reasons over the years, I have studied and lived with French, Spanish, Arabic and Afrikaans, all in addition to the Russian, and I think the main lessons have been: 1. Not knowing the right word will kill a conversation, while not knowing the grammar adds to your attraction as a foreigner. 2. No-one composes a new sentence from scratch - it’s all mostly cliches. If you are tying yourself in knots trying to work out the grammar of a sentence, you are not speaking the language as a native as they mostly avoid complicated constructions. Just learn the cliches and exclamations and you will be right 90% of the time. If you learn to say some quotations, words of songs or proverbs reasonably well, no-one will know how much you know of the language. 3. Don’t be afraid - open your mouth and speak! Hesitate, mumble and stutter if you must, but try to keep going. In the end you will get the rhythm of the language, and once you have that, the words will sort themselves out. Repeat what people say to you all the time - always repeat the question. 4. Use your body to supplement your words: point, make faces, act out the point you are trying to make. It’s a bit like doing your own sign-language while you talk, and it helps people understand you better.
Well said tony - completely agree
Excellent advice
your effort is much appreciated man, glad to hear that from people who spent year learning the language.
Appreciate the tips!
Those are some good tips. I did French in school and hated it, but as an adult I've managed to - just about - get by speaking French with the few people I've met who don't also know some English. I once spoke to a guy for about an hour where my level of French was comparable to his English, so we were kind of talking in Frangish/Angçais. It probably helped we were both a bit drunk. When I travel, it's pretty likely that people my age in other countries will speak English (actually an ex of mine from Romania probably knew grammatical rules better than I did), but I don't want to have to rely on that!
Person: English
T-shirt: Israel
Country: Belarus
Language: Russian
Hotel: Trivago
Israel*
@@revolzyy isn't real*
Yeet
@@ShaddySoldier o7
@@ShaddySoldier nt
@@ShaddySoldier wow, Painfuly
"There's one reason russian is considered difficult to learn, and that reason is... Russian Grandma."
He would never say grandma, only bubby or babushka
@@imholdenonarope bubby is plural for baba, which is "a chick".
@@Setras it's a short form of 'babushka' as well
@@vladoshka9014 it's not.
@@Setras что нет-то, если говорят так?
I am a native Russian.
And I approve it. Hi is right. Listen to him guys.
Hi - привет He - oн
Slou MoBoss, вы правы.
I always loved Russia. I’m living in Moscow for more than a year.. I understand almost everything but I cannot speak because I’m always worried with grammar. I get ashamed and then I don’t speak :(
@@mys245 I wish I could move to Russia for a few years! Please be confident, for all us who wish to do what you are doing!
@@mys245 actually you should speak, people understand if you are a foreigner and will be patient with you, so don't get ashamed, that's one of the fastest ways to learn things, is to practice them.
I speak england. You undestands I?
sorry, I no speak London. Lol
yes, actually.
mine speaking, english are language easy
alright, yes.
Я говорю по-английски
Another top tip here that may help the discouraged...I've been living in Ukraine, Russian-speaking part - for 12 years. I'm a Brit. Me Russian is more than conversational but definitely not 'accurate'. I've not studied it academically but I did casually study it to some extent, early doors when I moved over. What I'd say is that the extent to which you need to worry about grammar depends on your aim and your 'pride' in not sounding weird, but mostly to avoid ambiguity. In Russian the ending changes help to pin point precise meaning so without changing them, or by changing them wrongly, it can sometimes cause ambiguity - but mostly not, since the context and accompanying gesticulations are usually enough to clear that up! But for example they are used to distinguish between object and subject in a sentence and if you don't do it, it makes it difficult for them to get what you mean. The good news is that there are some aspects of Russian that are easier than English - no articles, fewer tenses, largely phonetic and basically no fixation with the verb 'to be' most of the time. Also they have a lot of borrowed words from French, German, Latin/Greek which can help out. If you learn the alphabet, not difficult as Bald says here, it's surprising how many words you'll recognise when you start reading directions, public notices and so on. The words for things like toilet, bus, shower, hotel room, telephone, cafe, coffee, tea, sugar and so on will all be familiar to speakers of European languages. The bigger issue, if you have the vocab you need, is the pronunciation - by which I'm specifically referring to the stressed syllable. This is close to critical. Getting this wrong renders your language very difficult to understand, as it does in English actually. But my top tip vis a vis the endings, once you're reasonably confident you have the right word and, hopefully, the right stress, is to mumble! I'm not kidding! When I started mumbling in the shops, early doors, rather than trying to articulate perfectly, the number of times I had to repeat myself dropped dramatically! Just let the ending of the word tale off into the ether and they'll fill in the gaps in their mind! That's another slight issue with the way foreign languages are taught...there's a kind of 'model' pronunciation that's held up as sacrosanct but actually that's not how people speak!
There is a German entrepreneur living in Russia (Stephan Dürr), whose farming on the area as big as Luxembourg, who said, that he learnt Russian by chatting with his colleagues and employees. And when he later came to Moscow dealing some business, they all stared at him in awe as he was German speaking some rural Russian dialect :)
Is learning verb tenses importent?
@@altanbayraml6933 I would say that it definitely helps and that it's more straightforward than in English...not having some grasp of this can make communication a little hard for anything other than basics like shopping, directions etc. Just my opinion...
@@fullboreraw thanks for the quick answer mate. Cheers!
As a native who heard Bald's speeches I would also suggest to learn how to pronounce soft consonants (especially ЛЬ) - that will improve the speech intelligibility greatly.
He has a point. Take English as an example.
“The boy throws the ball” is the proper way, but if you’re not a native English speaker or starting to learn English, saying “boy throw ball” would be perfectly understood.
Language interpretation comes down to contextual factors as well.
In my native language of Afrikaans, we have a saying that roughly translates to “A good listener only needs half a word”, and that really rings true when someone is speaking a broken language.
@Tina Yael Severinova M. the placement of the words tells you their role semantically.
Alru Muller klein wêreld
Nathan Verster
Angswekkend klein. Ek het vir ‘n paar sekondes probeer verstaan wat jy geskryf het want ek het dit in Engels gelees. Ek kort slaap.
I'm from México, I work all the time with American Tourists and I can fully agree. For example in spanish to ask for the restroom you would say "¿Dónde está el baño?". But if someones come to me and says "Donde Esta Baño?" or "Donde Baño?" or everything in infinitive form I can understand perfectly what they want. It's all about context and basic wording.
As a Belgian (Dutch speaking) your Afrikaans looks a bit awkward to me but I have no problem understanding it. I can imagine its about the same when Bald speaks Russian. :)
And indeed, as long as people are willing to listen you can get a long way with knowing a language somewhat.
"The luxury of moving to Belarus" Only Bald would describe that as a luxury lol
Lol when he said that I was like luxury?!!😂😂
goingonabout 1:29
Why not it’s good there
II PSYCHO II Lol ok sure pal
Brian L I like it it’s beautiful
Yes. If you don't know grammar we realize that you are a foreigner. But we will understand 95% of what you say)) grammar just allows you to put words wherever you want and not to depend on sequence of words in your sentence.
I mean, everyone would know he's a foreigner as well even if his grammar was perfect. Getting the accent perfect in a foreign language is even harder.
damn it doesn't work in german lol
Syimyk Asanov It also works quite well in german. And as a fallback, the vast majority of germans speak enough english to get around.
@@AlexanderNassian thanks, I didn't know thar germans cool with it. My teacher gets mad everytime I put a verb in the middle))
@@paramount7616 Most Germans are really chill, we know how crazy the language is. Also, German is considered a "cold" language, which means it has a lot of redundancy built in, so you can't easily mess up the meaning (we use pronouns everywhere, you can get the correct case of a noun from word order, article, noun ending, and sometimes the verb, etc). In a "hot" language like Japanese, you do a little thing wrong, and the sentence doesn't make sense any more (because pronouns are often left off, only a particle determines the role of a noun, verbs are not declinated etc). So you can follow the advice of the video as long as you are learning a "cold" language.
Me as a Czech, I have absolutely no problem to learn russian grammar...It's very similar to what we use in the Czech Republic :) That's one of the good things, when you are a native slavic language speaker, then you will find all the other european languages very easy and not that much complicated. Not counting hungarian, finnish, basque though :)
exactly! our slavic languages have no articles but have flexible words which is beautiful in its own way
Yeah, grammar is identical and also vocabulary sometimes is pretty similar. I moved to Czechia from Russia without knowing the language, but I could understand a lot of speach and even read the text.
@@beingasanocean8066 Great, I hope you like it here :)
@@beingasanocean8066 Great! And what program did you use to move to Czech? I also plan moving there but don't know which way is better.
do u want to try to talk with me, as an exchange of our language skills. Im a Russian native speaker, and know Russian very well, even for Russian guy. And i want to advance my English to level of fluently speaking.
For me there is just one rule when learning a language. "Do it like a baby". Listen to music, watch movies listen to people and try to repeat what they said. This way you will be able to use grammar more intuitively and it'll work out just fine. (thats how i learned english and russian. I don't know anything about english grammar btw. and i'm austrian!)
@Улитка Хаха да) Игра моего детства!)
Yes, I agree. I've discovered that learning how to conjugate verbs in French by sound is the easiest way to do it (like how a baby would do it). The big tables of verb endings that educators try to make you memorize are not very useful for language learners.
Nice
Damn, i remember Spore.. good old days
Damn boi, youve done a good job learning if you taught yourself.
I’m from Scotland
Plan is learn Russian
Go to Russia and drink with the locals
5year plan
Good plan, где в Шотландии вы живёте? Моя мама живёт в Dundee. Я люблю Шотландии.
Most people: 'I want to learn a language to meet people and/or find opportunities'. Scottish person: I want to learn Russian to drink more alcohol haha
😂
Hmm...are you planning to survived 5 years of hard drinking..
Good luck dude .👍😂
I’m fae killie
As an English teacher, I totally agree with Mr Bald. The modern style of language teaching emphasises learning vocab. Additionally, fluency is more important than accuracy. Hence, use the language to the best of your ability and have fun and don't be afraid to make mistakes. Accuracy comes gradually and naturally. :)
By the way: In class, I use the exciting videos of Mr Bald frequently as the content motivates my students to learn English.
Heh, here in my country the approach to language teaching is still emphasis on grammar rules, rather than vocabulary and practical use of the language. And then you end up with people who have a perfect grade in English, but speak it like broken Google Translate bot, because they lack the knowledge of practical usage and vocabulary. :/
Why are you asking me to “have fun”? We live in free society and you can not just walk around asking people to do this and do that only because YOU want them to. You’re not a ☕️Cher, you’re bully!
Its the same with any language mind you wont be able to read any notices or newspapers though lol but you can have a great experience without learning the grammar
@@DODO-vy6sf wat
@@DODO-vy6sf wat
Can we take a moment to appreciate how wonderful and cosy residential area he is walking thru
Try it in winter and fall, have a razor handy
Standard Russian neighborhood
@@emell7025 What goddamn razor
This is how "commieblocks" look like if you actually live there
Absolutely
I am fluent in both Russian and English language and I would give you a pass as a gopnik
Vlad Makarov The G-Pass
hahah
Certainly you commented just to comment :D
Russians that say they’re fluent in english in reality barely can put 3 words together and those who say they are “so-so” at english speak really well. My personal observation.
@T K I spoke with a lot of young russian guys and most of them barely spoke. I mean, I could understand what point they were trying to bring across, however, to my surprise the only guy who spoke fluent English said to me that he wasn't really good at english the guys that I met usually described themselves as bilinguals but I would say they had plenty of the vocabulary to pass by , but definitely not enough to have a meaningful conversation.
you ever just walk around wearing a shirt with the Israeli flag and nothing else?
Whats wrong with it? If it was an American or British flag you wouldn't even say anything..
@@tomaskacerovsky3366 the question is whether he is a Jew or not?
@@tomaskacerovsky3366 I pointed out the shirt because it was such an odd thing to see. Any shirt with just a foreign flag on a white background is an odd shirt. The israeli flag is just more odd because, as far as I know, Bald has no ties to and has never been to Israel. The same would be said if it were a Swedish or Canadian flag. If it was the UK flag, although odd, it would make sense because Bald is British. If it were a Russian or Indian flag, it would make sense because he frequents the countries despite not being tied to them.
His grandfather was Jewish.
@@CraftVader1 It's just a T-shirt for Christ's sake...Maybe he got it as gift from one of the guys he meets on his journey.
This is precisely how i actually learned English. I'm a 20 year old kid from Bulgaria, which learned fluent English by himself, only by using in the internet and interacting with natives, i simply hated English grammar in school and i excelled in vocabulary. I now work in a fancy tea place where i have the opportunity to speak to a wideeeeee range of foreigner most of which compliment me on my vocabulary. I don't know why what i say works, but i'm sure as hell it does.
the reality is english is a flexible language, to a fault. meaning, *too* flexible: the majority of even fluent english speakers routinely make 'gramatically incorrect' statements, or written sentences. i think yours is an interesting insight, that "i dont need to know WHY i speak these sentences this way, only that it is the correct way". personally i think what ruined french for me was getting bogged down in trying to decipher the literal meanings of the words, because the grammar ruins it
This is precisely how I actually learned English. I'm a 20 year old kid from Bulgaria, who learned fluent English by himself, only by using the internet and interacting with natives, I simply hated English grammar in school and I excelled in vocabulary. I now work in a fancy tea place where I have the opportunity to speak to a wideeeeee range of foreigners, most of which compliment me on my vocabulary. I don't know why what I say works, but I'm sure as hell it does.
I fixed a few grammatical errors for you :) Hope this helps.
Guys, with 20 years you are certainly NOT kids anymore ;) . You're adults.
This is actually the proper way to learn a language.
Think about it... Do 5 year old children know grammar?
No man
Not everyone Russian knows Russian grammar
@@un1que731 Иди в школу, учись.
Холера...
Russian 5 year olds know have internalized the grammar OP is referring to and can use cases, genders, aspects, the whole of it, correctly. Skipping declension completely puts you on the level of a 2-3 year old.
@@ltu42
Nonsense! Five year old kids don't know grammar. They just know the language through experience.
that is how kids learn a language. they start with words.
Amazing... i thought they started with grammar.
I thought they start to learn was by listening from the whom
eat your cereal I tought they just started speaking
Of course they don't start with words!!! They start with listening phrasis which are repeted by mother from day to day.
@@johnmarlowe4092 also from the whom
As my tutor said about Russian Grammar: There are always exceptions in grammar, and then there are even more exceptions for those exceptions.
aj039 🙀🙀🙀
That probably just means that she doesn’t know how to explain, that’s exactly what I’d do
@@arthurluzhnov2969 no, it doesn't
English also has this shit
I've noticed that Russian speakers LOVE to hear people trying to speak their language and are always super supportive and happy to help..
It seems the worse you are the more smiley and helpful they become.
Unlike some...Naming no names.... THE FRENCH
You pretty much explained why my sister took 4 years of Spanish in high school but only knows 2 words today. Language teachers should take note from Bald!
Yessss
If she only knew a few words she wasn't trying outside of the class. There has to be a motivation otherwise no progress will ever be made.
@@kgbcomrade5529 yeah I took one year of Spanish in high school and still know enough to get by. I am learning Polish now and am feeling the grammar things Bald is talking about.
o, as, a, amos, ais, an or some bullshit like that lol
@@kgbcomrade5529 You’re 100% right. But in high school we were told if we didn’t take 2 years of a foreign language we wouldn’t get into college, and our only options were Mexican-Spanish or French 🥺
All russian kids after watching the video: "I knew all of this grammar stuff is pointless!"
Well, if russian kids can understand what he is saying in english, then maybe it's true :)
It's true. As a russian - I never studied russian grammar in school, neither did I understand it, and passed the EGE exam in russian with 95/100 result. The vocabulary is everything.
yeah kinda
There are plenty of videos here on UA-cam about misleading in study FROM RUSSIAN TEACHERS EVEN IN RUSSIAN FEDERATION, let alone neighbour countries. So no strange at all that regular person can't explain grammar nor correct you're wrong even when they know correct word. They simply used to speak it that way. As born'n'raised in Ukraine(currently in Israel btw lol) I always tried to learn all of these stupid grammatic rules in both Russian and Ukrainian(which are pretty similar obviously) as hard as I could. Try to guess how much of them still are in my mind when I'm starting to speak Russian?
Of course, grammar is needed to read some serious book like Tolstoy's or Dostoyevskiy's dramas but for some road sign/Cafe's menu/grocery shopping all you need is about hundred words. Any further will come along with live communications only! And, by the way, first impression from "bad speaker" usually is:"Wow! You try to communicate another language! So you should be at least both willing full an smart to even start, my appreciation!"
Moscow Cyclist Hi, is there any specific method you would recommend for an English person to learn Russian vocabulary for beginner? Thanks
Why in hell am I watching this being a native Russian speaker😂
I'm jealous man lmao! Russian is quite the task to handle but honestly I'm having fun in the process which is all that matters.
😂😂😂
Your comment sort of proves his point. Because it would be Why in THE hell. But I get you lol.
I know how you feel. It's the same thing with me except I'm a native polish speaker and I constantly watch English videos about the Polish language
Lol
not gonna lie, this is what I needed to hear. I've been "trying" to learn languages for probably 20 years now, since I was 10, and never made any substantial progress because I always give up w hen it comes to grammar rules. Vocab is fun, and this has made me think I might try again.
Thats like me, i have so many attemps at learning new languages, i have tryed vietnamese, filipino, spanish, ext. But now im determined to learn german and russian.
I really do enjoy learning Russian by learning the vocabulary. I bought a list of cards with Russian words and it became something like a tradition for me to go through the cards before bed time. Of course, that itself is not enough. But reading simple books and maybe watching your favorite movies in russian or listening a podcast in russian about your favorite sport also helps a lot and is fun.
Me too!!!
This is why the Spanish education system in the US doesn’t teach you anything. 4 years I spent focused on grammar and was left with no vocabulary, and I could never carry a conversation despite knowing the grammar perfectly
That‘s exactly the same for me here in Germany! I‘m now learning Spanish in school since more than a year, and the only thing we do is learning time forms and conjugations of verbs. Really bad. I‘m glad that I at least learn Russian on my own, that’s maybe why I‘m so good at it, especially compared to Spanish in school haha
I learned more Russian from Counter Strike than I learned Spanish at school.
Same here with spanish classes in Sweden
@@niklas8279 god I find Spanish easy. Have somewhat learnt German in the past but learning Spanish was like a breath of fresh air compared to German. Latin languages are so much easier to learn than Germanic or Slav languages.
@@niklas8279 In Russia we have the same problem. Our teacher knows english grammar perfectly ,but if turn on american or british song,she would understand about 30% even less than it. All she knows is a grammar.
This sounds funny to us, but its a no problem, really. You dont need grammar, true.
Yeah, that's exactly what 99% of russian commenters think and apply 🤣
Privjet! :) i started learning like 1 minute ago haha
@@willtipton100 good for you. Now you can play Metro and Stalker games with no eng voice over haha
Your profile pic makes it easy to believe you
It’s the same with Russians learning English. They are obsessed with grammar. But really it is just a case of improving their vocabulary. Half of the English population don’t understand or use grammar correctly.
- Don't study Russian grammar
- Хорошо, не буду
Horosho, ta njet.
В голос😂
Ok, i wont
agha, schass!
Lutše ne budét? A za čém ty tak dumaéš.
The only reason i come to this video is to read the newest comments.
That Israeli flag shirt has triggered the internet.
Fuck up
Ottoman Simulation no, fuck left
I love Israel😍
@Mack M obama did plenty of Israel's bidding
@Mack M Liberals aren't leftists.
2:56 - _"So guys, if you want to learn russian, especially in the first year, forget grandma. Forget grandma!"_
😂😂😂
poor babushka lol
🤣🤣🤣
Nice one. You made my day 😂!
Haha my grandma taught me russian.
@@ricog7147 oh man lucky u!
I fully agree to this. As a Russian this is exactly how I learned English. Just practice, talk to other people, watch movies - the point is sooner or later you will start picking up key linguistic patterns in how a set language works.
Hey I have a question, how easy it is for russians to understand Polish? Because for Poles Russian is about 1/3 understandable and like 85% if you know the context more or less.
@@kubajackiewicz2 I can read Polish and understand about 50%, much better if I know the context, but when it comes to someone speaking Polish, I cannot understand SHIT, unless the person speaks super slowly and makes huge pauses between words. (I'm native russian)
@@kubajackiewicz2 I am a Russian speaker and when I hear polish I can understand about 1/3 of the vocabulary
@@kubajackiewicz2 I've always understood about 1\3 spoken Polish; since I've learned Czech I understand from 2\3 to almost everything, but there is a kind of a mental lag, 'cause some phonetical patterns are different from russian when structually the words are almost the same, or in other cases russian equivalent of morden polish words are archaic in russian (lepszy for example). So, every time i visit Poland, I have almost zero communication problem. It is really hard to read polish, though, like really really.
agree with*
Well said! Living in Uzbekistan my broken Russian, some key phrases, and an ever growing vocabulary has gotten me quite far. I knew zero when I first arrived. Trying to use grammar slows me down and, honestly, feels like a roll of the dice when choosing the right ending....people mumble the endings all the time anyway.
As a language teacher myself, I can honestly say you're totally right! That's not to belittle (the importance of) grammar, it's to emphasize the value of vocabulary where communication for its own sake is concerned.
[bumps into a group of Russians while exiting a restaurant]
Mr Bald:
-Извинитесь!
anyone who didnt get the joke - "Извиняюсь" - is "sorry" and "Извинитесь" - is "apologize to me immediately mfkers"! so grammar can still cost you your life)
@@ImPedofinderGeneral ....... really?!
@@Soy_boy-by8ez Not exactly, it means ''aplogize'', but you you use in an official converstation with a person or just if you're adressing a word to a group of people ''Извинись is used in unofficial enviroment and only to a single person'' But ure not telling them that they're motherfuckers xD But yea, this guy really has a point, if you would want to say sorry and you'd say ''извинись'' instead of ''извините'' you will be tremendously misunderstood
@@levismalevis7239 thx for putting effort man, I truly appreciate it :)
@@Soy_boy-by8ez np :)
Yep. You've nailed it. I majored in Russian, tortured myself over hideous grammar. Hated it, but loved reading books, translating songs, watching films. Just like adults can understand and have a conversation with a child learning their own language (but isn't perfect in his/her grammar), they can understand a foreign person learning and using new vocabulary, even if it's not perfect. I rarely study grammar in any language I am learning. It kills the joy. I prefer to pick it up through listening, observing and practicing :) I worked in a Russian language library (in the U.S.). Russians are happy to correct grammar in the middle of a conversation :)
Donna Frazier I do the same thing. Love listening, watching movies, music, and speaking Russian. I understand the grammar some but I don’t focus on it. It is better to learn vocabulary because it expands conversation. I could get by in Russia by using vocabulary more than grammar skills..
can't take him serious with that shirt on
As a speaker of SEVEN languages, I can only say ... OH, HELL YESSSSSSSSS!!!! I learned Polish, & followed the EXACT SAME RULE!!!
Timothy Fredrikson 👏👏👏im going to start this approach
Zajebiście stary, żółw! 🤜🤛
Isn’t polish considered one of the hardest languages to learn? Right up there with Hungarian and Russian.
@@josepartida1711 ... It is indeed!! Hungarian is not a Slavic, but Polish & Russian both are of Slavic origins! The main difference between Russian & Polish is that Polish does not use the Cyrillic alphabet!
@@josepartida1711 Yes, Polish is a slavic, but it's real saving grace is that it does not use the Russian cyrillic alphabet. It's grammar & composition was truly the most difficult part for me!!
I also made immense progress when I stopped wasting time learning about the rules of the language and just observed how it was used in interesting stories.
Even I, as a native Russian who was taught Russian grammar for 9+ years in school and 3 more years in highschool, don't explicitly remember any rules. It's all based on intuition. It's as ridiculous as English phonetics (where you can't even spell the word "phonetics" phonetically). Если я увижу слева голодного медведя, а справа книжку по Русской грамматике, то я побегу налево.
I did that with German. I managed to learn the language, to a level where I've been mistaken, for a native speaker in a few months! The irony of the story: Some German bloke told me a while back, that my grammar is better than most germans.
Yeah, that's how I learned English.
I speak a few languages and its the same for ANY language. A child can speak their native language fluently before they are even aware that grammar exists as a concept. learning to speak a language fluently isn't something that you can study like other subjects, it’s more comparable to learning to ride a bike. you can't sit in a classroom and learn to ride a bike by reading a textbook, you have to get on the bike, try fail try fail try fail until you can ride it. for a language you just have to practice speaking it. You can learn grammatical rules later when you’re reasonably fluent, they will make more sense to you then, but attempting to learn the grammatical rules at the start is insane, they will be meaningless to you and will not help at the start.
That t-shirt is a good way to guard against UA-cam bans these days.
Ya that or Hezbollah or Hamas. All the same engine...
Hahaha sad but true. Geez
explain please?
@@Pat_KraPao my friend u dont know who is the puppetmaster then - they control the world
Excellent remark . Europe needs rid . More to this Guy than meets the eye .agent , shill and should be very careful not to be charged as a Spy !. In remote areas filming places with Zero Russian connections .
great video!!! He is right!!! I'm a native Russian speaker (Ukrainian as well) and my approach in learning languages is pretty close to this one, but also I would recommend to read a lot of books. Here is how I study German. I took one book, read it, anther book, read it and so on. And the most important part here is google translater. I open two windows and I copy a pice of text then past it in one of the windows and I click on every single word that I don't know and the second window comes to use when google doesn't want to give me the meaning of a word by clicking on it. Then I copy the word and past it in the second. After the third or forth book the progress will be huge!!! By reading in a such way you accumulate language and see the way this language works in first hand. If you come across a word the second or third time you don't need to click on it any more 'cause you already know it! Then you see grammar structures and context that they are put in what gives you tremendous benefit for you open grammar rules and be like "aha, here it is, here how it works" even if you memorize grammar in the beginning that's not bad , I also did it, and even if you forget it never mind you recall it when you will be listening or reading something... this method I call like collecting threads and after some period of time you will be able to knit your own sweater!!! Also very benifitial thing is trying to memorize no matter what it might be, rules or words or whatever else, just try and don't pursuite the result!!! Всем фарту !!!)))
There's probably a slim chance you'll see this.. but your right I have story.
So beginning of 2019. I started to have health problems. I switched careers. It gave me more time to study. I'm a strange dude(if you couldn't tell by the Handle) but I study things in depth.
Well one day, I was searching the sea of videos on UA-cam and found your Moldova video. I thought it was hilarious. I subscribed.
I subscribed to other Russian like channels or Slavic like channels. Note this is the beginning of 2019 And fell in love with the culture and the language.
By 2021 between your channel,Sam's Russian adventures, Ushanka show, Shieh, NFKRZ, Learn Russian( what is crazy she moved to my city from Russia as a teacher in university like a few miles away), Russian Criminal and few other channels ... I learned the basics of Russian. I took to the internet, applied myself Now in 2022 I can understand most Russian. Read and write it if I try.
It's because of you. Now I know I may never leave this rock known as Colorado because of my health. But because of you man, I've seen places I can never see in person. I learned about a culture, culturally I'm not supposed to. Growing up where I lived my step дедушка would blame everything on all в Советы.
Бенджамин... спасибо брат
seriously thank you. Know your appreciated . When you get old know you helped break stigmas, and helped people learn, and helped people feel alive vicariously through your videos and travels.
Блин, это очень круто. Уважаю таких людей, которые ставят себе большую цель и достигают её! Молодец!! Желаю здоровья!
Я в целом восхищаюсь людьми, которые изучают иностранные языки. А если кто то изучает русский, это восхищает меня вдвойне. Потому что мы сами не всегда можем разобраться в нашем языке, где то, в каких то моментах немного запутаться и т.д. Браво!
Have to say, around late '19 I did the same thing pretty much.
Found it very annoying that of half the letters were the same but I couldn't read it... But it was very odd at first, I don't know much for how Russians learning English must feel, but once you get it down you can really just roll through it. It is a far more natural alphabet for it's language, almost like how no one really struggles reading Italian because it was at one time Latin, yet French is way--way more complicated than it needs to be using the same alphabet.
Im also just starting to study russian (at least the basic) mostly because of him...i don't know if i will ever need it (i actually need to improve my english) but for me right now the est european culture is the most attractive
Да ладно тебе, не все так плохо в Колорадо :)
As a Russian native speaker I need to say - THAT IS 146% TRUE! I never learnt Russian grammar I just memorise all that shit (took 10 year though )
So ur tellin me even you native speakers don't even learn grammar and when us poor student who wanna join in to russian unis we have to.. why do u guys do us like dat..
@@lethall6609 as a native speaker of an East European language, that Grammar is just the biggest pain in the ass, no other language subject even comes close to such complexity, amount of rules and exceptions to those rules. More practical to just learn it through years of conversations than through studying
@@lethall6609 I'm sorry for you :):)
@@lethall6609 language is formed from a way of thinking. words in russian are flexible. and this is not a problem for native people as it has certain patterns. the words meander like a stream, but that doesn't stop us from understanding the foreigner. bald is right, grammar is not required for a foreigner to understand them in common parlance
@@lethall6609, Have you ever listened to several native speakers talking to each other. They don't always understand each other.
This works! This is how I’ve learned English. I’ve abandoned 4y of grammar and started to learn the vocabulary. I’ve also learned to not focus on the single word, but to describe if i can’t remember it. Keeps conversations fluent. Next thing I’ve learned to use future, present and past so I could describe something on the timeline. 20y later I watch movies in english and live in California. American girlfriend/wife helped the progress. I think Mr. Bald would agree 😁
Or date a Russian.
Personally, that's how I learned German by dating germans.
Good idea. That's the excuse I'll tell my wife.
@@39Chevy underrated comment
Will B. Legend 😂
I also have to learn german. Is any girl here? =))
make this place tinder again
As a Greek speaker I can confirm it's true.
The Greek and the Russian grammar is almost the same, if you say "Θέλω ενα μπύρα" instead of "θέλω μια μπύρα" people are gonna understand and frankly they are gonna be impressed that you speak any Greek at all.
Interesting. Last week I started learning Ελληνικά and immediately felt it so natural for me as a russian. Even though there are no similar words other than with greek origin.
@@DmitryTaranov привет русский друг! Я очень рад что ты по греческий учишь! Я грек и учу русский язык!🇬🇷🇷🇺
@@wonderwhy2979Я тоже грек и хочу изучать русский язык. Привет!
yeah man, your Russian is very good, I'm really amazed not every foreigner speaks Russian that well as you !
Lold nice joke bruh.
I mean, he is more than capable of communicate but i personally know some foreigners who can do better.
Steir Qwe why are you flexing your friends capability to speak a language?
@@spongebobsquarepants1788 I guess you can put it that way, altrough person in question isn't friend of mine
Well, his Russian is pretty terrible, BUT still perfectly okay to travel, have conversations etc, etc.
Yes! That's absolutely true, (as a Russian teacher) I can say that 90%of the lesson concentrating on the lexical structure will really do! Then, students start intuitively use the right grammar forms and progress much faster.💪
You're very pretty, is that your real face?
I love your profile picture. so pretty 😍😘
@@cokedoutmarkhamill8179 Russians girls are very beautiful)))
Landysh Lana true
Has anyone ever told you you look good in your profile picture?
This is exactly how I teach Russian in my videos. You are sooooo right. Grammar is not necessary. Learning the theory doesn't help, but actually gets in your way when speaking.
I like to compare it with dancing. You learn to dance watching attentively and ... dancing (like a bear at first but it gets better with time, right?). You don't learn to dance learning the theory about dancing!
We don't learn the language. We practice it. And to practice we need to experience it. Listening, reading, speaking and writing. After experiencing / internalizing the language quite enough we start 'feeling' its logic and we notice grammar points ourselves almost unconsciously. It's not bad to look up smth in a grammar book just to check if you got it right. But you don't need to memorise all the rules before producing the language.
Happy Russian learning to everyone to does :-D
I learned GCSE Russian at night school at age 42. Then I went on to A Level Russian. It was all grammar and exam and I gave up! I just wanted the joy of learning Russian as I loved the language, culture and people. That was over 20 years ago. How I wish I had known this advice then! Might give it a go again…….
After months of learning Russian and feeling discouraged halfway through it, now I feel motivated to continue learning Russian. When it comes to Russian grammar and cases, my mind goes blank.
How do you learn it ? I use babble
Imagine the latin grammar... even worse
If anyone is interested, we can learn languages mutually. I am Russian to you. You me english. Online skype or else. free
@@Denis-cp2zq my native language is Russian and i learn English. So we can organize a training exchange. If you are interested, add me in Skype - artemmaterik
I just got done learning some of it and I'm fucking lost man, it's very discouraging.
You're completely right. In the 1980's, I made a three years study of Russian language. The teacher taught us every single grammar rule. I have the diploma and can't speak a word of Russian. I envy your perfect Russian.
His russian is not perfect (i am Russian)
His Russian is VERY FAR from perfect, and sometimes even his vocabulary is bad. But this is one of the reasons why he’s so likable on the streets there - his lack of grammar sounds pretty funny to native speakers and it automatically creates lightness and positive attitude.
I envy your pefrect face
@@crpunks Do you recommend me any app, website, channel, books that could help me learn russian?
I'm Portuguese and my accent is perfect a Russian told me that the Portuguese and Russian have very similar pronounce, even culturaly I felt at home in San Peterborough. Love from Portugal
portuguese sounds eerily like russian
Susana Portuguese is just Spanish spoken in a Russian accent lmao
Susana, If that's your picture, I think I know why he told you your accent was perfect.
Geno Eastern Europeans living in Portugal barely have an accent speaking Portuguese.
@@David-dx5wz Hard for someone uneducated in any of those 3 languages to know any difference. English is just like German spoken in a French accent.
Thank you!!! This is awesome, Im learning or relearning (it's been 27 years since Ive spoken a lick of Russian). I've been looking for people to talk Russian to..:D Watching your videos have been such an amazing help. i find myself repeating what you're saying to people that you speak to, and trying to retain what I hear.
4:02 cat on the hood of BMW
XDD
мимими
Catnik
Koшeчкa!
@@petersarkoci9217 это нормально в России и в других странах снг. Просто там правительству наплевать на бездомных животных, и их они не забирают в приюты. Хотя сейчас они начали их стерилизовать, но это не то. Полно было случаев, как собаки нападали на прохожих.
I hope this guy makes more videos on learning languages, he seems to do it so easily
he is speaking with natives a lot in a real life environment. its much more efficient than just sitting in the classroom.
So true, I learned Spanish just by learning vocabulary. If I say things imperfectly, so long as they understand what I'm trying to say people appreciate the effort and continue to talk with me.
I do not know Russian. Now after seeing this for some reason you inspired me to learn it. Thank you!
Nearly a year ago, last November, I found this video and watched it, and it changed my entire life.
I decided to be like, "You know what? Let's try this." with the Russian language, because I felt like i needed to give it a try. I wanted to be able to say that I tried it, then probably just live as I did before.
But that's not what happened.
I ended up practicing Russian for about a month and a half before that died off, but not before I decided to re-pick up my Spanish because I had done it in high school. I had forgotten most of my Spanish, but I was too hooked on language learning to care.
Needless to say, because of this video, I ended up trying out those two languages along with 15 others, for a grand total of 17. I'm still shocked at how a single video did this for me.
I tried to learn Russian maybe 3-4 times, and it's never picked up, but my Spanish went flying out the roof. Not even a year since I started back up, and my understanding of it is phenomenal. I just passed the fifth checkpoint test 30 minutes ago! (And I understood it way better than the fourth one!)
I also started to pick up skills in reading Asian languages, so we'll see what comes of that.
All this while in engineering college. (Currently in my third year)
The moral of the story is, even if you think you know you aren't a language person, try a language out for a week at least, and have fun with it. At least be able to say you tried it. And just maybe something great will happen.
Wow! I'm impressed.
If you want to practice your Russian with me (I'm a native Russian speaker), you can hit me up on Telegram. My ID: @iamthevictor.
I took 4 years of Spanish in High School - was relatively fluent, but at that time, the US didn't have as much Spanish spoken (late 80s). In college, I took a semester of Russian. Absolutely killed my memory of the Spanish I had learned!
BIG COMMENT
@@joshporizzle I should top it with a bigger one one day xDD
how about now?
Beautiful thing about those Slavic languages, speaking few of them myself - grammar is really one of the least vital things. It's important if you want to perfect it, and it adds...correct flavor to your words. But overall, if you have vocabulary and can construct a sentence you can be pretty much 100% understood. The fact that in Russian, and Ukrainian for example you can construct a sentence using same words in pretty much any way imaginable. You can keep moving the words around to your heart's content, and even use improper grammar it will still make sense. It'll make more or less sense depending on the context and complexity of a sentence, but it will be understood. You are absolutely correct about your approach. In fact, this is similar to how I've learned English. I gave up on textbooks a while ago.
Quicksilver_Cookie 🙌
Any ancinet indo European lanagauge such as Sanskrit greek latin works the same way
Second language acquisition and pedagogy expert here: don't listen to Ben! That's right, don't just listen - do! He's totally right.
We don't learn grammar of our mother tongue explicitly, we learn phrases and vocabulary patterns which in turn teaches us the grammar implicitly. We learn to read through listening and copying, none of this phonics bollocks.
The only time you need to learn grammar explicitly is if you need to pass a test, or are merely learning ABOUT a language. Communication is the door to new languages. Vocabulary is the key that opens the door.
You had me in the first half not gonna lie
Phonics?
Did you really just call yourself a "second language acquisition expert"
@@user-wv2zk It might be their job I guess?
You sir just spoke my mind. I am so so glad that I came to realise that learning grammar manually is almost pointless by myself. I came to this video to see if my point was correct. Thankfully it is correct. Learn vocab. Learn simple examples and phrases. You can use those phrases and stuff your vocab that you learned into them. You'll find how you subconsciously learned the grammar pattern. It's like a jigsaw puzzle. You can never solve a jigsaw puzzle without the pieces. You can never solve grammar without vocabulary
Think the key is being comfortable having sloppy grammer. You are confident and very social, and were willing to sound silly or risk looking "stupid" for not having perfect grammer. Many people probably fear this and waste time trying to be perfect instead of embracing imperfection, wich would make them learn quicker.
I speak Hebrew, Russian and English fluently and this video is so funny!! he is right 100%
You must live in Israel then.
@@seiwarriors US
@@topgopnik yeah or in the US. Propably somewhere in New York. Israel has a lot of people who speak Russian and Hebrew so yeah I though you live in Israel but seems like not. Have a good day fam.
@@seiwarriors Florida actually - moving to Idaho. Israel is a socialist dump.
@@topgopnik oh wow, are you perhaps Jewish since I am too although I am living in England. Israel is turning to become a future socialists state so yeah I can definitely agree on that.
One who learns a language for leisurely purposes should focus on vocabulary at first, but once they are fluent, grammar should be something to worry about if they want to sound like a native.
Fenarious im planning on japanese would grammar be important?
العويس
I would say in a language like Japanese, grammar is quite crucial to understanding, and I’ve seen some... interesting fuck ups where people don’t use it properly. From what I’ve heard, you should definitely focus on learning the basics of grammar when you begin, but once you feel comfortable with that, vocabulary should be a priority. Also, don’t get too caught up with honorifics because apparently even native speakers don’t know how to use them perfectly.
My favorite book on languages is "The Loom of Language", originally published in 1944. On Russian, it advises: "It is therefore impossible to give the reader who wishes to learn Russian any good advice except to take the precaution of being born and brought up in Russia."
What asinine and pointless advice
Thanks for this, been doing duolingo for about a year and a half and happy Ive not given up, the tenses get me also - I hope it will grow on me, I practice about 20 mins daily and wont give up
UK man
Israel T-shirt
In Russia
What a legend
@hristiyan kuruluş diriliş Gutierrez адыдфэс no u
fuck u, russia, uk and israel
@hristiyan kuruluş diriliş Gutierrez адыдфэс
Fuck you disgusting antisemitic
Fuck everything
Hotel? Trivago
I got 99 problems but the grammar aint one
С *Девяноста Девяти Луфтбалуны,* ты знаешь немецкий !
Im finnish and I would tell people not to learn the finnish grammar either. Its so complicated and unrelated to any other language, and you still wont get it right until you just use the language for years. My idea learning any language, vocabulary first. If you know the words youll be able to communicate no matter how bad your grammar is.
@@Byzantia believe me writing is ez. It takes 1-3 days with practice
Thanks
Oh I thought you said, *I AM FINISHED*
When you speak, you don't think grammar before speaking every sentence. We simply develop the sense over time through communication.
It's interesting you say this. When I studied Czech in the Army, the instructors (Czech natives) always said, "Vocab, vocab, vocab" You'll learn grammar later and if you asked them about tenses, they just said learn vocab for now (course was 48 weeks). Like you said, if you ask where the train station is and butcher the grammar but get all the words right, they'll know what you are talking about. So this was very cool to hear from you as that's exactly what our Czech instructors said (32 years ago) :-) Love your videos !!
The thing is however, that is not the standard everyone has.
Many people do not want to "butcher" their target language and sound like a toddler all the time. Many people actually want to have a reasonable command of the language and even sound near-native like.
I guarantee you the vast majority of second-language learner want to actually sound good in their target language, and not just being barely understood.
Did you learn it at DLI
@@Comintern1919 the vast majority of people who learn a language in their teens in school can barely speak it 10 years after
I was sent this video from my Russian translator in Moldova. I had pretty much come to the same conclusion but this was super helpful to knock off any remaining vestiges that remained. Actually, it takes me to a whole new level as I was continuously trying to improve my grammar. So this really helps! Thank you.
I think that "learn A LOT of vocabulary" is a good tip for learning EVERY language. Grammar commes automaticly.
I don't think "the grammar comes automatically" applies to slavic languages. Their grammar is completely different to english or any romance languages (spanish, italian, french, portuguese, etc.)
@@fernandopenia7002 Not, it's fully Latin based. Just the languages you named dropped the latin grammar. The russians didn't.
@@holger_p Lol... What ?
@@mwanikimwaniki6801 He probably means cases. Latin has cases and words change accordingly. Same thing with Slavic languages and in many other language families. Cases exist in Romance languages as well, but other than pronouns, there are no declensions.
But yeah, other than that, Latin and Slavic languages have little in common when it comes to grammar.
@@guillemmoreno5522 😁😉I speak French and Spanish... I know a intermediate level Latin... But I hate the declensions lol😖😖😭😭😭
It’s April 2024 ,After 6 months of learning russian I didn’t see much progress and tonight I saw this vidoe . The next 6 months my focus is gonna be only vocab hope I will come back here after 1 year and check how my russian is doing .
Learn grammar organically, not out of a book. You can't speak the right Grammer by visualising the declension tables while you speak.
I can
@@Maxjeix01 my hat off to you sir
@@xpusostomos lol
thats how i learned englisch. gramma was for exams at schools and universitys but the most important reason in learning a language is to be understood. As long as that works you've done a good job. Never had a russian friend point at me and ask "why tf arent you using the right case?" in fact most of the time any russian native speaker i've met was more shocked + happy that i was able to understand him/her and have a conversation.
Russian: my grammar is a nightmare.
Hungarian: hold my palinka
Языковой Канал LingvostudiA Finnish : hold my polkaa
George Rady LMFAO 😂
LOLLLLLLL!! One of the funniest comments I've ever seen. Kosonom!
I'm a Hungarian, learning Russian rn. I was good at Hungarian grammar at school, but I'd gladly omit the Russian grammar for a while as Bald suggests because speaking a hard language doesn't make learning Russian easier. 😂
@@BenefitCounterbench Well, yes and no... For example as a Hungarian it is much easier to understand most of the grammar, like cases or perfective/imperfective. Try to explain those to a person whose mother tongue is English where there is no such thing as cases. :)
I read, write, speak English. I've learned the vocabulary & phrases from the movies only. I know nothing English grammar. my mother tongue is Arabic fyi. Likewise, I'm learning French language now and I'm using the same method, vocabulary and common phrases. I'm progressing faster than my friends.
you have really good english !
You're absolutely right mate. I always told to my friends, parents and wife, if you want to learn English, better dive into music, films with English subtitles, carefully listen to the native speech, watch yt and only then calibrate everything with grammar. Probably you won't reach the highest points in IELTS but it will surely give you a sense of confidence while travelling or communicating with good ppl abroad.
Great channel! Love your vids! Greetings from Baltic States!
P.S.
Kids never learn grammar! They absorb incoming info like sponge! Adults are forgeting that we are all coming from a place called childhood
Agreed 100% 👍🏻
That's true we learn to talk with imitation not with grammar.
Absolutely great information. I compliment you on your perspective/attitude. As a Frenchman living in the US I sent my daughter to polish her French after four years of learning the language in high school, to France to live with my father's old friends son's home for a month. French grammar is horrible much like Russian. Taking to her via email and feeling her frustration, After 10 days, I told her my secret weapon. You stated it perfectly. Learn nouns and verb and put it together to create conversation and don't worry about the fancy grammar. The couple that had a daughter her age exclaimed that my daughter's personality exploded and that instead of having a timid girl they now had a vibrant person with a wonderful personality. Lots of love
Exactly, nouns and verbs! The rest is just superfluous and takes there joy out of learning a language. When I see my daughter's French homework I want to tear hair out of my bald head in frustration
Thanks for your kind comments,so nice of you mate🙂🌹
So.....your video was followed by a Grammarly commercial lol :)
You dont use adblock?
Terrific! For me, slumped in my computer chair, it was one about posture. Haha.
@@DonegalOverlanding using adblock on UA-cam is unethical my friend, please think about it !
You are totally right!!! for any language forget Grammar at all costs, it's a nightmare and makes things more difficult. Thanks for the Video:)
Thank you! I’m just starting Russian and this will help my education journey greatly!!
I do the same with Polish, vocab vocab vocab. I learn so much quicker and communicate efficiently!
James Burton I think at some point cases will become intuitive.
Zaraz Cię wypróbujemy :))))
Same with me when I learn Serbian. I now understand like 20-30 % of it
Bardzo, obviously for any slavic language
Ugh. I had to move to Poland when I was 17 and learn the language AND pass my high school matriculation exam. It was super difficult. Only thing that made me feel better was that at least it wasn't Russian, which has 1 extra declination than Polish. Effing grammar....
As someone who's studying Japanese, another difficult language, it's encouraging to hear how much just learning lots of vocabulary helps.
Lmao weeb
@@senior.toucan6370 I'm learning Japanese too
Another one of those people who watch anime and start trying Japanese.
I studied Japanese in Japan but not in a school, on the street, in restaurants and in bed with Japanese girls. I filled up notebooks worth of vocabulary and I was totally fine.
@@reallymentalpig1173is there anything wrong with that?
As a Chinese who studied in a UK university for years, I traveled to Turkey last year and stayed in there for seven or eight months. I totally agree with our bald about vocabulary. I have never learned any Turkish grammar, I only learned vocabularies and a few sentences, then I can speak with locals and living in Turkey with no problem at all. Even if I was forming sentences in my imaginations (based on Japanese and English grammar), most people can understand me easily. For example: ‘burada ne zaman kapat?’ (In Turkish grammar English: This place what time to close?) The word ‘Kapat’ means close, however initially I was using ‘Bitti’, which means ‘over’ in English 😂 I was certainly using wrong vocabulary and I don’t even know is my grammar correct at all. However, locals can still understand my Chinese-English-Japanese hybrid Turkish quite easily. And I can also understand them for the most of times, all thanks to learning enough vocabularies.
it's true of learning any language, not only Russian. The grammar fetish needs to go.
Isn't German an exception? I thought Germans were grammar strict
@@doubleutubefan5 have the same question
doubleutubefan5 yes german is quite grammar strict ( i.e they may say wth are u talking about like ben says the russians do not 😂) so you must learn german grammar, however this is not too hard. Just go through all the forms whilst you learn and it becomes easy / almost second nature. I know this as i have been learning german for 6 years ( learned in school for 4 years and the past 2 years been continuing to teach myself for fun) so yeah. It really is not as hard as you think it is . As an native english speaker learning german is quite easy as a lot of the words are connected in their origins to the words we use , making learning vocabulary a matter of mostly just spot the difference / association .
catafalque yes and the locals may be even more impressed with ur accent 😂 I don’t even do that much to maintain my german, just subbed to german youtubers, watched movies in german and listen to german music a bit , even if you don’t really know what they’re saying you can guess and it’s all about learning in a context, completely useless to learn plain vocab as it will mean nothing to you, you will get bored and give up, especially if not in a schooling/ university environment . I’m currently learning russian and i love it, such a beautiful language, but hard to even learn the alphabet 😂
catafalque i wish russian was my native language 😂 i’m trying to learn it , however even the alphabet is difficult to me, it is a very different language to english
I learn English in exact same way. Actually i didn't learn it at all, i just listen and read a lot of all kind of mean comments on youtube. I know literally zero grammar rules in English and get away with it.
I can understand it well and kinda can express myself. And it cost me like zero time, i just enjoy videos and remembering new words. Easy peasy.
Maybe after sometime i'll buy some lessons and learn grammar, but for now i'm okay with what i have.
lAsteriosl i never learned any grammar in english and i speak it fluently. I only Google new words that i dont know
Same here
@Spirit of Vodka Your grammar isn't perfect though, for example `listening you are learning grammar`
@@sweetberries4611
"By ..... listening you are learning grammar."
What's wrong with that?
@@istvanglock7445 that phrase looks correct for me. I learned English the same way. It just feels natural to say something. Sometimes I catch myself using Russian grammar with English words. 😂
I'm russian but complex grammar was the thing that made me stop learing german. I'm really thinking of picking it up again, thank you
I speak Yiddish and I can tell you that that's right , The grammar is not the most imortant part when you start learning a language
but isn't Russian grammar more complicated than German? Shouldn't it be like a step down in difficulty for you?
@Lenny69 シ Russian also has grammatical gender though, so it is not a problem
I couldnt agree more on this. i learned Russian at university for one year as an elective course. They forced us with learning grammar and we barely did any conversation, this resulted in me having a bad note. In the end i learned Russian through your videos, music, movies and meeting russians in person, practising the language. Now i fully undestrand the languge, minus some words.
4:02 lol @ the cat just casually lying on the hood of the car xD
I see it every day in russia
КоТ
cats be like that
@gmail account noooo
@@Diogenesthedog0 ti si kot
-Есть пить?
-Пить есть, есть нет
how do you like this bald and bankrupt ? )
@@dmitry1976yt also this:
- Хочешь колбасы
- Да нет наверное
Aleksandr Trohhatsov hey im wondering if it is okay to drop the word i you he we and so on, like in Spanish. Like you did: so do I say я хочу or can I simply say the verb хочу?
@@bneshel1514 Ne po krestianski eto
@@bneshel1514 Yes, it's completely equivalent "я хочу чаю = хочу чаю" . But second is a slightly informal.
Thank you brother, the grammar made me give up when I was going so well. I'm getting back to it. Your best tip for me personally!