All the cases
22 April 2026 09:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI can't believe that after delaying the introduction of *any* mention of noun case-endings at all until Lesson 9 (and anything more complicated than the accusative and prepositional cases, which the other book covers in the very first lesson, until *after* dealing with verbs of motion!) the 1960s Penguin Russian course then proceeds to hit you with all the plural cases at once -- plus all the numerals from 1 to 100 in addition -- to be memorised in the course of a single lesson :-O
However, having now covered those, or at least the endings that are common across pretty much all genders (I hadn't even remembered that masculine, feminine and neuter are basically identical in the plural in everything except the genitive case), I can at least progress to the very first chapter of my *1930s* Russian drill-book! This begins optimistically When the student feels that he has a general grasp of the principles of declension, he should attempt to explain to himself the *reasons* for the following noun-forms[...] (Frankly, the first stage of learning the language must inevitably be a little tedious..) and gives you page after page of nouns to classify as "Masculine Hard Genitive", "Feminine Soft Accusative (plural)" etc., i.e. back to the public-school days of chanting your Latin declensions as an first step ;-)
I wonder what actual modern course-books look like... (it's not quite the DuoLingo approach!)
Of course it's ridiculous to be doing this after a year's worth of intensive Russian listening practice, multiple films, and a whole load of fairly complex song translations, but I'm afraid I do actually need the formal grammar, and it hasn't painlessly inserted itself into my brain by means of mere passive exposure, toddler-fashion...
However, having now covered those, or at least the endings that are common across pretty much all genders (I hadn't even remembered that masculine, feminine and neuter are basically identical in the plural in everything except the genitive case), I can at least progress to the very first chapter of my *1930s* Russian drill-book! This begins optimistically When the student feels that he has a general grasp of the principles of declension, he should attempt to explain to himself the *reasons* for the following noun-forms[...] (Frankly, the first stage of learning the language must inevitably be a little tedious..) and gives you page after page of nouns to classify as "Masculine Hard Genitive", "Feminine Soft Accusative (plural)" etc., i.e. back to the public-school days of chanting your Latin declensions as an first step ;-)
I wonder what actual modern course-books look like... (it's not quite the DuoLingo approach!)
Of course it's ridiculous to be doing this after a year's worth of intensive Russian listening practice, multiple films, and a whole load of fairly complex song translations, but I'm afraid I do actually need the formal grammar, and it hasn't painlessly inserted itself into my brain by means of mere passive exposure, toddler-fashion...
no subject
Date: 2026-04-23 02:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-04-23 07:03 pm (UTC)Although come to think of it Olga, my neighbour in orchestra rehearsals, is actually Russian (and has helped me with obscure idioms a couple of times, e.g. Всегда семь футов кораблю) But I would be far too embarrassed to ask her for Russian conversation classes precisely because I do know her personally in another context and we normally converse in fluent English, which makes stumbling around in pidgin Russian all the more ridiculous... (and raises the inevitable question of 'why do you want to improve your ability in Russian', which is an issue that I don't really want to talk to her about!)
I've just realised *why* the texbook has decided to do plurals and numerals all in the same chapter; on account of the numerals (aarrghh). Although I actually have managed to passively absorb Много лет, семь часов, пять рублей etc... it's just all the counting of the other things (including, in this chaper, lions, tigers and apes!)
Тысяча чертей :-D
I'm afraid one really does simply have to hear the numbers again and again in lots of combinations until it all sounds normal. Unfortunately while I have been hearing them -- including vast numbers of dates, which I nonetheless still struggle to decipher -- they clearly haven't been sinking in very well.