Learning russian Vocabulary

Language Learning
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Hello, i am currently learning russian, at this point i am a completly beginner. I have some problems with learning Vocabulary, most Memory Methods i know don’t work very well with the vocab because i can’t image or come up with a similar word to remember the vocab. The Vocabulary is also very similar to eachother so linking each Cyrillic letter to a person/action and storing it in a Memory place doesn’t work for me (for journey methods the same). Here is a link with my biggest problem: Pronouns Russian Pronouns - Russian Grammar

any help would be appreciated

ps. i want to find a method for much information so i want something faster than paced repetition

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If you want to learn the language faster than you could learn via e.g. spaced repetition, I expect that you would anyway have a delay before you could really use the language practically.

If you only want to read Russian, and not listen/speak/etc., then that is the exception when using powerful memory techniques might help.

For learning to speak Russian in particular, I’d recommend the following:

  • Learn the alphabet and practise using it until you get really good. You should be able to read Russian text aloud at a normal speed, regardless of whether you understand the meaning.
  • Use flashcards to learn adjectives, verbs, and small connecting words (with, today, never, etc.)
  • Practise using the pronouns in context, using easy sentences where the only difficult feature for you is the pronoun. For example in English, if you want to learn “we”/“us”, you could say e.g. “we eat a sandwich. The sandwich eats us”. Even if doesn’t make sense, it helps your brain understand what to do with those pronouns.
  • For learning pronouns in cases, noun cases, adjective cases, and verb conjugations, you could create a mnemonic for the whole list. I still remember from Latin “-i, -isti, -it; -imus; -istis; -erunt” (perfect tense endings). Okay, that’s not a mnemonic, but placing the 6 together makes them a convenient unit for memorization, whether you used a rote technique, mind palace, or mnemonic.
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I might be jumping to conclusions, but given that you’re talking about individual letters here…

…that’s more of a precondition than a first step really. So if you are still using mnemonics for the letters, then maybe take a weekend to get down the alphabet first. There’s just too much going on in your head otherwise if you’re trying to learn vocabulary whilst still learning your ABCs so to speak.

What exactly is it that makes the personal pronouns difficult for you? It really shouldn’t be the fact that…

…I mean that’s always true if you look at different cases for m/f/(n) pronouns in Germanic, Romance, or Slavic languages. In that sense Russian is no harder than any other foreign language you could learn. Coming back to the above point of, is it maybe that you still need more work on the alphabet itself, so that you can concentrate on what you really want to learn.

Given that you know German, it really shouldn’t be a problem with understanding the grammatical concept here, even though Russian has two more cases. You’re in a much better position than having English or French as your native language.

I think this is a good point for you to reflect upon and see what it is you’re trying to learn here. Latin is a dead language and in school we teach it more similar to a science class than to a living language class. So, you can obviously find tv shows and movies in Russian (which is not true for Latin) and learn it in a more natural way.

Just like in German, not all cases are equally likely to occur and just by listening to tv shows, even if you don’t understand much yet you’ll develop much more of a “natural ear” for the important cases. Also, great is the enemy of good, so if you just want to learn the language to communicate and not pass a test in school, think about how much trouble German speakers have with their cases:

Das ist Peters Auto.
Das ist Peter sein Auto.
Das ist das Auto von Peter.

Obviously, they’re all the same sentence, but grammatically only the first one is really correct. This is true for speakers of many language, so I’d really go 80/20 here and once you got the basics down start relying on listening to spoken Russian on tv or what you can read in magazines; rather than spending time with a grammar book.

Bottom line, make sure you got the alphabet down first. Understand the grammatical concept by ways of the table you’ve linked to but learn the language in context rather than a grammar table or word endings, which is also a point that Daniel already made…

…so listen, listen, listen. Tv shows, movies, YouTube, etc… people actually speak this language without thinking about the grammar all day. Just listen a lot until you can also say that “this sounds correct” rather than “this is the rule for this case”.

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thanks for your advice

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Native Russian speaker here, and it’s quite a challenge you’ve got ahead of you. I’d suggest coming up with very silly and funny example sentences for each pronoun case. Silliness sticks in the mind very very well.