Conversational Russian: In 20 Lessons

If you are serious about learning a language, and not just phrases, you must practice. More comprehensive than a typical audio course, and much cheaper & more convenient than a software package, this book serves as a handy study aid. Yes the material is dated (pretty much unchanged from the 50's), and the typography is a mess. You would be nuts if you tried to learn Russian from this book alone. But for $10 you get a cornucopia of study material. Repetition, variation, and drills. And repetition. The approach to grammar is unique: when a new grammatical form is encountered, it is cross-referenced to one of the thousand or so endnotes that expound (in great detail) on the principle at issue. These endnotes comprise about a third of the book. Nice idea, but it makes the book much harder to use as a reference. (For reference purposes, get Kemple's Russian grammatica.) The book would be infinitely more useful if Cortina Languages made the audio available as downloadable MP3's. There is a card to mail in & order phonograph records, but I didn't actually try it. They don't have it on the website so I doubt it is available. As it is though, $10 is worth it just as a study aid.

Definitely a vintage book,Stalingrad is mentioned in one of the dialogues but valuable none the less.It starts off with simple conversations with english side by side with the Russian for ease of use.Each chapter concentrates on a grammar point which is illustated with many example sentences incorporating the relevant structures.I find this method superior for language learning as it enables you to assimilate by example rather than intellectual analysis which I believe is a barrier to fluency in any language.If you are studying Russian then audio from another course is essential, this book would be an useful to addition that.

Perhaps the print seems spartan, but the examples in this book are great and so numerous.I especially like the grammar section in the back. You can find numerous stock phrases that can be memorized for various conversations you may anticipate:e.g the section on prepositions "po" and "v" alone has instantly useable examples (pp 302-303) 'po ponedelnikam' 'on Mondays' 'v vremya voini' 'during the war' 'vo vremya' 'on time' 'po moemy mneniyu' 'in my opinion' 'v ety noch' 'on that night' 'v etom sluchae' 'in this case'These are just a few of them I thought off the top of my head.The line drawings seem dull but on closer observation they are authentic if minimalist views of Soviet/Russian life which test your knowledge of the culture.Check out the equestrian statue of Peter the Great (p. 31) Can you recognize the line to Lenin's Tomb? (p. 192) The spire of one of the Stalin-era skyscrapers of Moscow State University? (p. 135) The mezzanine of the Gosudarstvennii Universalnii Magazin (p. 140)Before I go to a party with Russian friends I memorize various phrases. My knowledge of the language has noticeably improved.For around $10 this volume is a bargain!

I probably would have given this book four stars, but I felt the need to make up for the previous reviewer's one star. This really IS a good book - The type is a little bit hard to read but if one is familiar with the Cyrillic letters it will not be hard. I'm sure with reading glasses you'd have no trouble. This book basically teaches in several ways. It has a dialog or conversation at the beginning of each lesson, and gives the English translation. Then, it has "Exercises," where an example is given of a type of sentence and then more sentences are given in just Russian. These are done at an easy pace, so it not hard to understand them. Finally, for the last third of the book there is a grammar reference, which is VERY helpful - The lessons have footnotes pointing to these grammar notes. All in all, this book is fairly, well, textual (not many pictures!), but if you're commited to learning more than just "traveler's" Russian, definitely check out this book!