This is the first question I get when I talk with a native speaker of Russian, like I must be out of my mind to waste my time learning Russian when I know English. I listed my personal reasons for starting to learn Russian in my first post. But beyond that, I really like what it does for my brain. Sure, it’s hard. I have a full-time job. I have a 90 minute class three times a week. I end up putting in 15-20 hours of study every week, most of it on the weekends because of the daily life of coming home, cooking dinner, etc. I try to get in an hour or more of study in the evening, but by then my brain is shutting down and I just want to watch Iron Chef and relax. I just can’t stay up late doing homework anymore. :-)
But it’s fun to be obsessed about something, to fall in love with it. You can absolutely justify spending $60 to get that cool Russian frequency dictionary (which you can find described on my recommended books page), because, well…you just NEED it! I also have a personal theory that keeping your brain active helps stave off things like Alzheimer’s. I don’t know if there’s any foundation for that idea, but after watching my Dad die of Alzheimer’s, I’m activating as many brain cells as I can if that helps keep things ship shape, brain cell wise.
If anyone ever happens to read this blog (I suppose I’ll have to actually advertise it before that will happen), I’d be interested to hear why you are studying Russian, or any other language for that matter.
здравствуйте!
I’m sam. 18 years old. i just started to learn russian. and very hapy that i found some useful webpages. include your blog :)
I hope I can able to learn more from other russian learners. i think i will also write my Russian learning progress in my personal blog.
Basically, i like to learn languages (very interesting and fun). I learn English, as well as deutsch. And now i just start to learn Russian. Able to understand russian will be very cool! i can watch russian movie and maybe read russian novel someday. i realize when i know more languages i get more knowledge and info. And, now i know from you that it can exercise our brain! wow!
Hey I just came across your blog when I googled something along the lines of “russian translation novels”. I’ve only read a few of your posts but I could relate pretty much everything I’ve read, down to the struggle of turning off the food network to do something productive lol. :P But I’ve been studying Russian for 4 years, studied in moscow for three months and just received my degree in Russian. However, I’ve now found myself not using it and can just feel the Russian area of my brain shrinking by the day and its horrible! But anyway… I was glad to see your enthusiasm on the subject and hope that your journey towards learning Russian is going well. You have a lot of good info on here from what I see and will probably be using your site as a reference while I try to maintain, preserve and build on what Russian I have!