Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #144099 in Books
• Published on: 2000-02-24
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 214 pages

Synopsis
Aiming to provide an all-round and accessible description of the language, this book gives a presentation of grammar as an intellectual exercise and lots of drills and exercises which are intended to be stimulating and interesting. The best of the language, namely extracts from works of many of its inimitable writers, is used among much else: Pushkin, Gogol', Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Bulgakov, Mandel'shtam, not to forgoet Kharms. The overriding aim is to set everything in an entertaining, real, and enlightening historical, cultural and social context - to give learners what they actually want to know about Russian (but are usually afriad to admit to). It also sets out to describe everything in such a way that the dread moment in so many books when everything becomes incomprehensible simply doesn't happen here. "Learn Russian" will not teach you how to buy an ice-cream or ask direction to the Kremlin but it will give anyone the opportunity to read some of Russia's greatest literature in the original along with learning something of the historical, cultural and social context.

Customer Reviews

In at the deep end
I've borrowed this from the library, and intend to buy it.

The pace of many language books is very slow indeed. This book assumes you've a little dedication and don't mind a challenge, and gets straight to business. Resources like Ruslan Russian 1 (which achieves its own aims with aplomb) might aim to have you exchanging polite greetings and asking directions by the end of the book. But I find it inspiring that Ian Press's small, dense work aims to have you reading Pushkin by the end.

I knocked a star off the rating for two reasons -- one, because many people will prefer a less ambitious pace, and two, because I've not given it the attention it deserves yet, so I can't promise you it works!

Learning Russian
Yeah, this is an amazing book, it teaches you all about grammar and stuff. If someone asked me if i would recommend it. I would say "yes". Its quite funny in places 2

peace

Covers a lot..
I think this book provides a great deal of information on the Russian language but that is perhaps where it fails; it tries to pack far too much into each chapter. I also found that the explanations on using verb and noun endings was far too scholary and would be difficult to digest if you haven't already studied a similar language. On the other hand, the book does provide a very interesting insight into Russian culture, history and literature and is certainly well written from that point of view.
If you have already studied a language and have a good knowledge of language-learning terminology then this book will be a great asset to studying Russian. However, if you have not learnt a language before, try another book which is a little less concentrated.