Product Description

This dictionary contains 10,000 Russian words in order of importance starting with the most common and finishing with words that occur about 8 times in a million. All the terms have English translations.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #248403 in Books
• Published on: 1996-06-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 440 pages

From the Back Cover
This dictionary contains 10,000 Russian words in order of importance starting with the most common and finishing with words that occur about 8 times in a million. All the words have English translations, many have examples of usage and the entries include information on stress and grammatical irregularities. There is also a complete alphabetical index to the words in the list.
A learner who knows all or most of these 10,000 words can be regarded as competent in Russian for all normal purposes. The list takes you from a beginner's core vocabulary through to postgraduate level.

Customer Reviews

Very very useful book for university Russian studies!
I used this book revising for my finals, so I had something to focus on. It's always hard to know what vocabulary to learn, but with this book I just carried on until the end of the book, knowing that by the time I reached 10,000 words the chances of meeting that word were just one in a million! It was a great confidence builder.

Good book for understanding what to learn
Bought this book because I was trying to learn Russian, and didn't have any idea which words were most important. Found that many of the words I had learned were rarely used. On the other hand, many of the most common words, I had never heard.

This book then allowed me to focus on words that I needed the most. Since I now live in Russia, (while still using the book) I find that as I learn the more frequently used words, I hear them almost daily. It's been a big help.

On the other hand, it's not a good 'first book' for people who want to learn Russian. You still need grammar, sounds, etc. It's probably better as a second or third book.

Recommended for all serious students
This book is both fascinating and a boon for any serious student of the language.

Some of the words in the earliest sections of the book will be surprising, and some of those that don't appear will also surprise you.

As a learning tool, I can say from personal experience and from the experience of friends, thoroughly learning the high frequency words and working your way through will increase your reading fluency in leaps and bounds.

As a fascinating linguistic study it will be of interest to any Russian learners who wonder how things such as communism, glasnost, perestroika etc have affected the language.

It isn't a book for beginners, it's a bit heavy for anyone just starting out (literally as well as metaphorically ;)) as well as not being especially cheap (though it's good value). This isn't a dictionary in the "I-want-to-know-the-word-for-bread-now" sense, and anyone expecting that would be disappointed. But for any student who wants a structure to vocab learning, or wants to improve reading fluency, etc, it is a godsend and well worth the money.