I fear that Robert Crampton is doing this the hard way:
I have spent half an hour each day for the past two weeks trying to learn Russian. I’m finding it extraordinarily painful, particularly the alphabet, in which our P letter is their R sound, their R is backwards and means ya, ya is one of five different letters denoting a Y noise, N is P, B is V, C is SS and the letter H is actually N, while the sound H doesn’t exist as such but is replaced by a wide variety of very finely delineated hissing and spitting. Friends keep saying to me, that looks impossible, why are you doing it? Here’s what I reply.
Forget, for a start, the alphabet. Makes it all far too complicated, concentrate only on the sounds. Then, you only need a few words. Remember that Muscovites are the cultured ones, so that moloko (milk) is correctly pronounced malako, whereas only rubes from the Volga say moloka. A little bit is "choot, choot", making sure to "t" the t. Finally, get the word for ice cream correct. Morozhenue (moro-jen-you-eh).
At this point everyone will assume that you are indeed a cultured Muscovite and go back to speaking English.
For bonus points you can learn a few numbers: adin, dva, tree, cheteree and then adinatsat, dvatsit, threenatsit, cheterinatsit and then devsti etc but forty becomes sorok.
Note, not the same root as four or fourteen. Nor four hundred, nor four thousand, it reappears again at forty thousand. This is because in olden times counting went 37, 38, 39, many. Knowing that will mark you out as being on a par with Professors of Languages.
You don’t actually need any more and you certainly don’t want to learn enough of the language to discuss Gogol or Dostoevsky in the original: it’s impolite to even think of doing that in English, let alone any other language.
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