Englishman walks through Belarusian city with an israel t shirt on talking about the russian language.

“Russian language teachers hate him!”

As a native Russian speaker I agree about focusing on vocab. The language is very flexible. The different ends you put on most words are the same, but like he said there are a few. You can talk like Yoda and sound normal in Russia

Only a British lady got mad at me for asking for a tissue instead of napkin. Russian speakers really don't care about grammar when talking to foreigners. Maybe if you were to meet a PHD in linguistics and Russian literature... Those guys get upset, the only thing they know in life is grammar 😆🤣

True that! A foreigner that knows perfect grammar is spy!

"There's one reason russian is considered difficult to learn, and that reason is... Russian Grandma."

Me as a Czech, I have absolutely no problem to learn russian grammar...It's very similar to what we use in the Czech Republic :) That's one of the good things, when you are a native slavic language speaker, then you will find all the other european languages very easy and not that much complicated. Not counting hungarian, finnish, basque though :)

Can we take a moment to appreciate how wonderful and cosy residential area he is walking thru

I am a retired 76 year-old and this guy reminds me of the years I spent at school learning Russian. After all that time, the only thing that remains with me is the vocabulary, and I can more-or-less follow the conversations. Which proves his point. For all sorts of reasons over the years, I have studied and lived with French, Spanish, Arabic and Afrikaans, all in addition to the Russian, and I think the main lessons have been: 1. Not knowing the right word will kill a conversation, while not knowing the grammar adds to your attraction as a foreigner. 2. No-one composes a new sentence from scratch - it’s all mostly cliches. If you are tying yourself in knots trying to work out the grammar of a sentence, you are not speaking the language as a native as they mostly avoid complicated constructions. Just learn the cliches and exclamations and you will be right 90% of the time. If you learn to say some quotations, words of songs or proverbs reasonably well, no-one will know how much you know of the language. 3. Don’t be afraid - open your mouth and speak! Hesitate, mumble and stutter if you must, but try to keep going. In the end you will get the rhythm of the language, and once you have that, the words will sort themselves out. Repeat what people say to you all the time - always repeat the question. 4. Use your body to supplement your words: point, make faces, act out the point you are trying to make. It’s a bit like doing your own sign-language while you talk, and it helps people understand you better.

I speak england. You undestands I?

Another top tip here that may help the discouraged...I've been living in Ukraine, Russian-speaking part - for 12 years. I'm a Brit. Me Russian is more than conversational but definitely not 'accurate'. I've not studied it academically but I did casually study it to some extent, early doors when I moved over. What I'd say is that the extent to which you need to worry about grammar depends on your aim and your 'pride' in not sounding weird, but mostly to avoid ambiguity. In Russian the ending changes help to pin point precise meaning so without changing them, or by changing them wrongly, it can sometimes cause ambiguity - but mostly not, since the context and accompanying gesticulations are usually enough to clear that up! But for example they are used to distinguish between object and subject in a sentence and if you don't do it, it makes it difficult for them to get what you mean. The good news is that there are some aspects of Russian that are easier than English - no articles, fewer tenses, largely phonetic and basically no fixation with the verb 'to be' most of the time. Also they have a lot of borrowed words from French, German, Latin/Greek which can help out. If you learn the alphabet, not difficult as Bald says here, it's surprising how many words you'll recognise when you start reading directions, public notices and so on. The words for things like toilet, bus, shower, hotel room, telephone, cafe, coffee, tea, sugar and so on will all be familiar to speakers of European languages. The bigger issue, if you have the vocab you need, is the pronunciation - by which I'm specifically referring to the stressed syllable. This is close to critical. Getting this wrong renders your language very difficult to understand, as it does in English actually. But my top tip vis a vis the endings, once you're reasonably confident you have the right word and, hopefully, the right stress, is to mumble! I'm not kidding! When I started mumbling in the shops, early doors, rather than trying to articulate perfectly, the number of times I had to repeat myself dropped dramatically! Just let the ending of the word tale off into the ether and they'll fill in the gaps in their mind! That's another slight issue with the way foreign languages are taught...there's a kind of 'model' pronunciation that's held up as sacrosanct but actually that's not how people speak!

Second language acquisition and pedagogy expert here: don't listen to Ben! That's right, don't just listen - do! He's totally right. We don't learn grammar of our mother tongue explicitly, we learn phrases and vocabulary patterns which in turn teaches us the grammar implicitly. We learn to read through listening and copying, none of this phonics bollocks. The only time you need to learn grammar explicitly is if you need to pass a test, or are merely learning ABOUT a language. Communication is the door to new languages. Vocabulary is the key that opens the door.

I am Russian, and I approve this message!

I am a native Russian. And I approve it. Hi is right. Listen to him guys.

not gonna lie, this is what I needed to hear. I've been "trying" to learn languages for probably 20 years now, since I was 10, and never made any substantial progress because I always give up w hen it comes to grammar rules. Vocab is fun, and this has made me think I might try again.

"The luxury of moving to Belarus" Only Bald would describe that as a luxury lol

All russian kids after watching the video: "I knew all of this grammar stuff is pointless!"

Well said! Living in Uzbekistan my broken Russian, some key phrases, and an ever growing vocabulary has gotten me quite far. I knew zero when I first arrived. Trying to use grammar slows me down and, honestly, feels like a roll of the dice when choosing the right ending....people mumble the endings all the time anyway.

Thank you!!! This is awesome, Im learning or relearning (it's been 27 years since Ive spoken a lick of Russian). I've been looking for people to talk Russian to..:D Watching your videos have been such an amazing help. i find myself repeating what you're saying to people that you speak to, and trying to retain what I hear.

Why in hell am I watching this being a native Russian speaker😂

2:56 - _"So guys, if you want to learn russian, especially in the first year, forget grandma. Forget grandma!"_ 😂😂😂

Great video, you are a real inspiration. I think often people learning another language focus too much on getting things perfect meanwhile the locals understand you perfectly even when one makes full of mistakes in grammar. Love your videos by the way.

As a Greek speaker I can confirm it's true. The Greek and the Russian grammar is almost the same, if you say "Θέλω ενα μπύρα" instead of "θέλω μια μπύρα" people are gonna understand and frankly they are gonna be impressed that you speak any Greek at all.

He has a point. Take English as an example. “The boy throws the ball” is the proper way, but if you’re not a native English speaker or starting to learn English, saying “boy throw ball” would be perfectly understood. Language interpretation comes down to contextual factors as well. In my native language of Afrikaans, we have a saying that roughly translates to “A good listener only needs half a word”, and that really rings true when someone is speaking a broken language.

- Don't study Russian grammar - Хорошо, не буду

I've noticed that Russian speakers LOVE to hear people trying to speak their language and are always super supportive and happy to help.. It seems the worse you are the more smiley and helpful they become. Unlike some...Naming no names.... THE FRENCH

The only reason i come to this video is to read the newest comments.

I’m from Scotland Plan is learn Russian Go to Russia and drink with the locals 5year plan

you ever just walk around wearing a shirt with the Israeli flag and nothing else?

There's probably a slim chance you'll see this.. but your right I have story. So beginning of 2019. I started to have health problems. I switched careers. It gave me more time to study. I'm a strange dude(if you couldn't tell by the Handle) but I study things in depth. Well one day, I was searching the sea of videos on KZfaq and found your Moldova video. I thought it was hilarious. I subscribed. I subscribed to other Russian like channels or Slavic like channels. Note this is the beginning of 2019 And fell in love with the culture and the language. By 2021 between your channel,Sam's Russian adventures, Ushanka show, Shieh, NFKRZ, Learn Russian( what is crazy she moved to my city from Russia as a teacher in university like a few miles away), Russian Criminal and few other channels ... I learned the basics of Russian. I took to the internet, applied myself Now in 2022 I can understand most Russian. Read and write it if I try. It's because of you. Now I know I may never leave this rock known as Colorado because of my health. But because of you man, I've seen places I can never see in person. I learned about a culture, culturally I'm not supposed to. Growing up where I lived my step дедушка would blame everything on all в Советы. Бенджамин... спасибо брат seriously thank you. Know your appreciated . When you get old know you helped break stigmas, and helped people learn, and helped people feel alive vicariously through your videos and travels.

I forgot this video and came across it again today just at the right time. You may have single handedly changed my path with Russian language learning! 🙌🏾 ⚡️ thank you

As someone who's studying Japanese, another difficult language, it's encouraging to hear how much just learning lots of vocabulary helps.

For me there is just one rule when learning a language. "Do it like a baby". Listen to music, watch movies listen to people and try to repeat what they said. This way you will be able to use grammar more intuitively and it'll work out just fine. (thats how i learned english and russian. I don't know anything about english grammar btw. and i'm austrian!)

[bumps into a group of Russians while exiting a restaurant] Mr Bald: -Извинитесь!

I know how you feel. I attended the Defense Language Institute in Monterey in order to learn German. I graduated, but it was the hardest year of my life. Once I left there and was sent to Germany I found that my language skills progressed very quickly when I stopped obsessing about German grammar and concentrated on speaking and listening.

I've been learning Russian for two years now . I've got to say he makes an excellent point here. In the beginning when I started learning , I didn't really understand what I was doing. I spent a lot of time trying to understand the case systems , it was EXTREMELY slow progress. Last year I changed my approach , I thought I am going to focus on listening and repeating. I started doing Pimsluer which is an audio course , now I have progressed on to Glossika which is a listening and repeating course. I also use Anki for vocabulary , my Russian is still a little patchy but I can now watch Russian movies and serials and understand most or all of it. I can have conversations with natives. Obviously I am still learning I have some big holes in my vocabulary but I am very happy now I can finally understand what my Russian teacher is saying 99 percent of the time , and I can converse with natives without using English. If I would have continued trying to just study grammar , I would still be at an extremely basic level. Russian grammar is very difficult for foreign learners. I totally agree with Bald here that grammar is what slows you down . When you take the focus from grammar and move it onto vocabulary and actually using the language , your confidence grows and you can actually enjoy using the language in real life. Great video Mr Bald and Bankrupt , thanks for the tip watching this video helped me so much.

This is actually the proper way to learn a language. Think about it... Do 5 year old children know grammar?

As my tutor said about Russian Grammar: There are always exceptions in grammar, and then there are even more exceptions for those exceptions.

Best tip ever, I totally agree with you Bald ! I never learned further than how to conjugate in Present, Past and Future and it works perfectly fine, I'm able to travel anywhere in Russia and being understood mostly tanks to vocabulary and practice. Gramar will come with the time and there is no need to waste years being stuck on it and missing the practice and the vocabulary you could learn instead. Keep up the great videos, I watch them a lot now that I can't visit my favorite post soviet countries anymore and it makes me feel like almost there. Cheers from France !

Person: English T-shirt: Israel Country: Belarus Language: Russian Hotel: Trivago

I am fluent in both Russian and English language and I would give you a pass as a gopnik

Yes. If you don't know grammar we realize that you are a foreigner. But we will understand 95% of what you say)) grammar just allows you to put words wherever you want and not to depend on sequence of words in your sentence.

I do not know Russian. Now after seeing this for some reason you inspired me to learn it. Thank you!

Thanks for the tip and nice shirt btw!! I've always thought this about the other languages I've learned when asked by others about them. Ignore some or all of the grammar rules and just go for it by learning vocabulary. You'll hear natives speaking it properly and will connect the dots with grammar later. Natives will get the idea of what your saying, help you out and just appreciate they can converse with you.

that is how kids learn a language. they start with words.

This is why the Spanish education system in the US doesn’t teach you anything. 4 years I spent focused on grammar and was left with no vocabulary, and I could never carry a conversation despite knowing the grammar perfectly

This is honestly smart advice that I am gonna use. Thanks for the good input

Thanks for this, been doing duolingo for about a year and a half and happy Ive not given up, the tenses get me also - I hope it will grow on me, I practice about 20 mins daily and wont give up

4:02 cat on the hood of BMW

As an English teacher, I totally agree with Mr Bald. The modern style of language teaching emphasises learning vocab. Additionally, fluency is more important than accuracy. Hence, use the language to the best of your ability and have fun and don't be afraid to make mistakes. Accuracy comes gradually and naturally. :) By the way: In class, I use the exciting videos of Mr Bald frequently as the content motivates my students to learn English.

As a Chinese who studied in a UK university for years, I traveled to Turkey last year and stayed in there for seven or eight months. I totally agree with our bald about vocabulary. I have never learned any Turkish grammar, I only learned vocabularies and a few sentences, then I can speak with locals and living in Turkey with no problem at all. Even if I was forming sentences in my imaginations (based on Japanese and English grammar), most people can understand me easily. For example: ‘burada ne zaman kapat?’ (In Turkish grammar English: This place what time to close?) The word ‘Kapat’ means close, however initially I was using ‘Bitti’, which means ‘over’ in English 😂 I was certainly using wrong vocabulary and I don’t even know is my grammar correct at all. However, locals can still understand my Chinese-English-Japanese hybrid Turkish quite easily. And I can also understand them for the most of times, all thanks to learning enough vocabularies.

I couldnt agree more on this. i learned Russian at university for one year as an elective course. They forced us with learning grammar and we barely did any conversation, this resulted in me having a bad note. In the end i learned Russian through your videos, music, movies and meeting russians in person, practising the language. Now i fully undestrand the languge, minus some words.

That Israeli flag shirt has triggered the internet.

You pretty much explained why my sister took 4 years of Spanish in high school but only knows 2 words today. Language teachers should take note from Bald!

I learned GCSE Russian at night school at age 42. Then I went on to A Level Russian. It was all grammar and exam and I gave up! I just wanted the joy of learning Russian as I loved the language, culture and people. That was over 20 years ago. How I wish I had known this advice then! Might give it a go again…….

You are totally right!!! for any language forget Grammar at all costs, it's a nightmare and makes things more difficult. Thanks for the Video:)

This is precisely how i actually learned English. I'm a 20 year old kid from Bulgaria, which learned fluent English by himself, only by using in the internet and interacting with natives, i simply hated English grammar in school and i excelled in vocabulary. I now work in a fancy tea place where i have the opportunity to speak to a wideeeeee range of foreigner most of which compliment me on my vocabulary. I don't know why what i say works, but i'm sure as hell it does.

This sounds funny to us, but its a no problem, really. You dont need grammar, true.

i literally clicked on a russian vocab video and saw this in the recommended, lol, m glad someone said it, i spend hours looking at grammar pages and get nothing out of it but when i learn vocab i feel like im making progress and it makes me want to actually keep going

This is how I learned Chinese as well as an American girl. I have never once studied grammar - I've just listened and listened and listened to Chinese people speak for years and years. I still don't fully "get" the grammar. I couldn't describe how to form a sentence. But I can speak quite well and Chinese people understand me. So all is well in my grammarless world!

That t-shirt is a good way to guard against KZfaq bans these days.

Or date a Russian. Personally, that's how I learned German by dating germans.

Thank you so much for this. I hit a huge road block in my learning of the Russian language and grammar is the reason.

I've been learning russian for a year now, so glad I just found your channel! I agree completely hahaha

I fully agree to this. As a Russian this is exactly how I learned English. Just practice, talk to other people, watch movies - the point is sooner or later you will start picking up key linguistic patterns in how a set language works.

As a language teacher myself, I can honestly say you're totally right! That's not to belittle (the importance of) grammar, it's to emphasize the value of vocabulary where communication for its own sake is concerned.

Absolutely agree! this is my experience with German, though I'd like to gain more experience travelling and meeting natives. Cool shirt btw, love from Israel :)

Thank you for the tip! You made me realise how to learn languages faster. 👍👍👍

I also made immense progress when I stopped wasting time learning about the rules of the language and just observed how it was used in interesting stories.

As a speaker of SEVEN languages, I can only say ... OH, HELL YESSSSSSSSS!!!! I learned Polish, & followed the EXACT SAME RULE!!!

that's the most brilliant video and the best advice on learning a foreign language. Bald's experience and advices to focus on vocabulary is exactly what I tell to anyone who is asking what is the best way to master English.

Thanks for the tip, I'm willing to learn to learn Russian since we get a good deal of Russian speaking truckdrivers here and they don't give a hoot about correct spelling or grammar, only that you're willing to be helpfull :-) It will make my life a bit easier. And I gave your channel a sub while I was there ;-)

Yes! That's absolutely true, (as a Russian teacher) I can say that 90%of the lesson concentrating on the lexical structure will really do! Then, students start intuitively use the right grammar forms and progress much faster.💪

So.....your video was followed by a Grammarly commercial lol :)

I could not wait any longer. For all sorts of reasons I just had to start learning Russian. I started 2 weeks ago. What a beautiful language but what a nightmare. Thank you for this tip Ben, it will change the way I learn. I am Dutch myself. When someone from abroad tries to talk Dutch with me I appreciate the effort much more than to correct him / her on their mistakes. Learning a language is NOT an easy task. For sure the Russians know their language is difficult especially when you come from a language which is not in the Slavic family of languages (Polish, Ukrainian, Serbian). So I will drop to understand the grammar. Thanks Ben and stay healthy.

great video!!! He is right!!! I'm a native Russian speaker (Ukrainian as well) and my approach in learning languages is pretty close to this one, but also I would recommend to read a lot of books. Here is how I study German. I took one book, read it, anther book, read it and so on. And the most important part here is google translater. I open two windows and I copy a pice of text then past it in one of the windows and I click on every single word that I don't know and the second window comes to use when google doesn't want to give me the meaning of a word by clicking on it. Then I copy the word and past it in the second. After the third or forth book the progress will be huge!!! By reading in a such way you accumulate language and see the way this language works in first hand. If you come across a word the second or third time you don't need to click on it any more 'cause you already know it! Then you see grammar structures and context that they are put in what gives you tremendous benefit for you open grammar rules and be like "aha, here it is, here how it works" even if you memorize grammar in the beginning that's not bad , I also did it, and even if you forget it never mind you recall it when you will be listening or reading something... this method I call like collecting threads and after some period of time you will be able to knit your own sweater!!! Also very benifitial thing is trying to memorize no matter what it might be, rules or words or whatever else, just try and don't pursuite the result!!! Всем фарту !!!)))

As a Russian native speaker I need to say - THAT IS 146% TRUE! I never learnt Russian grammar I just memorise all that shit (took 10 year though )

This works! This is how I’ve learned English. I’ve abandoned 4y of grammar and started to learn the vocabulary. I’ve also learned to not focus on the single word, but to describe if i can’t remember it. Keeps conversations fluent. Next thing I’ve learned to use future, present and past so I could describe something on the timeline. 20y later I watch movies in english and live in California. American girlfriend/wife helped the progress. I think Mr. Bald would agree 😁

I've been struggling with the grammar so much. It almost put me off to learn since I just don't progress that fast. Going to try this. Cheers

Wow this was actually really motivating and helpful. Makes me want to learn the language.

Yep. You've nailed it. I majored in Russian, tortured myself over hideous grammar. Hated it, but loved reading books, translating songs, watching films. Just like adults can understand and have a conversation with a child learning their own language (but isn't perfect in his/her grammar), they can understand a foreign person learning and using new vocabulary, even if it's not perfect. I rarely study grammar in any language I am learning. It kills the joy. I prefer to pick it up through listening, observing and practicing :) I worked in a Russian language library (in the U.S.). Russians are happy to correct grammar in the middle of a conversation :)

After months of learning Russian and feeling discouraged halfway through it, now I feel motivated to continue learning Russian. When it comes to Russian grammar and cases, my mind goes blank.

Think the key is being comfortable having sloppy grammer. You are confident and very social, and were willing to sound silly or risk looking "stupid" for not having perfect grammer. Many people probably fear this and waste time trying to be perfect instead of embracing imperfection, wich would make them learn quicker.

This is an interesting idea. Im going to try this out starting today!

You're completely right. In the 1980's, I made a three years study of Russian language. The teacher taught us every single grammar rule. I have the diploma and can't speak a word of Russian. I envy your perfect Russian.

yeah man, your Russian is very good, I'm really amazed not every foreigner speaks Russian that well as you !

When you speak, you don't think grammar before speaking every sentence. We simply develop the sense over time through communication.

totally agree with this man... I started taking Russian but my teacher was obsessed with grammar - felt like we weren't getting anywhere...

I'm Portuguese and my accent is perfect a Russian told me that the Portuguese and Russian have very similar pronounce, even culturaly I felt at home in San Peterborough. Love from Portugal

Russian: my grammar is a nightmare. Hungarian: hold my palinka

This is good stuff. You’re absolutely right!

4:02 lol @ the cat just casually lying on the hood of the car xD

My favorite book on languages is "The Loom of Language", originally published in 1944. On Russian, it advises: "It is therefore impossible to give the reader who wishes to learn Russian any good advice except to take the precaution of being born and brought up in Russia."

I read, write, speak English. I've learned the vocabulary & phrases from the movies only. I know nothing English grammar. my mother tongue is Arabic fyi. Likewise, I'm learning French language now and I'm using the same method, vocabulary and common phrases. I'm progressing faster than my friends.

Got to agree with you - this is my experience with other languages. I also lost out a bit because I tried to start learning Russian in the nineties when Russian classes started evaporating with the end of the Cold War.

Nearly a year ago, last November, I found this video and watched it, and it changed my entire life. I decided to be like, "You know what? Let's try this." with the Russian language, because I felt like i needed to give it a try. I wanted to be able to say that I tried it, then probably just live as I did before. But that's not what happened. I ended up practicing Russian for about a month and a half before that died off, but not before I decided to re-pick up my Spanish because I had done it in high school. I had forgotten most of my Spanish, but I was too hooked on language learning to care. Needless to say, because of this video, I ended up trying out those two languages along with 15 others, for a grand total of 17. I'm still shocked at how a single video did this for me. I tried to learn Russian maybe 3-4 times, and it's never picked up, but my Spanish went flying out the roof. Not even a year since I started back up, and my understanding of it is phenomenal. I just passed the fifth checkpoint test 30 minutes ago! (And I understood it way better than the fourth one!) I also started to pick up skills in reading Asian languages, so we'll see what comes of that. All this while in engineering college. (Currently in my third year) The moral of the story is, even if you think you know you aren't a language person, try a language out for a week at least, and have fun with it. At least be able to say you tried it. And just maybe something great will happen.

I hope this guy makes more videos on learning languages, he seems to do it so easily

Thanks for the great advice Balders. BIG help.

I truly aspire to learn as many languages as I can before I kick the bucket, but I've long been avoiding Russian and Japanese (of the languages on my shortlist. -ninja edit). Lately, I've been consumed with the thought of trying to learn one or the other or both, as I'm happy with where I am on my current project. Thanks for the words of encouragement! I think I'll start listening to some Russian tonight! (Part of my learning is auditory, for sure. Once I can link the way a word looks with how a word sounds, I'm starting to pick it up for use by that point. The major kink in this... is that I often screw my grammar up! I'm not learning properly, but I am learning, darn it! To hell with the grammar =)