5 Tips to instantly upgrade your Russian speaking skills

Russian can be a frustrating language to learn. But in this article I want to give you 5 tips you can use to instantly upgrade your Russian speaking skills.

These are tips that I use (and have used) while learning Russian that made a big impact on my conversational skills.

Curious what they are?

Watch the video below to hear me explain them:

Or continue reading to find out:

Use “set phrases” to win time

If I were to ask you in English “would you be able to live in Moscow?”, you could reply something like this:

“Well, that’s a good question. Let me think…”

See what you did there?

You bought yourself time to think about an answer.

Now, imagine someone asks you in Russian “вы могли бы жить в Москве?”

You could do the same thing:

Ну, это хороший вопрос. Дайте мне подумать…

Ну – well

Это хороший вопрос – it’s a good question

Дайте мне подумать – let me have a think

This makes your conversations much smoother. 

Often you need time to understand a question and think of an answer.

But if you were to say nothing at all for 10 seconds and only then reply, you stall the conversation.

Maybe your conversation partner will start explaining the question. Or maybe he’ll try to translate it into English.

Even though you were just thinking. If you stay silent, people might mistake thinking about the answer for not understanding.

So it’s good to have some set phrases you can use to win time whenever you need them.

Ask yourself which phrases you usually say in English and find the corresponding Russian equivalents.

Can’t come up with any?

Take a look at this list below:

• Ну – well
• Э́то хоро́ший вопро́с – it’s a good question
• Да́йте мне поду́мать – let me have a think
• Я по́нял(а) – I understood
• Ла́дно – alright
• Оке́й – okay
• Я пра́вильно понима́ю что вы хоти́те знать … – do I correctly understand that you want to know … (repeat the question)

This works great if you already have a solid understanding of Russian. But what if you struggle understanding what native speakers say?

Go through a cognate list

Even though Russian has a different alphabet and sounds, it’s not an entirely alien language for most people. 

If you know any of the Germanic or Latin languages, there are plenty of words that are the same in Russian as in English.

And if you happen to know a Slavic language, then Russian will be even easier.

What do the following words have in common?

• accent
• activity
• barrier
• brother
• category
• chance
• dialect
• effect
• electricity
• fact
• gas
• group

What do you think?

The answer is simple:

These words are all the same (or similar) in Russian as in English.

Here’s the translation:

• accent – акце́нт
• activity – акти́вность
• barrier – барье́р
• brother – брат
• category – катего́рия
• chance – шанс
• dialect – диале́кт
• effect – эффе́кт
• electricity – электри́чество
• fact – факт
• gas – газ
• group – гру́ппа

Often the pronunciation changes a bit. For example the English “fact” is pronounced with a short “a” in Russian (sounds more liked f*cked).

But if you’ve done a couple of lessons on Russian pronunciation (or spend a couple of hours watching Russian series), you can probably  guess how they are pronounced.

I’ve found about 750 Russian-English cognates, and put them in a sheet. You can download them on this page.

Going through this list will help you instantly upgrade your vocabulary. 

You’ll be able to recognize more Russian words.

And you can add lots of them to your own vocabulary. You won’t remember all of them in one go, but if reading through the list will help you learn another 100 to 200 words, that’s a big help.

But what if you don’t know other words you need? Well, you may try the following tip:

Use “exchange” words

A couple of years ago I wanted to say in Russian that “I need to cut my hair.”

But I didn’t know the words for “cut my hair.”

So what did I say instead?

I got creative.

And I said я хочу делать волосы короче.

I want to make my hair shorter

“to cut hair” would be стричь волосы, but стричь is quite a rare verb that most intermediate and advanced learners know.

But делать волосы короче are words that most upper beginners already know.

So you can get around some of the more difficult words by using a form of делать.

Want another example?

Imagine your internet stopped working at home. You want to say that “we need to repair our internet,” but you don’t know the word for “repair” (починить).

You could also just say нам надо сделать наш интернет (we need to MAKE our internet).

Sure, saying починить would be more specific than сделать, but the context will make clear what you mean.

Want another example?

Imagine you want to say that someone’s car is cool. But you don’t know the word for “cool”. Well, you can just tell them машина хорошая.

The adjective хороший can be used for almost all positive adjectives. 

So if you don’t know a specific positive adjectives, just say the adjective хороший and people will understand you like it.

Now, does this mean you don’t need to learn any other adjectives?

Of course not.

It’s good to learn more words so you can express yourself in more detail.

But there will always be situations where you don’t know a word you need. And often with a bit of creative thinking you can describe that word with words you DO already know.

Alright, now you’re able to describe more situations in Russian. But how about sounding more like a native speaker?

Well, then do this:

Skip the pronouns when you’re saying something

In English, pronouns are inevitable.

Why?

Take a look:

• I speak
• You speak
• We speak
• They speak
• Speak to me!

The conjugation “speak” can be used for 4 pronouns and the imperative (command). 

So we need to add a pronoun otherwise it’s unclear who is doing what.

In Russian, it works differently:

• Я говорю́
• Ты говори́шь
• Он говори́т
• Мы говори́м
• Вы говори́те
• Они́ говоря́т
• Говори́(те)!

Now, what happens when we remove all the pronouns?

• Говорю́
• Говори́шь
• Говори́т
• Говори́м
• Говори́те
• Говоря́т
• Говори́(те)!

It’s still clear who is doing what, right?

Говорим can only mean “WE speak”

It cannot mean “he speaks” or “they speak”. The -м ending indicates that it’s a we conjugation.

Now, if you’ve listened to Russian speech before, you might’ve realized that native speakers often don’t say the pronouns.

Someone might reply: да, знаю, instead of да, я знаю.

And this is something you can also emulate.

You don’t need to use the pronouns all the time. Only when you want to emphasize who is doing what.

The best way to learn this is to spend time listening to native speakers talk – either in real life or while watching series.

But you can already start playing around with it now while having a conversation.

Just start with leaving out я occasionally while speaking. 

But what if you want to upgrade your Russian even more? Well, then do the following:

Add stress marks everywhere

Russian can be frustrating to learn. The stresses are horrible.

They’re pretty much random.

There is some sort of a system, but I found it more complicated than just learning the stresses 🙂

It also doesn’t help that the stress indicates whether an о sounds like an а.

Saying the stresses incorrectly is an instant giveaway that you’re a foreigner who’s learning.

So how do you overcome this?

The easiest way is by adding stress marks EVERYWHERE.

Reading a Russian book? Make sure to buy one that has stress marks.

Learning vocabulary on an app? Make sure the stress is underlined.

Reading an online article? Make sure the stresses are marked.

When you see the correct stresses, your brain will automatically start associating the correct stresses. So that when you want to say that word in a conversation, the chances of you saying it correctly are much higher.

But how do you do this?

Well, for online reading material, there are some handy sites and browser extensions that do this.

Just search online for “Russian add stress marks to text” and some of them will show up.

But for any physical material you need to find a source that has already added them.

Or print material after having used one of these stress-adding websites.

Or you can underline it yourself.

But especially for online materials it’s easy to add and will help a lot.