Teach Yourself Beginner's Russian Script

Outstanding refresher for someone who studied the language 50 years ago! Very quick & wasy to use!

I have purchased all three of the "Teach Yourself...Russian..." books and each one is excellent. This book teaches you the Cyrillic alphabet and the transliteration (conversion) of the alphabet into Latin characters. This will help any English-speaking person learn how to pronounce Russian words.

I got this book through InterLibraryLoan for a buck something and I was done with it in less than three weeks. By that time I could read Russian print about 100% and Russian script in a couple textbooks I have around 75%. This was only a couple of months ago and I am still learning to write and read the cursive script. But for even the new price this is a painless way to learn how to read and write Russian letters. The language itself takes somewhat longer (doh!) to learn. But this is a good start.

I found this book just right for learning the Russian script. It is taken in gradual steps with lots of cognates so you don't get bogged down with vocabulary learning. The book keeps your interest using many tips on Russian life and introducing pertinent (practical) words which will be useful on any visit to the country. Also examples of ads, tickets, announcements, etc. to give you a real life idea of how the script is used. I didn"t give it five stars because it does not tell you how to form the letters of the handwriting and you will have to look closely at the examples to find out which letters are higher than the others and which go below the line. Would recommend this along with a basic Pimsleur audio course before tackling a grammar.

This might be fine for someone who wanted practice in reading the Russian alphabet. However, I made the mistake of taking the title literally. I can read (or at least sound out) Russian books, but I have trouble reading or writing cursive Russian, which often looks quite different from the printed font. There is hardly any material on handwriting the language.