Learn Russian Now! 8.0

This is a very good program to learn Russian in because it gives you the benifit of being able to instantly hear what you are looking at. Not only that but you get instant translations and full dialog on one screen. You can "bookmark" certain words, or write down thoughts that occur to you as you learn. It's a very good program and will help you learn quickly if you get into it. Learning a language is not 'easy', but it doesn't have to be the most difficult thing in the world either. This program is the best aid I've had in my studies of Russian so far.

I bought this because I wanted to learn Russian because Alina Kabayeva and Alexei Namov are both russians. It's hard at fist but you get use to it if you take the recommrended 15mins aday. If you are going to give up on it don't even, but if you are serious take a chance on it.

I bought this course because I needed to be able to read text as well as hold conversations.

The program has four basic parts to it with the main portion being fundamental Russian. The basic presentation is straight forward with text in Russian and English displayed with audio in Russian. There are also games and some nice multi-media in the other portions of the software.

The course builds up a fairly good vocabulary and the use of proper grammar is taught through out the Fundamental Russian portion of the course. There are many features which help you learn pronounciation such as the ability to record your voice and compare your wave, pitch loudness and fricatives to the native speakers', as well as listen to your pronouciation and the native speakers in alternating playback.It also provides a Speech correctness meter which give you some idea of how you are doing.

Some of the audio and diction isn't as clear as I would like, but perhaps that more closely approaches "real world" conditions.

This isn't a "listen and learn" but it is a very good time if you can spend some time in front of your PC each night. You should be able to speak Russian fairly well and as a valuable plus, read in Russian, up to the limits of your vocabulary.

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This was excellent. I was able to learn English from this program from my native Russian, and this is a good thing. Whoever made this must be very intelligent. Those of you reading this must buy it. Whoever set this web site up is also very intelligent, for they have made it possible for me to learn English. For this they should be commended. Learn Russian, it is a good language to know, even if you do not live in Russia. This I know. I can be reached at tovarischwoofwoof@yahoo.com or on the Yahoo Instant Messenger service as tovarischwoofwoof. Thank you for reading this.

This software package is not as much a training system as it is a reference material and series of exercises in reading and pronouncing Russian. Despite its faults, its probably the best Russian language program on the market and is far better than trying to learn out of a textbook. The program admittedly has some neat features like hyperlinks to voice recordings of individual words and sentences, the ability to slow down the voice recordings, games and quizzes, a computerized comparison of your voice to a native speaker, etc. These are all really great features and really help you to learn. My biggest complaint is that these elements are largely unstructured and you really don't know where to start learning and what path to follow. Eventually, you muddle through it and figure things out on your own but with difficulty that could have been avoided through multimedia presentations.

There are some obvious areas where the software could be improved. For instance, I've had a hard time learning the Russian alphabet. The tutorial on the alphabet consists of nothing more than a display of the alphabet with someone pronouncing the name of the letter with examples of a single word. If you are trying to sound out a word in another section, you have to close that section and open the alphabet - meaning that you can't look at the word while you look up the individual letters. I finally did a "screen print", pasted the alphabet in a graphic file, and printed it so that I could have a quick reference.

Grammar instruction consists of nothing more than a few scant help files buried within the package; multimedia of some sort would definitely make this more interesting and enhance learning. The package focuses on learning 100 of the most common words - but doesn't really explain syntax (verb conjugation, word order, word context, etc) other than providing a few sample sentences.

Overall, after using the software, I like it... but still see far too many areas for improvement. In addition, if you are serious about learning Russian, I recommend that you also buy a elementary Russian textbook that covers grammar and a dictionary for easier reference.