Best children russian language books according to redditors

Yeah, I'm doing a degree in Russian and French!

I'd say start by learning the alphabet, it's really important because all the [best] resources you're going to find are going to be partly in cyrillic. We learnt it in two weeks at uni, it's really not that hard if you're consistent about it. It's a really phonetic alphabet, meaning that (generally) one letter = one sound. In fact, for me that makes Russian pronunciation WAY easier than French.

After, I'd probably pick up a good textbook and try to work a bit on it every day. Russian is REALLY different from English, it doesn't have the same grammar rules at all (word order and cases is one of the biggest difference). So it's good if you take it in little by little and just try to do even 30 mins every day. In my course we've been using Colloquial Russian , it's pretty nice and covers all the basic grammar points. Of course, we still get loads of resources from our teachers, but you can find that online or in other books.

Also, duolingo now offers a russian course! If you want to start by taking it really casually and "light" it can be a good option for you. (to type in Cyrillic I just use my on-screen keyboard option and turn it into russian [on windows]).

More importantly, it can seem really overwhelming, but you just gotta remind yourself why you're doing it, and keep going. After a few months you'll be amazed at how much you've improved!

First, i know it will seem pessimistic of me to ask but; are you guys getting along very well? Most likely one will be better than the other, cause some frustration and will kill the learning process because of ego mismanagement.

If you guys can really work as a team, here's what i suggest:

• As a couple, your best asset is the very fact that you're a couple. If you live in a big town, google russian and the name of your town and go hangout there. Since it will be an "enclave" rather than a ghetto, you will see cultural stuff everywhere. Pamphlets and ads in local russian newspapers with tons of cultural events and beginners-in-russian are most often than not warmly welcomed, since russian is a very hard language to master for non-native speakers, meaning that they will be happy that a stranger puts in the effort of learning their language and their culture. They will often go the extra mile to help you pronounce and correct your mistakes. Of course, you will encounter suspicious and taciturn characters but hanging out in russian cafés and attending local cultural events will super-charge your russian assimilation. Languages are meant to be spoken.
  
  
• Secondly, i strongly, strongly recommend the acquisition of this book:
  
  http://www.amazon.ca/Russian-Learners-Dictionary-Words-Frequency/dp/0415137926/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300431171&sr=8-1-spell
  
  And follow this man's method, The Goldlist Method:
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH6FERpM5fQ (Part one)
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTyJiGVJ0LM (Part two)
  
  This will be your main method of vocabulary acquisition. I also recommend:
  
  http://www.amazon.ca/Schaums-Outline-Russian-Grammar-Second/dp/007161169X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1300431298&sr=8-2
  
  and
  
  http://www.amazon.ca/Big-Silver-Book-Russian-Verbs/dp/007143299X/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b
  
  Yes i know, spending money sucks, but i bought all three of them and not regret my choice at all. Very practical.
  
  Speaking of spending money, if you have money to spend, spend it on a private tutor for both of you. The value of this cannot be stressed enough. He will explain things to you that books can't and will correct your pronunciation and also challenge you by having higher degrees of conversation (like the use of dative instead of instrumental, etc) so that you learn in deep and not just "to get by".
  
  A huge part of language acquisition is the exposition to culture. The longer you expose yourself to russian, the faster and better learners you will be. That means listening to russian music, watching russian videos and movies, reading russian news and get interested in what's happening int he country, speaking russian as much as possible. Immerse yourself in it.
  
  If you do all of this and you really, really dedicate yourself to it and use your couple as a blessing rather than a curse, i guarantee you that in 6 months, your level of russian will be that native russians will not believe you when you will tell them it's всего шесть месяцев :)
  
  Hope this helped, good luck with your russian!
  

I had just finished Grad school, and I didn't have a job and was living at home—that helps :)

But basically I would wake up, repeat words I learned the previous day, then learn another 30 or so (I have a decent memory). Then I would go over a grammar topic for a few hours then try to watch something. The only thing I didn't do was talk much (I wrote lots) because I had no money for a teacher and don't like talking to random people.

But to be honest I just become obsessed with Russian and it became my job (for the first year, anyway. After that I had different strategies as I started working etc). Sometimes I spent 12 or more hours on it a day.

I used this book for the vocal—https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Learners-Dictionary-Words-Frequency/dp/0415137926

What I found to be interesting are Duolingo, memrise intermediate course(after you finish Duolingo) with Russian children's tales, and the Svetlana Le Flemig book(available through our pirate friends at a certain site, hint, hint; or amazon). These are more than enough to get started.

Also, movies and чебурашка.
Edit:link, and correction

How exciting that you are planning to learn Russian! I'm a four-year student: my high school offered the language (we had a sister city exchange program with Russia), and I took an additional two years in college. I think the biggest roadblocks in learning the language for myself and fellow students were the alphabet and pronunciation. So, here are my recommendations to remedy those hurdles:

1. Alphabet: make flashcards for the alphabet with English phonetic spellings on the back. Instead of trying to learn them in their entire series, break them up into your own categories (vowels, soft sounds, hard sounds, consonants). You'll learn them much faster when you have them in groups, and it will be easier to begin spelling correctly when you have them categorized this way.
   
   
2. Pronunciation: a lot of students in my classes (including myself at first!) were quite shy to participate considering that Russian language, if you are a native English speaker, is WEIRD. One of the very first things my high school Russian instructor did was teach us a song in Russian to get past this obstacle: Понимаешь We sang this every day for a few weeks, and soon, we all were dancing in our chairs and feeling like we had already mastered the language.
   
   ---------------
   While you are mastering your pronunciation, start learning basic phrases and vocabulary. And most importantly, think as much as possible in Russian! Talk to yourself out loud in the language. Your parents may think you are mad, but you will absorb the language so much faster that way. Incorporate it in your daily life in addition to the time you spend studying.
   
   I think the biggest catalyst in learning the language was having the opportunity to spend a month over in Russia helping our sister city with their English summer school program. I had to use Russian every day, little old ladies would talk to me on the bus knowing that I didn't speak a ton of Russian, but that experience brought me back to the US with a wealth of knowledge. I'm not sure what your intentions are for learning the language (whether it be a career interest, future academic pursuit, or just general interest), but you could look into exchange student programs (these are pricey!) and volunteer abroad opportunities for your summers. Of course, there are also study abroad programs that you can look forward to in college as well!
   
   Quite honestly, I don't have a lot of recommendations for online resources as most of my learning took place in the classroom. Try to look for places where you can practice your Russian speaking skills with native speakers. LiveMocha is supposedly a great resource, as you can practice language with native speakers and they will give you feedback after a session. As far as learning materials, this is the textbook and workbook that we had back in high school--I highly recommend them as they are easy-going and a good way to get into the basics of the language: Textbook and Workbook
   
   I'm not sure how large the area is that you live in, but check the library or look into community resources. A lot of places (especially college towns) will have Russian speaking communities or story time for kids. This is another great way to connect with native speakers.
   
   ----------
   
   Here are some final tips:
   
   When you get deep into the dark well of grammar and special cases in Russian, don't fret. My professor in college always reminded us that oftentimes even native speakers were confused by all the special rules. This little guy helped me out a ton in the beginning. Keep in mind that there is much more to Russian grammar than these rules, though, but it is a good general outline.
   
   Contrary to a few of the suggestions here, I think it wise not to overwhelm yourself with everything. Take Russian in steps: 1) Alphabet 2) Pronunciation/sounding out words 3) Basic phrases and vocabulary 4) Then you can get as intense as you would like. Make learning Russian fun for yourself in the beginning! Not to bring in a big foreboding cloud, but Russian grammar can be rather confusing once you get into the more advanced material. Generate a passion for the language now and it will carry you through the more challenging portions you will encounter.
   
   I will reiterate again, incorporate Russian in your daily life! Put vocabulary flashcards all over your house. Get crazy!
   
   Watch plenty of Чебурашка and Ну, погоди!. They are kid shows, but, they helped us learn new vocab and phrases quite a bit.
   
   *You will definitely need this when you begin to write: http://russian.typeit.org/
   
   If you have any questions or need help with anything, feel free to send me a pm.
   
   Russian is a beautiful language. I hope you find enjoyment in it! Удачи в учебе (good luck in your studies)!

First and foremost, for me, studying is not studying at all. It is interacting with anything that I can in Russian. Talking to people online, in person, reading anything Russian online or books, traveling to Russian areas (here in New York, we have plenty) or to Russia itself. Or just listening to Russian radio or podcasts or music. Anything that I can do to immerse myself helps more than anything else.

Otherwise, I can learn vocabulary with things like Rosetta Stone or Live Mocha. And I make flashcards on my phone of all words I continually come across and find useful to know.

For grammer, I use this book series and do the exercises, usually by typing out all the various sentences and such on my iPad while on the train or just on my computer at home.

Colloquial Russian by Svetlana Fleming & Susan Kay. It was the set text for my first year of university (studying German and ab initio Russian) and now I'm near the end of my fourth and final year and I can confidently say that it provided an excellent foundation. It has accents to mark stress as well as useful audio CD accompaniments. Available on Amazon fairly cheaply - hope it helps :) желаю вам удачи!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Colloquial-Russian-Complete-Course-Beginners/dp/0415469953/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427536468&sr=1-1&keywords=colloquial+russian

Hey, this is the book

https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Learners-Dictionary-Words-Frequency/dp/0415137926

I'm a fan of Colloquial Russian. I think it's more accessible/less dense than the Penguin course and has free audio online for the dialogues.

I taught myself the Cyrillic alphabet and was actually pleasantly surprised that it's not that hard. A lot of the letters aren't that foreign at all, and Russian has LOADS of words that you'll already know.

The toughest bit for me are telling apart the sounds of ш, щ, ж. But it's incredibly rewarding and it can make you feel proud to be able to read a new alphabet. Here's a vlog in which you can see a bit of my progress.

I'll give you the same advice I always give language learners: Go slowly, make sure you study with people (tutors are worth it, classes are worth it), and make it a regular thing. Here's the book I showed in the video, and I loved it for learning Russian. The author has a Norwegian version too:

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A non-Affiliate Link

The New Penguin Russian Course is amazing and includes everything you need to know about Russian grammar. A book I am reading right now for beginners is First Reader in Russian. It is a very basic Russian book that has exercises and a dictionary in the back. The only bad thing about it is the dictionary doesn't include all of the words from the book so I usually have to go to my Russian-English English-Russian Dictionary. This dictionary also lacks many important words, but it hasn't given me any problems. Another good Russian reading source is Russian Stories: A Dual-Language Book. If you just look around on amazon you will find many good resources.

Here are two relatively easy books that I've picked up:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1456439871/ref=oh_details_o05_s01_i00

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0844242810/ref=oh_details_o05_s00_i02

Granted I'm American, and have used these to learn, but they should be of decent help to you.

I used this book to teach myself the basics of Russian and Cyrillic. It focuses a ton on cognates, which made it a lot easier to pick up the letter sounds. I don't think I ever took the CD out of the package so I can't speak to its usefulness.

WELL look at this. I just added one to my list this morning and it is one I actually need. :)

I need this Russian book to help build up some more vocabulary. :)

Thanks for the contest! :)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Colloquial-Russian-Complete-Course-Beginners/dp/0415469953/ref=pd_cp_b_0

This book is the best I can suggest if you want to learn quickly.

In my opinion, apps and software don't tend to be of much use; they don't let you advance quickly enough and don't expose you to enough material. If you're serious about learning Russian, grab a good book and study each text or dialogue until you understand it both in reading and aurally. There's Teach Yourself Russian, Routledge's Colloquial Russian, the FSI FAST (Familiarization and Short-Term Training) Russian, Assimil Russian (if you speak French), and I've heard good things about the New Penguin Russian Course. In all cases, be sure you get audio along with the book, or have a native speaker who is willing to help you learn. Good luck!

I bought this book, which you might find interesting:

Russian Learners Dictionary

The words are listed by their commonness, so you will learn the most common words first.

It's a little annoying because a lot of really obvious words are in there in the beginning (Я, Ты, и, или, etc) but then it starts to get interesting.

If you can get through that whole book, you will have a vocabulary of 10,000 of the most common Russian words.