Way to Russia Talk Lounge

cybadec · Just Starting Joined: 16 Jan 2006 Posts: 2

I am looking for Russian books on audio to help me practice my Russian. I dont mean English to Russian lessons. I mean stories that are written in Russian and put on audio cassettes or CDs in Russian. I cant seem to find any and I cant read Russian well enough to search Russian websites.

wavetossed · WayToRussified Joined: 27 Jun 2004 Posts: 337

If you can't read Russian well enough to read the websites then you will never be able to understand Russian audio books.

My advice is to buy some Russian films on DVD and watch those with the Russian subtitles turned on. That way, when you come across an unfamiliar word you can see the spelling in the subtitles, and you can see the meaning in the context of what the actors are doing.

When I was in Russia, I stocked up on Russian TV series on DVD. That way, I get to listen to several hours of the same familiar group of actors. Once you get used to each person's speaking habits, it is much easier to understand.

http://www.ozon.ru is one place to find DVDs over the net.

cybadec · Just Starting Joined: 16 Jan 2006 Posts: 2

No offence but I asked a simple question. I did not ask for you to tell me whether or not you agreed with me. I can read russian I just cant understand it. By doing it this way I'll master grammer conversation and reading all at once at a much faster pace. The way you suggest would take much more time and would leave big gaping holes in my russian comprehension. Could someone please tell me where I could find these books without telling me why they think its a good or bad idea.

vitalsigns · Lounge Wizard Joined: 25 Dec 2004 Posts: 2784

Fire_Goddess · Guest

Paul Holmes · VIP Joined: 12 Apr 2005 Posts: 958

www.zevel.ru has audio books to be downloadedthrough emule.

wavetossed · WayToRussified Joined: 27 Jun 2004 Posts: 337

Wavetossed also speaks 6 languages and learned Russian during the past two years so he knows what he is talking about from personal experience.

Listening to Russian audio is an important part of learning but I can't see how audiobooks would be better than films. Audiobooks don't come with translations but in a film, you can see with your own eyes what the people are doing on screen and that is a BIG HELP to learning new words and phrases that people use in everyday life.

In addition, audiobooks in Russian are unlikely to be available outside Russia except in specialty bookshops like at a university that offers Russian courses. In London England the only place I ever saw such audiobooks was in Grant & Cutlers, the foreign language specialists. They had several of the Russian classics as audiobooks but I didn't bother trying them because classic Russian is too different from modern Russian with lots of words that are not commonly used or whose meanings have changed slightly. Not a good way to LEARN Russian for the first time. I will start to read the Russian classics once I can manage a newsmagazine without a dictionary. Right now I am still reading graded Russian readers and news websites like http://www.1tv.ru

Cybadec is right that it is good to learn reading, writing, hearing and speaking all at once, but I believe he is wrong in thinking that an audiobook is the way to do it. Films are more fun which makes it easier to spend more time with them. But you also need Russian course books (Barnes & Noble will have those), graded readers, and some way to practice speaking, even if you just sit at home alone and talk to yourself in Russian.

People who work their way through one course, lesson by lesson, are wasting their time. They could be learning 5 times faster if they would do an audio course and a book course, and watch films and listen to MP3s (or Russian Radio) and try to puzzle out Russian websites with the help of a translator. Your brain works better when you throw the same problem at it in several different ways at the same time.

Do a google search on "How to learn a language" for more info.

LADave · Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2006 12:29 am Post subject: Audiobooks/text

Perhaps what you need is sound files of Russian speech with transcripts. These are not so common, but you can find some online at:

http://www.gwu.edu/%7Eslavic/webcast/index.htm

At this website you'll find audio files of news broadcasts, supposedly in simplified Russian although the announcers still talk fairly fast. Also transcripts and vocabulary lists that generally give you the words you don't already know if you've gotten through one year of college Russian.

Obviously a lot more could be done with this concept. There is a CD format that mixes CD sound tracks and conventional computer files. If you put this in a CD player it works like a normal audio CD, but if you put it in a computer, it sees the data files. So you could have an audiobook plus transcript. Furthermore the Russian transcript could be annotated and it could be double-spaced with wide margins so you could print it out and have room for writing word translations between the lines of Russian.

Lenok21 · Frequent Guest Joined: 15 Feb 2006 Posts: 17 Location: USA

try www.sharereactor.ru
I download many movies from there and I think books there too.
Check it out.

LADave

Lenok21 -

Thanks for the great tip! So do films on sharereactor.ru ever include Russian language captions or subtitles? Do you have to subscribe or pay by the film to download, or is this completely free?

- Doddik

Lenok21 · Frequent Guest Joined: 15 Feb 2006 Posts: 17 Location: USA

Of course it is free Smile

You need to instal emule.com in a way to download them

Lenok21 · Frequent Guest Joined: 15 Feb 2006 Posts: 17 Location: USA

Sorry
www.emule-project.net

GuyJayP · Just Starting Joined: 29 Mar 2006 Posts: 1

russianaudiobooks · Just Starting Joined: 24 Jul 2007 Posts: 1

http://www.bestrussianbuy.com/ - has a big selection of audiobooks.
Some of them go with the text files. They are going to start selling DVD in Russian in a couple of weeks