On Youtube a Russian girl says: "Throw away your grammar

On Youtube a Russian girl says: “Throw away your grammar books!” I wonder: How do Russians themselves learn grammar? Would it be smart to buy some grammar books that are used in Russian schools? I find LingQ good for learning words, but have not yet found much grammar content here. Suggestions for other sources?

2 Likes

“Throw away your grammar and talk gibberish.” This sentence occurred to me. Personally, I can’t find anything more interesting to do than reading grammar books. Having written these sentences, I can see that I am playing the devil’s advocate here

1 Like

I don’t think that’s helpful at all. Grammar books for native speakers are very theoretical and based on the fact that you already know it at some level and only have to bring it up and label it. A proof is that most native speakers who have studied grammar at school are very bad at it.

A fast example. I’m a native Spanish speaker. I “like” grammar for some reason and I know the grammar of Spanish but the way I “know” it is this. For example, let’s say you ask me whether the subjunctive is used with verbs of “believing”.
I don’t try to remember the rule, even if I someone saw it somewhere. I go find an example, believing “creer”. If I say “Creo que Juan no vendrá”, so no subjunctive be “no creo que Juan venga” so, subjunctive only after negatives in this case.
Being good at grammar in your native language consists of that: leveraging your intuitive knowledge and being able to reflect on it and making it explicit.
Because of that, the typical grammar book for natives either leaves a lot of gaps, because natives can feel them in or is painstakingly detailed to cover very far-fetched, corner cases that natives themselves would consider doubtful. Those are too complicated and long to actually teach you grammar. They’re reference works, not manuals. As references, they can come in handy to solve concrete doubts, after you have a good command of the language and even of its grammar, but only in those particular cases, For example, I’ve found very useful to llook up Gevisse’s “Le Bon Usage” to solve some quite peculiar points of French grammar, but I’d consider completely impossible to actually learn the basics of grammar for such a book.

As for your question. Some people like more and some less to have a grasp of grammar rules, so it depends on what you want to achieve. I do like to know the main rules, even if that’s not the base of fluency.
Notice that even very “anti-grammar” polyglots, such as Steve Kaufmann, typically look first into a “basic” book of the language, which typically presents grammar. Stephen prefers “short” introductions, such as the colloquial series. He has a look at the book, reads rules and dialogues fast, without committing anything to memory and; after that, goes to read lingq style, then he goes back every now and then to the elementary book.

That’s one approach to putting some grammar knowledge into your learning. I think it makes sense. If you want something a bit more intense on grammar, you can use my own approach. I get a longer introductort text and goes through all of it, trying to make the main points stick but without insisting much on remembering what’s difficult. A typical way of achieving that is by going through one of the Assail books: it’s what I did for Russian. Assail is based on dialogues but, every seventh lesson, it presents grammar notions that had already been illustrated in the previous chapters. Notice that even in this method grammar’s secondary and the method insists on you not trying to memorize too much of it.

At any rate, my opinion is that adding some “light” grammar kowledge in the beginning of your learning helps, as long as you don’t forget that exposure is the main thing.

A couple of links: Steve’s explanation of his use of “introductory” books (let’s call it “grammar emphasis level 1)”:

Post from a fellow lingq member from the forum who has learned Russian and which coincides a lot with my own approach (let’s call it “grammar emphasis level 2”):

My personal advice is to move between hese two levels of “grammar emphasis” while you learn the language. I wouldn’t advise either the “level 0” (absolutely no grammar knowledge, only lingq and exposure) and I wouldn’t go over level 2 (priorizing grammar over exposure, staying too long studying grammar, which includes studying native grammar treatises).

try googling for free grammar resources. This is a good one. http://www.ceng.metu.edu.tr/~e1394618/Rus�a%20Kitaplar/A%20Basic%20Modern%20Russian%20Grammar.pdf

I go back to grammar over and over as I get more and more experience with the language.

1 Like

Hello Hakon, Russians learn a huge amount of grammar intuitively, with practice, not out of grammar books. Many of those endings and cases learners of Russian as a foreign language struggle with are intuitively there for native Russian speakers. Grammar books for native speakers are often complex and can have not only advanced grammar (which is good), but advanced vocabulary (which can be tricky). This concerns not only the explanation itself, but also examples for certain grammar rules. This way it just makes more sense to become advanced in Russian using special books for learners of Russian as a foreign language and then turn to some grammar books for native speakers for proficiency. Here is one of websites to use for reference:An On-line Interactive Russian Reference Grammar Удачи в изучении русского языка!

Grammar is very important too, I agree. Sometimes I don’t understand why people are encouraged to completely forget about it.

4 Likes

@hakon
All extrems are wrong.
We don’t have to negtlect the grammar, but we don’t have to study only the grammar.
The new words are more important for understanding and for reading.
But for speaking we need some basic grammar rules.
However, it’s a bad solution - to use the grammar books for native speakers, they are too detailed and they don’t focus on the points which are cruisal for foreigners.
I can recommend you this book for basic Russian grammar in use: С. Хавронина, Русский язык в упражнениях.
There are some versions: for people speaking in English, in German, in rench and in Spanish.

You can also try reading my grammar courses here in the Russian library:

  1. for the beginners - “Грамматические модели”:
    Login - LingQ

  2. for the Intermediate level - “Практическая грамматика”:
    Login - LingQ

You can find there the most important points which are important for foreigners from the basic Russian Grammar.

You can also read my article “Нужна ли нам грамматика”:
Советы учителя (Teacher's advice)-НУЖНА ЛИ НАМ ГРАММАТИКА?

If it is difficult to you to read this article in Russian, you can read it in the English version:

Good luck!

2 Likes

The Russian grammar book I’ve been studying in school: Error | VK Grammar is very important, it’s very bad if you make grammar mistakes, because people will be mocking at you. For example, new Windows 10 has a mistake in its Russian interface: “Сопутсвующие параметры” - missed т-letter, should be “сопутсТвующие параметры”. And now people make fun of it. Russian grammar is very important, especially if you are Russian. Russians are more indulgent to foreingers.

1 Like

I am pretty sure the grammar books for natives is useless for foreigners.
For example, the grammar books propose to ask a question to see the endings of the words, such a way you will know the correct spellings in some cases. But the foreigners needs to know it vice versa!
Most Russian grammar books for natives rely on the intuitive knowledge of a native speaker.

1 Like

Thanks for the tips!

Thank you for the comment. I remember, in children’s school, asking the teacher for more grammatical analysis in class. The other pupils protested wildly, of course…

Thanks for the link!

Thank you for the link and tips!

:slight_smile: Another example that curiosity doesn’t always kill the cat.

You are welcome! Всегда пожалуйста!

Thank you for the tips and links!

Thanks for the link!

Hi ! =))) You have to know it as a record, our Russian girls are really stupid idiots! =))) Whenever you see a Russian girl trying to “teach” any Russian, you should immediately know, she’s on YT NOT for the purpose of teaching you anything AT ALL ! =))) Her one and only goal is to have as many views as it is only practical ! =))) To this end, she’ll tell you just absolutely anything you could think of! =))))

And you also have to know it just as a top rule: Russian IS a language extremely heavily based on GRAMMAR !!! =))))

1 Like

Ni hao, Andrey ! =))))

I even know who are the ones to localize the Windows here, they could really mis-type it, no doubt! =))))

Let me just say that I have not yet met a Russian girl who is an idiot, although I am sure such people exist, as do stupid Russian men, not to mention stupid Canadians, or at least some people always appear stupid to us, (and we appear stupid to some others). Such is life.

3 Likes