Learning Russian. Week 3

I've reached the end of Week 3 of my Russian language learning, so time for a quick update.

I'm still averaging about an hour a day, and probably spend 30 minutes reading and listening, and another 30 minutes (or maybe more) just listening.

I've still writing some phrases down in a notebook, but only where they illustrate a grammatical point relating to prepositions.

I am assuming that I will end up retaining common words solely through repeated reading. We will see.

Different prepositions are followed by different cases in Russian, and if you know the case a particular preposition uses then you can recognize the endings of the case by looking at the nouns and adjectives that follow.

This is slightly over-simplified as some prepositions have a different meaning depending on the case used.

An example of a phrase I have noted is: Он работает на большом заводе 'He works in a large factory'.

Ha followed by the prepositional case means 'at/on/in'.

The nominative of 'factory' is завод.

I still have no idea how to form the prepositional, but by recognizing how it is used am hoping my brain will start to make the appropriate connections subconsciously. In this case, an е is added to what I can only assume is a masculine singular noun.

Speaking

I was initially intending to start booking regular lessons on italki and start talking in the first two weeks of November.

However, my aim is to be able to read Russian and specifically Metro 2033 in the original within a year.

Speaking is of secondary importance to me at the moment, and as I have only limited time, I'm going for the moment just focus on reading (and listening).

For what is is worth, I now have 485 known words according to the LingQ system. These are words that I can recognise passively, which is of course different from being able to use them in conversation.

Not bad for three weeks.

Peace,

Moonface.