Here are some resources for learning the Russian alphabet and the first couple of units of Голоса.
- A list of Russian sight words—these are calques from and homophones of English. (Not all the words are from English—some are words that both Russian and English borrowed from other sources, like Greek, Latin and German.) You received a copy of this list in class.
- Memrise, an excellent learning resource... the smartest flashcards you'll ever find. Here's the same list of homophones, borrowings, and calques, now done as a course on Memrise. VERY USEFUL for learning the alphabet. (You will have to create an account...)
- A creepy version of the Russian alphabet from IKEA. In fact, the Russian speakers don’t NEED an alphabet song, and no one sings it and no one teaches it to kids. It’s a phonetic alphabet—there aren’t really standardized names for the letters, as there must be in English. (How else would we explain how to spell our crazy words???)
- The Golosa site, where you can listen to recordings of many of the exercises from the Алфавит (Alphabet) section.
- For those of you who want to perfect your Russian cursive (пропись), some “worksheets” that I concocted (in .doc format). Wikipedia has an excellent overview of the uses and idiosyncrasies of Russian handwriting.
- A first-year student рекомендует this video to learn your ABCs... I like this one, too... Learn your animals in Russian while you learn the алфавит!
