Ah I'm learning Russian too right now (about 30 days in). I'm bilingual, native English, became fluent in Italian in my 20s after spending a few years living in

Ah I'm learning Russian too right now (about 30 days in). I'm bilingual, native English, became fluent in Italian in my 20s after spending a few years living in Italy (fluent to the point of thinking and dreaming in Italian). I'm finding the process of learning a third language to be really interesting in the sense that all sorts of "patterns" are bubbling up now that I have two under the belt, akin to what one experiences after having learned a few programming languages. Even so, no doubt Russian is difficult for a native English speaker. :-) The State Department classifies it as a "Category II" in terms of difficulty, meaning it is no walk in the park. By far the most troublesome issue has been casing (nominative, dative, genitive, accusative, instrumental, prepositional). So I've been spending some extra time learning how the vocabulary changes according to each case. On the bright side, word ordering really isn't an issue because of this, unless you would like to stress a particular aspect of the phrase. I use the free Chegg Flashcards app for iOS, it's great and there are tons of Russian vocabulary flashcards. I also purchased a paper Russian-English dictionary; it's far more convenient than constantly tabbing over and typing a word in, particularly since I don't have a Russian keyboard. Additionally, I write out vocabulary and phrases every day, basically pretending like I'm taking a middle school quiz. It's tough and tedious, but this is how I most effectively commit things to memory. Finally, every single evening I spend time "reading" http://www.pravda.ru/ http://www.pravda.ru/ and http://izvestia.ru/ http://izvestia.ru/, dictionary in hand, looking up word after word and then trying to find repeat occurrences of the word in the page. This has been hugely beneficial. Finding a Russian interested in learning English is on the TODO list, so we can help each other out. Fortunately here in Ohio there is a large Russian speaking population. Bottom line: learning another language is tough, but also a lot of fun. It is hugely satisfying to actually start understanding a phrase here and there in the newspapers, and over time, phrases will become sentences, and sentences, paragraphs. xaybey I'd love to talk to you further via email, my address is in profile. -Jason