Hello! I want to join this challenge! I'm gonna be learning Russian. I will not be starting from scratch though because I did learn it back in high school, but I was not particularly good at it, my grades were just barely enough to pass. I still remember a lot of words and can understand some spoken Russian, but I can't speak it much (maybe at a Duolingo educated tourist level at most lol) and I have forgotten how to write, and I don't remember all of the letters anymore, so I can't read much either. I used to know how to write and read back in high school, albeit I sucked at it, but that was almost a decade and a half ago and I have not really used any Russian since. This is my plan: As a start I want to re–learn the Russian alphabet in block letters, a lot of which I have forgotten (and many of the ones that I do remember I remember only because they use the same symbol as Latin alphabet letters, but of course Russia uses their own version of alphabet—Cyrillic script). I want to re–learn their individual sounds, as well as how to write them with hand (if I can memorize the look of the block letter and write the glyph by hand then I should have no issue recognizing it when I read it, that's my thinking). So that's stage one, which is a priority because when I do re–learn letters I will be able to start practicing some simple reading. Then when that's done I want to re–learn handwritten cursive script, so I can start practicing writing some simple words and sentences in Russian by hand. That's stage two. Stage three would be starting to re–learn a lot of the actual vocabulary that I have forgotten over the years, as well as starting to learn new words from scratch. I hope that this challenge will motivate me to study—I plan on doing 10 minutes a day minimum. 10 minutes doesn't sound as much, but as long as I keep it consistent it will add up to big difference in couple months time! And even bigger difference in a year or two! Let's go!
Checking in for the day one of learning—so far so good! I did start to memorize Russian letters through the use of this Wikipedia page, it has all the info that I need so far on the looks and on the pronunciation of the letters. Did not go through the whole alphabet today, just few of them; gonna add more and more every day until I have them all. I reviewed them multiple times a day by first thinking of the sound I want to make and then writing the block letter for it. I heard somewhere that apparently if you write things down by hand, not digitally but on a piece of paper, then it increases memory retention by up to 75%! Not sure the source of it but I definitely notice it to be true for me personally. So I have my notebook in which I write them down over and over again, not because I will actually ever check the notes, but simply for the process of writing, to remember better. Yes! Indeed so! Plus I probably gonna do more than 10 min anyways to be honest, cos I looked at the clock today and 10 min passed by so fast and I wasn't even done yet! Just making it 10 min only, and not forcing myself to study more, is more of mental thing for me. Cos if I say I will study for 30 minutes total every day I probably will just freak out and procrastinate lol, but I can do it for 10 min, and then if I feel like doing some more I'll do 5 min more, etc, but if I don't feel like it then no pressure.
First, you need to develop a new habit and make learning Russian your long-term goal. It's important to build motivation as it is with nofap. Then you need to be consistent and when you skip a day, you need to make it up the next. At least, this is my way but I hardly ever skip a day. I use Anki, Spanish.dict and duolingo - if I skip the reviews I lose points or get the double number of reviews or break a streak. Carrot and stick kind of motivation.
Day two of learning—checking in. Same as yesterday: wrote down some more letters and repeatedly recalled and wrote them down multiple times across the day. Yep, that's the plan! After I re–learn the letters I want to make a daily habit to read books in Russian every day. I just need to be able to recognize the letters first, but I think I have enough of vocabulary from my high school days to be able to read simple books. Obviously I will only be able to read simple stuff for children for now, not Dostoevsky lol. But once I can do that I should get more practice momentum going. Yea that's not a good idea for my brain. If I set so strong rule for myself, "I must learn every day", then what's more likely than not gonna happen is that I will get stressed and overwhelmed by this perceived obligation, and due to that stress will procrastinate. Then I will end up not doing it, and now because I must make up for it the next day I will get even more anxious, so I will skip the next day too! And next thing you know I have the whole week worth of learning I need to do at Sunday! And end result of that will be that I will become so stressed about learning that I will stop learning at all and quit. But if I say to myself: "only 10 minutes, more if you feel like it but no pressure, and if you skip a day doesn't matter, it's not like Russian language will run away somewhere, you can always pick it back up tomorrow or overmorrow, etc" then I will more likely than not end up doing more study and more frequently.
Another day done! New block letters and reviewing multiple times through the day. You mentioned Duolingo, so I tried it out. I knew about the app but did not plan to use it at first. But it's actually kind of fun! Gonna add Duolingo to my routine.
Typing Russian without a special keyboard can time-consuming. But when there's a will, there's a way.