Russian Learners' Dictionary: 10,000 Russian Words in Frequency Order

by Nicholas Brown, Brown Nicholas, Nicholas J. Brown

Book Overview

This dictionary contains 10,000 Russian words in order of importance starting with the most common and finishing with words that occur about 8 times in a million. All the words have English translations, many have examples of usage and the entries include information on stress and grammatical irregularities. There is also a complete alphabetical index to the words in the list.
A learner who knows all or most of these 10,000 words can be regarded as competent in Russian for all normal purposes. The list takes you from a beginner's core vocabulary through to postgraduate level.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0415137926
• ISBN13: 9780415137928
• Release Date: June 1996
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 440 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.9" x 9.7"

Customer Reviews

This handy list will save you a lot of time!!!

I am a VERY serious student of Russian... and therefore, I acquired this book by Sir Nicholas J. Brown. This list of 10K words will literally SAVE the student a lot of time by concentrating only on the most commonly used words. The book is sold as is, but I have actually had my Russian friends read the words and the examples aloud while I record their native pronunciation onto digital audio files. They say the word's number in Russian, eg. 1975, then they pronounce the word twice (Russian only), then they read the given example (without translating). This will work well for most, there is no need to record the English translation. The number of the word tells you where to find that. I hope that the next edition will be sold with a CD or MP3 files to accompany the product. Udachi!

Practical Aid In Learning Russian

Having begun studying Russian earlier this year, I was very pleased to stumble upon this book. Many people study languages and in the process learn many words they may not actually need. This book literally lists the most frequently used words in order of occurance in normal conversation and writing. It is perhaps wise to note that language is a dynamic beastie and words may shuffle in frequency of use, even inviting new words into the process. But you have to start somewhere. As stated in the beginning section of this book, it is a work built upon past efforts to document usage patterns, expanded to include more than simply what you would need to pass a scholastic requirement. But remember, this is a list, not a text book. There are examples of usage offered (for the first 600 words) as well as tenses, but no detailed explanations of application. Any serious student of language will find such a reference most valuable.

Very Useful

This books strength is in its ability to assist in the consolidation of useful Russian words. Rather than learning words that are unlikely to arise in everyday conversation or literature this book definitely assists in strengthening your grasp of the most commonly used words. As the author quite rightly states, although "(do)sveedanya" (goodbye) may be one of the first words in the language you may learn - in usage terms it is the 1273th most common in usage (sveedanya). You'd be better in general terms to learn "ryeshat" "to decide, solve" being number 1272 in frequency, even though this may not even be mentioned in a conventional Russian course - indeed in the authors excellent new Penguin Russian Course this word is not mentioned until Chapter 13!My personal usage of this book is to highlight with a bright marker words that I have learnt. A quick glance at the book then immediately gives me feedback on my progress in vocabulary terms. This alone is an excellent tool and encourages you to an even greater vocabulary. Where else can you get such instant feedback?

Such a neat idea

Whatever posessed Brown to embark on the mind-bending task of figuring out the 10,000 most frequently used Russian words is unclear, but I'm glad he did. This book is a great study aid, enabling one to prioritise word lists so that the most useful ones can be memorised first. Each entry comes with a small phrase to give the word context, and stress marks are given throughout.The fun part is when you've absorbed, say, 10 words from the list and then listen to native Russian speakers. The new words pop up with surprising regularity and give a major boost to one's comprehension of what's being said.It's an ideal accompaniment to any Russian course and could really help you pull ahead if you're studying in a classroom environment.

Best book for increasing your vocabulary

I've bought a lot of books in trying to increase my vocabulary in Russian. This one, however, has been the most practical. It seems like every time I learned one of the most frequently used words, I'd begin to hear it almost immediately (we were living in Russia at the time). Before this, I'd picked up a lot of words (thousands) that I simply never used. Wish I'd had this book about a year earlier.