In article , ASCACHESS wrote:
are there any good programs (mp3, docs, etc.) to learn the basics of
spoken Russian - so as to understand the names for the pieces,
letters, numbers, chess terms, slang, etc.? Thank you.

-Scott

Hanon Russell wrote a book with a name like "Russian for Chess Players". This
was printed back in the 1970s. I don't know where you would get a copy today.

It was excellent for being able to translate Russian language chess magazines
without having to learn all the Russian idioms.

Rp


Hanon Russell's book was ... not the best.

One might do better by relying on any of the usual self-study or touristy
grammars (+audio) that one may easily get from, say, Amazon. (E.g.
"Berlitz Basic Russian" or similar, with both some grammar and some
audio.)

When one has gone through this, carefully, the next step might be to crack
open some issue of the Informant, and see what the little annotation
symbols come out to be in Russian rather than English. Play through some
games and practice doing the annotations over into Russian rather than
English.

Buy some standard Russian pocket dictionary (Langensheidt's or similar.)
Find a small Russian games collection of a player that interests you or
even an little anthology of standard "greatest" games. This book (and any
other little Russian games collections that you may buy at this juncture)
you'll read through in three stages as you become increasingly proficient:
1) Play through the naked game scores, until you're comfortable with that
--knowing the Russian names for the pieces, the words for White and Black,
and can decipher the names of the players and the location and occasion of
the games. 2) The second stage, sometime later, you begin reading through
the prose annotations for the games. This is the meat of what you actually
want to do, where you'll learn most of your actual chess-related
vocabulary and jargon (plus you'll actually be studying the games! The
Russian in annotations tends to be simpler and more formulaic, and just
comes along for the ride while you study.) 3) Finally, as you gain
additional proficiency (and if you are interested), you can begin to read
through the longer prose passages --introductions to the games,
biographical information, etc.

As a supplement, while doing the above, go to your local club from time to
time, hang around and listen (without being rude, of course) while your
friendly neighborhood Russian chessplayers are playing each other and
start arguing with each other in analysis. Which they invariably do every
five minutes or so.


It's not as good as actually studying the language seriously, of course,
but the above program should accomplish what you want, particularly if you
put some effort in the early stages.

--Kevin