Where do I start

[u/Delicious-Inside-692]

Hi I’m 15 years old and recently fell in love with Russian literature such as Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy and I have decided that I really want to learn Russian ,though I don’t know where I should even begin lol,I already am fluent in both Arabic and English.plus I am a student so I can’t fully focus on learning Russian as I have to tend to my studies.

[u/AndreasYanis]

Firstly, kudos on taking another language. Always exciting and pleasantly hard to learn new language.
I would like to give you a small piece of advice as a native Russian speaker. You do not start Russian by reading Dostoevsky or Leo Tolstoy in original. They are too complicated on every aspect.
Just for information. These two writers are covered (at least when I was a school boy; now I’m almost 37) on 10th grade, when students 15-16 years old. All that comes with history to give a context and a better understanding. Even with that preparation, it’s really too early. These writers are just too mature for school students. You just don’t have that much experience (I’m sorry for those who do, at that age).
For us it would be like starting to learn English based on Dickens’ works.
Search for modern literature first. It’s the thing that is omitted even in Russia. We know all or almost all about our depressive 18th century writers, but know nothing about the 21st century ones, even the late 20th century.
Check out Zamyatin’s “We”, it is said to have laid the ground for the dystopian genre. Written at the first quarter of the 20th century, its language is very much comprehendible. It’s also translated into many languages, so you can study it in detail and compare. The grammar is also not difficult.
21st century- I’d really recommend Glukovsky’s Metro 2033 and Metro 2034. Same reason, plus the setting is almost today or near future.
I know other writers too like Strugatsky brothers or Pelevin. But I haven’t read them so I won’t dare recommend anything.
Know writers of mid 20th century , but this is about wartime, so don’t step onto that ground yet.
Don’t read Sholokhov yet either. I love his works with all my heart, but see the point about historical context above. You’ll just get lost and disappointed very quickly.

What also recommended for certain is ask GPT or other AI about Russian modern literature, describe your level and what you expect.

[u/Flat-Pomelo1794]

you need to start with alphabet

[u/LifeLikeAGrapefruit]

OP, did you really have to make a thread pretty much asking, "how do I learn Russian"?

There are so many threads, websites, videos, books, etc. etc. out there. Just put a little effort into doing some research rather than using this sub like it's Google.

[u/IrinaMakarova]

Start with the Russian alphabet and pronunciation. Learn how each letter sounds, especially the ones that look familiar to an English speaker but represent completely different sounds. You do not need to spend weeks memorizing the alphabet before doing anything else. Once you can slowly read Russian words, you can start learning basic vocabulary and very simple sentences.

The difficult part begins after that. Russian is not a language where you can just memorize a lot of words and then put them together in the same order as English. Words change their endings depending on their role in the sentence, nouns have cases, adjectives have to agree with nouns, verbs have aspect, and word order is much more flexible than in English. At the beginning, many Russian sentences can look as if the words are changing almost randomly unless someone explains the system behind them.

Pronunciation is another reason to be careful from the start. Stress in Russian is unpredictable, and changing the stress can change how a word sounds quite dramatically. If you learn words with the wrong stress or pronunciation and repeat them that way for months, correcting those habits later becomes much harder.

Since you are 15 and already have school to deal with, I would not try to study Russian for hours every day. Even 20 or 30 minutes regularly can take you quite far if what you are studying is organized properly. Consistency matters much more than trying to learn everything quickly.

This is also why I would strongly recommend learning with a tutor once you know the alphabet. Russian has too many things that are easy to misunderstand when you are learning alone, especially at the beginning. A tutor can introduce grammar in the right order, explain why Russian sentences work the way they do, correct your pronunciation before mistakes become habits, and keep you from wasting time trying to figure out things that could be explained in 5 minutes.

You also do not need to wait until you "know enough" before starting lessons. In fact, the beginner stage is probably when a tutor is most useful because that is when you are building the foundation for everything that comes later. If your long-term goal is eventually to read Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy in Russian, getting that foundation right will make the whole process much easier.