I've seen other people make their own threads to document their learning, so I thought I'd join in and do the same. Although I tried learning Russian at the start of 2016, after only a few weeks I'd managed to convince myself that it was Impossibly Hard and completely gave up. But, I decided to give it another shot this year, starting from scratch, and I'm determined to not talk myself out of it this time.
At the moment, the only resources I'm using are Duolingo and Wiktionary - as they're free - and once I've wrapped my head around the basics I'll invest in a textbook or two, and maybe a full reference grammar.
I'm still getting the hang of cases (when to use them as well as their declensions... in the singular, I haven't started learning any plural patterns yet) and word order, but I can feel myself improving a little bit every day, which is pretty motivating.
I've tried to write a simple piece of text, inspired by the last Duolingo skill I completed ("Family") - would anyone mind looking it over, answering some of my questions about it, and correcting any mistakes?
У меня есть очень маленькая семья. У меня есть мама. Мою маму1 зовут Дж-. Её нравится слушать кантри музыку и смотреть криминальные драмы. Я живу с ней.
У нас дома есть кошка и собаки. Наша кошка —2 черная и белая. Её зовут М-. Две из наших собак — коричневые3, а одна из наших собак4 — белая.
У меня тоже есть брат и дядя. Моего брата зовут Л-, а моего дядю зовут Д-. Они не живут дома ни со мной, ни с мамой5. Но они живут на моём городе6. Мой брат — помолвленный, и он живет с его невестой. Его невесту зовут М-. Мой дядя живет с его двумя собаками.
Мой брат любит7 древнеегипетскую и валлийскую историю, а мой дядя любит онлайн игры и рок музыку.
смотреть - to look; to watch
криминальный - criminal (adj.)
коричневый - brown
помолвленный - engaged
невеста - fiancée
египетский - Egyptian
древнеегипетский - Ancient Egyptian
валлийский - Welsh
1 Can I leave out the possessive here?
2 Does anyone know how to type — ? I use the standard Russian Windows keyboard and I can only find - .
3 Confession #1: I used Google Translate to try and figure out how to say "one/two/(etc.) of my/our/(etc.)". Confession #2: I have no idea what case the adjectives are supposed to be in.
4 Can I use пёс if I'm specifically referring to a male dog, or would собака be used anyway?
5 "He doesn't live at home with me or (my) mum". But Russian uses double negatives a lot, so... ??? This one confused me, I really have no idea how I'm supposed to write it.
6 How would I say "in the same city as me"? Something like: На такой/таком же городе, как я?
7 Is there a difference between нравиться and любить?