You're learning Russian in the hardest possible order. I'm Russian — here's the easy one

If you are month in and still can't make a sentence in russian — it's not you. It's the order

I'm Russian. I studied English many years and got almost nowhere. Textbooks, rules, table of tenses I could fill perfectly and still could not order a coffee. It went up only when I started to travel and had to speak. Badly, with mistakes in every sentence. People understood me anyway

So here is the order I would take if I start Russian tomorrow

1. Speak it wrong. Out loud. This week

Wrong endings don't block anything. Russian has enough redundancy that context carries the meaning — word order, prepositions, the verb, the room where you stand. Say «я идти магазин» and any Russian understands you go to the store

To sound correct is separate project. It comes later, and it comes easier than you think.

2. Learn whole phrases, not rules

«У меня есть…» · «Мне нравится…» · «Я хочу пойти в…» · «Можно…?» · «Скажите, пожалуйста…»

Memorize whole thing with the ending already inside. Then change one word

And here is what nobody told me: the phrase is not how you skip the case. It's how you get it. Say «мне нравится» four hundred times and the dative is already inside you — through the ear, not through the table. You don't skip anything. You swallow it whole and digest later.

3. Take 30 phrases you will really use this week

Order food. Ask direction. «Скажите медленнее.» Drill them until they come out without thinking.

This is the line between speaking and studying. You feel it when you cross.

4. So when to start the cases?

Not on a date. When it starts to itch

One day you hear yourself say «в магазин» and «в магазине», and you notice they are not the same word, and you want to know why. This itch is the signal. For most people it comes somewhere in month four, five, six of real speaking.

Open the table before the itch — it's noise. A grid of endings attached to nothing you ever said.

Open it after — and you don't learn a rule. You get the answer to a question you already have. Takes much less time. And it stays

My son, when he was learning to talk, said «идем улица»

No preposition. Wrong case. Two words in wrong shape, and he said it all the time

And we went outside

Nobody gave him a table. I said «да, идём на улицу», we put shoes on, and we went. Few months later he says it right and he could not tell you why

Only difference with you — you are old enough to be embarrassed