Part 2: Learning the Languages of the New World Powers — Russian

Along with Brazil, Rus­sia is the oth­er junior mem­ber of the BRICs (see Part 1 for more on the BRIC con­cept.)

While it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly the coun­try that’s first on Amer­i­ca’s list of future eco­nom­ic com­peti­tors, it’s expect­ed to be a play­er. And, if Gold­man Sachs is right, Rus­sia, a resource-rich nation, will over­take Italy’s econ­o­my in 2018; France’s in 2024; the UK’s in 2027 and Ger­many’s in 2028 — that’s assum­ing that none of its under­ly­ing prob­lems (a declin­ing pop­u­la­tion, Vladimir Putin’s heavy-hand­ed pol­i­tics, envi­ron­men­tal dete­ri­o­ra­tion, etc.) become too severe.

Through­out the Cold War, the Russ­ian lan­guage was very in vogue. When the Wall fell in 1989, it fad­ed. Now, if the eco­nom­ic pre­dic­tions hold true, it could become the lan­guage of the future yet again. As of this moment, there’s no short­age of good pod­casts that can get you speak­ing a lit­tle Russ­ian. First, we’ll point you to A Spoon­ful of Russ­ian (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). This well-reviewed pod­cast gives you a chance to learn con­ver­sa­tion­al Russ­ian from a native Russ­ian speak­er (Natalia Wor­thing­ton), and when it comes to teach­ing the alpha­bet, they use video to teach Cyril­lic let­ters.

Next, if you’re look­ing to do busi­ness in Russ­ian, this pod­cast is for you. Sim­ply called

Busi­ness Russ­ian (iTunes Feed Web Site) this series, pre­sent­ed by the UCLA Cen­ter for World Lan­guages, teach­es stu­dents, as you could guess, the essen­tials of Russ­ian busi­ness com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Final­ly, to give things a lit­tle more of an intel­lec­tu­al twist, we present

Russ­ian Lit­er­a­ture (iTunes Feed), anoth­er UCLA pod­cast that lets users improve their
com­pre­hen­sion and vocab­u­lary by lis­ten­ing to excerpts from Tol­stoy,
Gogol, Chekhov and oth­er Russ­ian lit­er­ary greats.

Final­ly, if you’re look­ing for a more com­pre­hen­sive approach to learn­ing Russ­ian, we’ve list­ed sev­er­al prod­ucts on the mar­ket in our new Ama­zon store.

See our com­plete col­lec­tion of For­eign Lan­guage Les­son Pod­casts.

Check in tomor­row for our third install­ment ded­i­cat­ed to speak­ing Hin­di.