Москва — это город.
Moscow is a city.
IPA /mɐˈskva ˈɛtə ˈɡorət/
Say it muh-SKVAH — EH-tuh GOH-rut.
Listen in Russian:
Slow in Russian:
Москва — это город.
24 lessons · pattern-first method
Speak Russian from lesson one.
Build your essential Russian speaking framework in 24 focused lessons. Two reusable matrices — one for the verb, one for the case endings — then hundreds of real sentences built from them, with stress-marked audio and review that adapts to you.
One preposition, two endings — the question word decides
| Form | город (m) | Москва (f) | почта (f) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Где? (Where?) | в го́роде | в Москве́ | на по́чте |
| Куда? (Where to?) | в го́род | в Москву́ | на по́чту |
Same preposition, different ending — the question word tells you which one you need.
How it works
Two engines carry the whole course
Russian builds a sentence out of two systems. The verb carries tense, aspect and person; the noun carries case, chosen by the question you are answering. Learn both as tables you reuse, and the terminology never has to come first.
Reusable matrices
One table is the verb engine: three tenses by statement, negative and question. The other is the case engine: a question word, its preposition and the ending that follows. Every lesson adds a row, then reuses it with new words.
Stress, IPA and audio
Ordinary Russian text does not mark stress, and unstressed vowels change sound. Here every word carries its stress mark, IPA and an English-friendly hint, plus normal-speed and slow audio played by your browser.
Spaced review
Exercises you missed and words you marked difficult return at growing intervals, so your effort goes exactly where it is needed rather than over what you already know.
Try it now
Useful Russian, ready in seconds
Three phrases from the course. Press play, repeat aloud, then press the slow button and repeat again.
Ты понимаешь по-русски?
Do you understand Russian?
IPA /tɨ pənʲɪˈmajɪʂ pɐˈruskʲɪ/
Say it TIH puh-nih-MAH-yish puh-ROO-skih?
Listen in Russian:
Slow in Russian:
Ты понимаешь по-русски?
Я живу в большом городе.
I live in a big city.
IPA /ja ʐɨˈvu v bɐlʲˈʂom ˈɡorətʲe/
Say it YAH zhih-VOO v bul-SHOHM GOH-ruh-dyuh.
Listen in Russian:
Slow in Russian:
Я живу в большом городе.
The roadmap
24 lessons, one framework
The verb engine goes in first, then the six cases in the order Russian actually needs them, then aspect and motion, then the everyday situations that pull it all together. Later lessons constantly recycle earlier material, with a cumulative review after lessons 4, 8, 12, 16 and 20, and lesson 24 is a full assessment of everything before it.
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Reading Russian and the Sentence Without a Verb
Learn to read Cyrillic in one hour, discover why Russian needs no word for 'is', and build your first affirmative, negative and question sentences without conjugating a single verb.
- 60 min
- 22 phrases
- 30 exercises
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The Verb Engine: Three Tenses at Once
Install the whole Russian verb system in one hour: the base table of three tenses against statement, negative and question, the six present-tense endings, a past tense that marks gender instead of person, and a future built from быть plus an unchanged infinitive.
- 60 min
- 24 phrases
- 34 exercises
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Who You Are: Names, Nationalities and Professions
Introduce yourself properly: pick between ты and вы, ask and answer the name questions as fixed chunks, state a profession or a nationality with no verb at all, conjugate the class II -ить verbs, and make your first adjectives agree.
- 55 min
- 26 phrases
- 34 exercises
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Having, Wanting and Liking
Russian has no verb "to have", so this lesson installs the frame that replaces it — у меня есть — fills it with the family vocabulary, adds the two irregular modals хотеть and мочь, and puts you in the dative for мне нравится, мне надо and your first imperatives.
- 55 min
- 26 phrases
- 34 exercises
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Where? The Prepositional Case
The first real case. Answer Где? with в or на plus a changed ending, sort places into the в-list and the на-list, and say where you live, where you work and where you study.
- 60 min
- 26 phrases
- 34 exercises
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What and Where To: The Accusative Case
Add the case that makes Russian sentences move: the accusative. Direct objects, the animate masculine, and the где? / куда? contrast that turns the prepositions в and на from "where" into "where to".
- 60 min
- 24 phrases
- 34 exercises
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Going and Travelling: Motion Verbs I
Russian asks what English never does: are you going on foot or by vehicle, and is this one journey or a habit? Lesson 7 installs идти, ходить, ехать and ездить, the на + transport chunks, and the only two motion prefixes you need at this level.
- 55 min
- 26 phrases
- 34 exercises
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Nothing, Nobody and the Genitive
The genitive arrives, and it does three jobs at once: saying what you do not have, saying how much of something there is, and following the seven prepositions that always take it. Nothing, nobody, never and nowhere come with it, and Russian double negation stops being a mystery.
- 60 min
- 26 phrases
- 34 exercises
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To Whom? The Dative Case and States
The dative is the friendliest of the Russian cases: three endings in the singular, two in the plural, and no animacy to worry about. It names the person everything is aimed at — the one you help, ring, give, show and explain to — and it is the case of «Мне холодно», «Мне надо» and «Мне тридцать лет», three sentences with no subject and no verb at all.
- 55 min
- 26 phrases
- 34 exercises
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With Whom and As What: The Instrumental Case
The last of the six cases, and the best shortcut in Russian: one set of endings covers "with a friend", "with a pen" and "as a doctor", and eight frozen forms tell you when anything happens — утром, вечером, зимой.
- 55 min
- 26 phrases
- 34 exercises
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Numbers, Money and How Many
Numbers arrive, and with them the one rule that changes the ending of every noun in Russian: one takes the nominative, two to four the genitive singular, five and above the genitive plural. Prices, payment and the nine counting nouns come with it — and by the end of the hour you can buy something in Russian from start to finish.
- 60 min
- 26 phrases
- 34 exercises
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The Complete Case Map
Twelve lessons in, the whole noun system goes on one page: six cases against four noun shapes, three declensions including the soft-sign third, the animacy rule in full, adjectives that follow their noun into every case, and every A1 preposition sorted by the case it governs. No new field of vocabulary — this is the map you have been building since Lesson 5.
- 65 min
- 26 phrases
- 43 exercises
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Aspect I: Every Verb Has Two Faces
Every Russian verb comes in two halves, and this lesson installs both. Seventeen high-frequency aspect pairs, the ten prefixes that build the perfective, the rule that the present tense belongs to the imperfective alone, and the four meanings a past tense can carry.
- 60 min
- 24 phrases
- 34 exercises
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Aspect II: Two Futures and the Result
Russian has two futures, and one of them looks exactly like the present tense. This lesson puts them side by side — буду делать against сделаю — adds the time adverbs that choose the aspect for you, and fixes the когда-clause trap that catches almost every English speaker.
- 60 min
- 24 phrases
- 34 exercises
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Motion Verbs II: The Prefix System
Eleven prefixes and two verbs, and you can arrive, leave, enter, come out, reach, drop in, pass, cross, approach and step away — on foot or by vehicle. This lesson builds the whole prefixed motion system of Russian, gives you the surprising past that comes with it, and teaches you how to ask for and follow a route.
- 55 min
- 24 phrases
- 34 exercises
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The Complete Verb Matrix and Survival Russian
The last of the sixteen core lessons: the whole Russian verb in one grid — three tenses, two aspects, six persons — then the fourteen conjugation classes, every irregular that matters, the complete imperative, and twelve survival scenarios you can now handle without a single new word.
- 70 min
- 26 phrases
- 34 exercises
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Time, Calendar and Weather
The clock in four frames, the seven days and twelve months in lowercase, dates that change case, the two grammars of the weather, and the frequency adverbs that put your whole week on a scale.
- 55 min
- 28 phrases
- 33 exercises
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Reflexives and -ся Verbs
The little ending -ся hides five different meanings, from "wash yourself" to "the house is being built" to sentences with no subject at all. This lesson builds every -ся verb of daily life — умываться, встречаться, бояться, жениться, мне хочется — and ends with the story of your own day.
- 50 min
- 24 phrases
- 32 exercises
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Politeness, Requests and Problems
How to ask for anything in Russian without sounding blunt: the four-rung politeness ladder, the particle бы that makes the conditional, the complete ты/вы switch, извините against простите, and the four frames that report a problem and get it fixed.
- 55 min
- 24 phrases
- 32 exercises
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Opinions, Feelings and Connectors
Say what you think and how you feel, and make the sentences hold together: four opinion frames, polite agreement and disagreement, the two families of feeling words, and the connector kit — потому что, поэтому, но, однако, хотя, если and чтобы — that turns separate statements into real speech.
- 55 min
- 26 phrases
- 32 exercises
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Food, Restaurant and Health
Order a meal from the menu to the bill, complain politely when it goes wrong, and describe what hurts at the doctor's and in the pharmacy: the three ordering frames, the portion genitive (чашка кофе, тарелка супа), food preferences, and the health frame «У меня болит голова», with the aspect pairs заказывать/заказать and болеть/заболеть.
- 55 min
- 26 phrases
- 34 exercises
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Travel, City and Real-Life Scenarios
Everything the journey throws at you, in Russian: buying tickets, checking into a hotel, shopping for clothes and handling an emergency — eight real-life scenarios built entirely from the cases, aspects and imperatives you already own, plus the fixed chunks that get you a room, a receipt and, if it comes to it, help.
- 60 min
- 24 phrases
- 33 exercises
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Word Order, Emphasis and Sounding Natural
The lesson that makes you sound Russian rather than translated: theme-and-rheme word order and inversion for emphasis, the particle kit (же, ведь, ну, вот, даже, всё-таки, ли, -то, -нибудь), the five intonation melodies ИК-1 to ИК-5, and the word-formation models that turn every root you know into a family of words — including the three registers of Russian names and the polite patronymic.
- 55 min
- 24 phrases
- 34 exercises
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Complete Russian Speaking Challenge
The final challenge: no new grammar, just the two engines — the verb matrix and the case map — running at speed through twelve real-life scenarios, forty-two exercises reaching back over the whole course, and the one-page cheat sheet that sums all of it up.
- 90 min
- 26 phrases
- 42 exercises
What you get
The A1 grammatical spine, and the words to use it
Each lesson page shows its own real counts. The course-wide figures below are the targets the content is built to.
Grammar
- All six cases, one question word at a time
- Both aspects, and the two futures they produce
- Motion verbs — on foot and by transport, with and without prefixes
- Numeral government: 1, 2–4, 5 and above
- Three tenses, the imperative, reflexive -ся verbs and polite requests
- Word order, emphasis and the particles that make you sound natural
Material
- 550–600 high-frequency words
- 500+ ready-to-use phrases
- 54+ dialogues
- 650+ auto-marked exercises across 18 types
- A searchable phrasebook, a grammar reference and a 14-section pronunciation guide
- Browser audio on every phrase, at normal and slow speed
Who it is for
Made for busy beginners
This course suits you if you want to speak practical Russian quickly, prefer structure over random vocabulary lists, and can study in focused 45–60 minute sessions. No prior grammar knowledge is needed: Russian has no articles, and the case system arrives one question word at a time.
What this course does not claim
No course can make you fluent in a fixed number of hours, and this one does not pretend to. What it does deliver is the A1 grammatical spine and a high-frequency core you can actually speak with — and an honest statement of where that stops, on the about page.
Built on general principles of intensive pattern-based learning — independent and unaffiliated with any named method brand or television programme.
No account and no tracking. Your progress, favourites and review schedule are stored anonymously in this browser and can be exported or reset at any time.
FAQ
Common questions
How long does the course take?
Twenty-four lessons, about 1,420 minutes of guided study in total — roughly 24 hours. The first sixteen lessons are the complete core: about 945 minutes, close to 16 hours, and they finish the A1 grammatical spine. Lessons 17 to 24 extend that into A2 territory. You can stop after lesson 16 with a coherent system, or keep going.
What will I actually be able to do at the end?
Say who you are and what you do, ask and answer questions, talk about your day, your family and your plans in the past, present and future, and get through shopping, eating out, travel and health situations. You will have 551 high-frequency words, 817 usable phrases including the phrasebook, and you will be able to decline a noun and choose a verb aspect on purpose rather than by luck.
Is this enough to reach A1?
Honestly: it is the grammar of A1 plus a large part of the vocabulary, not the whole thing. The official Russian as a foreign language standard (ТРКИ базовый уровень) asks for about 780 word forms and 100–120 taught hours. This course gives you the A1 grammatical minimum — all six cases, both aspects, motion verbs, numeral government — and 551 of the most frequent words, in 24 hours of self-study. It is a real A1 foundation and a genuine A2 start, not an A1 certificate.
Why does the course start with the verb and the cases instead of with words?
Because Russian rewards structure far more than vocabulary. A handful of endings lets you say thousands of things; five hundred words without the case system lets you say very little. So lesson 1 gives you sentences you can build with no conjugation at all, lesson 2 installs the whole verb — three tenses against statement, negative and question — and lessons 5 to 12 add the noun system one case at a time, in the order Russian textbooks have settled on over decades.
Do I need to read Cyrillic first?
No. Lesson 1 teaches the alphabet as four small groups, and most of it you already half-know. The harder part is not the letters but stress, which Russian does not write down — so every word in this course carries a stress mark, an IPA transcription and a plain-English respelling, and the pronunciation guide has 14 sections covering reduction, softness, devoicing and intonation.
Is there any audio?
Yes — every word and phrase has a play button using your browser's own Russian speech voice, at normal and slow speed. Quality depends on the voice your operating system provides, so where the audio is weak the written pronunciation guides are there for you. No microphone, no speaking score: you speak out loud because the lessons tell you to, not because a machine is grading you.
Do I need an account? Where is my progress kept?
No account, no email, no server-side record. Progress lives in your own browser and can be exported as a JSON file and imported on another device. Clearing your browser data clears your progress, so export it if the work matters to you.
How many 821 exercises are there, and do they actually mark me wrong?
821 exercises across the course, in 18 different formats, plus 23 quick-review warm-ups, 143 lesson checkpoints and a final assessment in lesson 24. Answers are checked properly: wrong case endings, wrong aspect and a missing soft sign are marked wrong, and writing е instead of ё gets an "almost" rather than a tick. Mistakes feed the spaced-review queue automatically.
Is this course connected with Dmitry Petrov or the Polyglot television programme?
No. It is an independent project. It uses general, widely-taught principles of intensive pattern-based learning — a small number of high-value patterns, drilled to automaticity, with immediate speaking practice and cumulative revision — but it is not affiliated with, approved by or produced by any named method brand or television programme, and no course material from any such programme was copied.
Will this make me fluent in 24 hours?
No, and be suspicious of anything that promises it. No course can. What this can do is give you the working system of Russian early, so that everything you meet afterwards has somewhere to go — and get you speaking from the first lesson, imperfectly and on purpose.