This Russian learner made THE BEST TOOL for everyone who learns Russian (and also a cool guy!)

Hello everyone! Today I invite you to meet my good friend Justin. Although, if you were in our chat for learning Russian, or you are subscribed to my Telegram channel, or you are now in our community for learners, then you know Justin. Justin made one of the coolest dictionaries for learning Russian. All links will be in the description. In this interview, in this conversation, we discussed how he started learning Russian. And believe me, this is not an ordinary reason. We talked about his travels to Kazakhstan, to Uzbekistan, how he spoke Russian there. We talked about what Russian sounds like in other languages, or what it doesn't sound like. And Justin studied Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Portuguese, and other languages, I don't remember anymore. And, of course, we talked about his project in this dictionary. One more request. Justin complained that all his favorite podcasts in Russian stopped being updated. Therefore, if you have recommendations for podcasts in Russian, please write in the comments so that Justin can read and find new cool podcasts for himself. And he, at the end of this conversation, at the end of our conversation, told about three of his favorite YouTube channels. Please like this video and subscribe to the channel. And that's it, let's start watching. Tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from? What are you? Who are you? I am from America, but I have been living outside of America for more than 10 years. I worked as a translator, not in Russian, and I worked remotely. Now I am in Taiwan, I study Chinese. Which language did you translate from? From Japanese to English. Mostly research work. So, what languages do you know? What languages do you speak? I speak English, of course, and Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, a little Vietnamese and Russian. How did you start learning Russian, why and when? Why? Well, it's a long story, but basically there were two reasons. At that time I lived in Vietnam, and it was right before the pandemic. I am comfortable in Vietnam, but I was looking for options where I could live comfortably during the rainy season. I published a post on Facebook in some group, someone, an unfamiliar person, answered me and advised me to visit Kazakhstan. I thought, wow, a completely unexpected answer. At that time, I didn't know anything about Kazakhstan. It seems to me that this answer is so cool that I definitely need to learn more. After that, I started watching videos on YouTube, reading different articles. In the summer of 2020, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and I urgently needed to return to the United States. Everything was fine, the operation was successful, but after that I started thinking about... After that, you decided to learn Russian. Yes, because I started thinking about cognitive health, how to keep the brain healthy. I read different articles on the Internet. In each article it was written that learning a foreign language is a good way. I thought, okay, I already have some experience in this, but probably I can try new methods, new ways, new languages. For various reasons, I chose Russian. I remembered Kazakhstan, the advice I was given on the Internet. After learning Vietnamese, I wanted to learn a language that doesn't have dialects and that is spoken in different countries, and not only in one. Also, because there are a lot of resources for learning Russian in contrast to Vietnamese. Justin, because you were already in Kazakhstan, you can find this post on Facebook and answer the person, okay, I went, what's next? Good idea. I completely forgot. So you started learning Russian two years ago, three years ago? Two and a half. How do you think, what helped you the most? What was the most effective for you? It's hard to say, because in different stages of learning, different things helped me. At first, I wanted to try different applications. Of course, we all know that duolingo doesn't work at all, but I learned about this application called Mango Languages and thanks to this I had a very good start in Russian, I think. Basically, a lot of listening and repeating. At first, it helped a lot to improve pronunciation, to understand basic phrases without too much explanation of grammar. After that, I started to create the first version of the dictionary, because sometimes, especially with subjects, it wasn't very clear when the place of emphasis changed. And I had a feeling that I know a few words, but I can't always use these words, because I don't know all the subjects. I also didn't want to study tables, grammar tables, and so on. Programming is a hobby for me, but I can do it only when I have an idea. At that time, I realized that this thing with emphasis was a problem for me. I thought, maybe I can program something. This was the first version of the dictionary. And how is it different from the second version? The one that exists now, this site, is the second version, right? The site was the first version. It was a web application. Because at that time I also wanted to try to write code in another language. I wanted to create a web application in ClojureScript. I heard that it was cool. In which language? ClojureScript? I already knew Clojure. Usually you need to use, for example, Python for back-end. Back-end. Yes, we say back-end. Back-end. Yes, usually you need to use, for example, Python or Java or some other language for back-end. And for front-end you need to use JavaScript. Yes, usually JavaScript. For Clojure and ClojureScript you can write a full web application in one language. So I developed this application about 5 months. Yes, yes. And yes, it's cool. Everyone I showed it to say that it's just the perfect option for learning Russian. Oh, really? Yes. So it's up to you. And, of course, the link will be in the description, because I think that more people should know about Clojure. Personally, I really like this function with additional where you can find relative words with different prefixes, suffixes. I've never seen this function and it's so necessary. It's so necessary. Yes, yes, really. The problem is that it doesn't always work perfectly. Sometimes there are parts of words that look like prefixes but in fact they are not prefixes. Well, встреч, for example. Yes, встреч. Встретить. Встретить is not в plus встретить. What are you doing now in terms of Clojure? I'm satisfied with the first version. In the second version I find mistakes so far, but I'm mostly satisfied. The thing is that after launching the first version I realized that although I'm used to probably a little bit of old-fashioned applications, after that I started participating in my Telegram chat and I realized that switching between smartphones and tablets was necessary to use the web version of Clojure. I came up with the idea to create a Telegram bot. In fact, it was more effective in my opinion, for learning. At the time when I was developing the first version I didn't read Russian very well so basically information about words I usually found in the English version of Wikislovar. But when I started developing the second version I could read better. I found several very cool dictionaries on the Internet. Only then could I use them. It's an unusual approach to learn a foreign language. Yes. I don't recommend it. I recommend this approach. It's very slow. You don't see the result. In the first version I constantly saw a table of deviations. So I got used to it through this process. During the 5 months I was developing I didn't see any progress. But after I realized that the rules became more familiar. I think that your knowledge accumulates and accumulates and then you see the result. Learning is not a linear process where everything goes straight forward. Up, up, up. The way you speak in Russian, Japanese, Vietnamese and so on. These are all languages from different families. These languages are arranged in different ways. What does Russian look like compared to other languages? Is there anything unique? First of all although everyone says that Russian is a very difficult language I think that there are a lot of words and expressions that come from French as well as English. So at first it's a very difficult language but after the basic stage it becomes much easier because there are words like information all the words that end in shin information revolution Even if you don't know a word you can guess for example in Chinese the situation is very different. It's impossible to guess. For me it was a happy surprise, let's say. I know that it's not a unique moment but for me it's a kind of verb very unique for me. I know that it's a common element in Slavic languages. Many people think that Russian is a difficult language but the most difficult stage is the initial one. And then when you have a basic everything becomes very clear I think. And in English it's the opposite. In English when you start learning everything seems simple and good but with time more and more One more unique moment in Russian for me is a sentence without a verb. Why do you need it? It's already clear. Even simple sentences For example, how old are you? For example, on the doors it's written from you to you. I didn't think about it that in English it's either you or push-pull. In Russian it's from you to you. Also very often you can put a sentence without a verb a movement, for example. I really want to go there. They also say that verb and movement is a difficult topic, right? You can do without them. I'm thinking about the question. I wanted to ask how did you end up in Kazakhstan? You were in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan. Where else did you go? That's all. So it was a stage after your study of Russian you decided to use it somewhere. Not really. In the summer I quit my job and thought that finally I have an opportunity to be outside of Asia for some time. So I didn't travel very often as a tourist. After I quit I thought that finally I have this opportunity. I thought about where to go and in the middle of summer I saw somewhere on Instagram in September there will be some course some... I don't remember some course one month course in Uzbekistan that combines studying and traveling. I thought cool! But because of that course I can't. But I thought why not do it on my own. I remembered about Kazakhstan and I thought maybe I can make some plan to visit Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. In terms of Russian Uzbekistan was not my first choice but in university I heard a course about architecture and art of Muslim world and since then I always wanted to visit Uzbekistan. I wrote this bucket list. For me Uzbekistan is very connected with art with architecture and yes, architecture and decorations and mosaics. I met this direction because of my favorite artist. I have several favorite artists and one of them is Vasiliy Vereshchagin and he has a whole cycle of paintings when he traveled through Samarkand. Maybe on the course if you were talking about Uzbekistan you saw these paintings. Ok, fine. Probably I didn't see because in the course it's all works from Middle Ages. And it turns out you decided to combine pleasant and useful. I mean... Or just pleasant? Just pleasant. As far as I know in Kazakhstan people speak Russian freely and did you have any difficulties to use Russian language? Did you ever switch to English or did you speak everything in Russian? Basically I would say that in Kazakhstan almost 100% in Russian. I rarely used English. Probably there were one or two people who talked with me in English. A guy in a mobile store and because he saw my passport he just thought that I didn't speak Russian. But besides that I think that almost 100% in Russian. I was very comfortable. And in Uzbekistan almost 100%. In fact, in Almaty and in Uzbekistan in Tashkent I was in Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara and everywhere I was confused with the locals. In Uzbekistan not really but I was confused with Russians for incomprehensible reasons. Russia is a multinational multicultural country. Yes. Although you say that you didn't talk with many people for a long time but still I think that it's much easier to exist when you go to a restaurant and everything is clear to you. You open some applications and everything is clear to you. You open a map and you understand people's comments. Yes, it was very useful everywhere. Especially with applications that are not always in English. There is not always an English version. For example the bus application in Almaty is only in Kazakh or in Russian. Do you have any other plans related to the Russian language? In terms of books a long time ago I bought an electronic version of a book in Russian called Chernobyl Mantra. It's a very sad and depressing book but for some reason I wanted to read it. I always upload it. Maybe there are audiobooks? I don't know because there are many words that I don't know. I definitely feel that I have reached a very big goal. Of course, it's not the end. For example, after I reached my goal in Vietnamese I lost motivation to continue. But with Russian I don't know. I would say it's not the end because I really like Russian. So I don't want to stop here. After my trip to Central Asia I came here to Taiwan and I'm just relaxing. One more thing. Today I realized that many podcasts that I listened to a lot last year have not been updated. There are no new episodes. Are these podcasts in Russian? You're being set up like this. Damn. I thought I have so many cool podcasts in Russian but they just disappeared. There is still cool content on YouTube in Russian that I like to watch but I don't have much time to watch videos on YouTube. I also thought to give up TRKI but I don't know. You're looking for the next spark. The next spark. Yes. Can you then recommend 3 podcasts or 3 YouTube channels that you watch in Russian that you like? If you like urbanism there is a channel Arkady Gershman called City for People. Next. It's pretty cool because I realized that creators of content in Russian usually shoot videos about places that are not very well known So it becomes not just a simple repetition of knowledge that you already have. The language is also new and the topic is also new. So City for People is cool. Another channel that will often be in my recommendations is 707. 707? What is it about? No, it's about 808. It's about technology, travel, trains. There are cool videos about trains in Kazakhstan, in Japan, in Europe. The other day I watched a video about apartments in China. It's a very cool channel. Another one. What else? City for People 808 and it's a podcast and there are no new episodes unfortunately but I really like Urubamba podcast. I've heard of it. Probably it's for children, I don't know. Every episode is about another country and they have guests in every episode from that country. They talk about this country, food, culture, music, language and so on. There are host schoolchildren who ask about different countries. I think it gives an interesting point of view. That's all. I will keep I will send them to everyone. Justin, thank you very much for agreeing to talk to me Thank you again for the invitation. We don't say goodbye. We will meet in chat and telegram. Maybe in a year I will be in South-East Asia in that country. It will be cool. Maybe we will meet. Thank you very much and bye-bye.