Dear Steemians. This is the third in a series I'm posting to support Golos. I'm a Russophile and I'm tremendously excited about the changes Russia is experiencing.  I hope you enjoy it:

Here's a short tip on learning to listen to Russian.It's easy to do and doesn't take long. 

You won't find it in any books and you can begin before you start any serious study of the language.

Here it is:

Listen to Putin

Let me repeat that.

Listen to Vladimir Putin speak.

"How on earth is that a useful tip for a beginner?" I hear you ask.

Let me explain.

There is a state that is little recognised in language learning... I call it 'Post Total Beginner'.

When you first hear a language you don't know it's tricky to differentiate even the different words. Yet after a period of study, even if you understand nothing of what is said in a sentence, you can pick out the separation of individual words. 

This is the state of being a 'Post Total Beginner' and any student who reaches this has taken a significant step on a long path of training the mind to pick out the different sounds of spoken Russian.

The best way to accelerate the advance to this step is listening to a native speaker. The longer you spend doing this, the clearer Russian diction will become to you.

I choose Putin as an example for a few reasons:

He speaks relatively clearly
His grammar is certain to be correct
He has a pithy, charismatic delivery
He has a broad range of emotion in his speech. The variation makes things more interesting.
There are more Youtube clips of him than any other Russian in history.

Watch this short clip:

Now place your attention exactly at the one minute mark. He says something that the subtitles translate as 'This is not true'.

Listen to the four words he uses again and again until you can make out the sounds. Eventually you should be able to hear this (transliteration)

'noa eta ni tak'

In Russian it is written 

Но это не так

A literal translation would be 

But it (is) not so 

Your task now is to listen to that piece, again and again, until you can hear those individual words. 

Got it? 

Congratulations! 

You have just taken a step towards training your brain to recognise the sounds of Russian speech.

In my opinion this should form a daily part of any Russian learning practice.

And in case you hadn't noticed you'll also learn far more about Russia in one short Putin soundbite than in a solid week of western 'news'.