Beginning Learner's Russian Dictionary

The Beginning Learner's Russian Dictionary is designed for beginning learners of the Russian language, including those who are going to take the Test of Russian as a Foreign Language (TORFL) at the elementary (A1) level.

Bonus: Free audio tracks are available to download and stream from the publisher's website.

The dictionary is based on the official Lexical Minimum for the standardized test, which was developed by the Russian Ministry of Education and Science and includes 780 items that learners are expected to know at the A1 level. To these, the names of countries, common Russian personal names, and grammatical terms have been added, bringing the total number of headwords in the dictionary to just over 1,000. Whether or not you plan to take the TORFL test, this selection of vocabulary will provide a solid base upon which to build your competency in Russian.

This dictionary offers many advantages for beginning learners over other Russian-English dictionaries. It offers a reader-friendly, uncluttered layout. Only senses appropriate to the A1 level appear in the entries. Grammatical information is presented clearly in tables along with invaluable usage notes. Example sentences contain only A1-level vocabulary. Beginning learners may find other dictionaries overwhelming, as entries contain multiple senses, many of which are uncommon and make it difficult to determine which sense is intended. Such dictionaries present limited grammatical information, often in abbreviated form, under the assumption that the reader is proficient in Russian grammar. Likewise, example sentences may contain too many higher-level vocabulary words to be of use to beginning learners.

An English-Russian index makes it easy to locate the Russian word you need and learn more about its pronunciation, grammar, and usage.

The Beginning Learner's Russian Dictionary is meant to be more than a reference in which to look up unknown words. It is a study tool to expand your lexicon and build a solid base in both vocabulary and grammar. You are encouraged to read through entry after entry, study the structure of the example sentences, notice the inflections of nouns, adjectives, and verbs, and practice your listening skills and pronunciation while listening to the accompanying audio tracks.