Russian wordlists

[Mike Berry]

For a recent publication in this field see Nicholas J.Brown, Russian
Learners' Dictionary: 10,000 words in frequency order, Routledge,
1996. This is based on a number of published wordlists, and includes
a translation and relevant grammatical information on the word where
appropriate.
The compiler writes in the preface "...the academic validity of
frequency dictionaries can easily be questioned. The very fuzziness
of the notion of frequency, and the significant differences between
any two frequency lists compiled by different people or different
methods, make the compilation of the 'correct' or 'ultimate'
frequency dictionary of modern Russian an impossibility. The
justification for producing a new frequency dictionary of this size
is not that I claim to have found some definitive way of determining
word frequency for the Russian language as a whole, but that such a
wordlist is useful. Students are stimulated to increase their active
and passive vocabularies in an organized, efficient way, the increase
in their vocabulary can be easily measured by testing from the list,
and one more straightforward criterion of learner competence is added
to such traditional critieria as number of grammatical errors, accent
and speed of delivery. To put it briefly, the idea may have some
theoretical flaws, but in practice it works."


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Mike Berry
Centre for Russian and              Tel: 0121-414-6355
East European Studies,              Fax: 0121-414-3423
University of Birmingham,           email: m.j.berry.rus at bham.ac.uk
Birmingham B15 2TT, UK.

                   ***** Umom Rossiyu ne ponyat' *****
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