Oh wow, stay safe!

Thank you for sharing your experiences and the YouTube channel recommendation.

I've been alternating between the interactive lessons on http://learnrussian.rt.com/ and "The New Penguin Russian Course". I've been enjoying the former a lot more because there's audio to accompany written content, which helps when I try to enunciate words. There are also tests, which helps me measure retention. The latter book feels more like dry reading to me, but coverage seems very comprehensive.

I haven't been learning for all that long, but the two things that have been regularly catching me out are:

- Knowing which "o" letters in the word are stressed, in order to pronounce it correctly (I default to reading them as "o" when they should instead be "a")

- Looking up new words in sentences is a bit harder because they often occur in conjugated forms (i.e. not only verbs, but nouns too)

Cool! There's an easy tip for "o": If it's in the dictionary as о́ then it's the stressed syllable and you say the "o", otherwise it's "a". Example word: о́вощи, the first "o" is stressed. You should include the accent mark on any flashcards you make, since it can literally change the word you are saying (сто́ит, стои́т).

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/овощи https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/стоит

In my experience, the unstressed "o" as "a" is only mostly true and varies by region. This is especially true for unstressed "o" preceding the stressed vowel.

For example, "молоко" is pronounced differently in different parts of the country. For me, the first "o" sounds more like a "ə" (think bOOk) around Moscow, and more like "a" further east.