Basic English and its kin are artificial dialects which represent, among other features, a carefully-pared-down vocabulary intended to be fairly comprehensive and expressive for its thrift. The vocabulary holds somewhere around 1000 words, give or take.
To my knowledge Russian Accelerator claims a 750 word Russian vocabulary that's meant to go pretty far.
Are there any freely available lists of a comparable length Russian vocabulary intended to give similar expressive power for its parsimony?
If the "Basic Russian" hasn't been generated yet then only reason is it's unpractical and likely to yield little.
Vocabulary for English is essential, in comparison with Russian. In Russian, the words, that very closely by intuitive comprehending, forms a bush (cluster), derived from one simple word, or, more accurately, from stem or root. In English things seemed more simpler, because a word, as teachers are saying to us, has no inflection, no agreement in morphology, and far from the amounts of words derived by prefixing, affixing, suffixing than in Russian.
But what they say did not take into account the simple fact, that explains the lack of "Basic Russian". Every Russian (Turkish, Polish, ...) words has the princip|le of the color-coded component used in electronic industry. Every colored strip marks given word, that it is listed as the member of a class.
For a rapid introduction to this topic: suffixing-meaning
Explanation by Quick Example:
prefixes-root-affixing+suffixing+flexia
|
-да-
|
да-р gift, present
да-р-ован-ие gift, talent, endowment
да-р-ом nothing, gratis
да-нь tribute, contribution
да-тель-н-ый dative
да-нн-ые datum, data
по-да-р-ок present
по-да-р-ить make a present
про-да-ть to sell
рас-про-да-жа sale
пре-по-да-вать to teach
по-да-вать to present, serve
по-да-тель bearer
по-да-яние charity, alms
под-да-нный subject, citizen
да-ть за-да-ча problemm, question
to give с-да-ча change
у-да-ча success
у-да-л-ось had done
у-да-ст-ся (s/he) might be able to
от-да-лить push away, zoom out
от-да-ли-сь echoed
раз-да-вать to distribute, pass out
раз-да-ча handing out
воз-да-вать to reward, render, return
вы-да-ча distribution, giving out
из-да-вать to publish, to emit smth (began to hum)
пре-да-нность loyalty, devotion
при-да-ное dowry
от-да-вать give away
пре-да-ть (чему-то) ...
пре-да-ть (кого-то) ...
...
"Дать задачу отдать сдачу."
Class про- collected the members that have common characteristics:
|
| get past smth; bypass smth; to go in; to go through;
| to pass inside; to move along smth;
|
|
| про-делать
| про-ходить
| про-писать
| про-дать
| про-плыть
про- про-говорить
про-греть
про-плавить
про-...
Once students achieve an understanding and mastery of the basic Russian suffixes and prefixes, they will be able to recognize, identify, and decipher words into their component parts. With this skill established, they should also develop an ability to construct many words and terms from a given Russian root, facilitating both the translation of Russian literature and student conversation and composition.
There are a variety of lists around which are comparable. You can google "most common russian words" or something similar. It is harder to shrink Russian down to basic words. Given the nature of the Russian language means the most simple words are complicated by conjugations, declensions and other grammatical changes.
I found a series called Book2 which are books for language vocabulary. There is one for Russian. The book covers words for the most common situations. As you learn more common words it is easier to then master all the grammatical issues and the wide array of prefixes and suffixes.
You can find something like this
http://masterrussian.com/vocabulary/most_common_words.htm http://www.learnrussianfree.com/vocabulary/word http://www.101languages.net/russian/most-common-russian-words/
But it's much more useful to get a good modern textbook of Russian. Then the vocabulary in this textbook will represent such a list automatically. Especially if it's for beginners.
