Englussiarenchgermitallianish

My Russian studies are taking me slightly longer than I was originally intending, but with good reason. I really want to be able to understand the language. Now, I'm neither wanting to be able to write professionally in Russian, nor do I wish to carry on technical conversations that involve detailed vocabulary particular to a specific trade. However, I would like to have a true understanding of the words I learn.

If someone were to approach me on the street and say "excuse me young man, what is your name?" I would know exactly what they meant. Most people who learn a second language have to translate in their head. The same query in Russian would be "Извините молодой человек, чем Вас называют?" I don't want to be going in my mind "ok, 'Извините' is excuse me. 'молодой человек' is young man. 'Excuse me young man.' Ok, got it. 'чем' ..." If I were to do that it would take forever and the Russian asking my identity might think I rode the short bus to Москва (Moscow).

So, that's what I'm doing in the evening. I will say that with the increased speed at which I can read Cyrillic, my progress is moving faster and faster. I've been neglecting my cultural reading and studies though because I find myself hungry for more language study. It's nice to have found something to capture my interest and keep me from thinking about work. To take this to it's logical conclusion, if I accomplish my goal of fluently understanding basic conversation in 6-7 languages I might end up combining all of them to speak Englussiarenchgermitallianish.