Hey, maybe I could get sponsorship for the Yan-nhangu learner's guide by putting in phrases like that - you pay $20 and I make sure there's your favourite example sentence...

So grand. I had a geometry text, where the points on the diagrams spelled out words that strung together thematically. Getting the humor of a language strikes me as the most difficult aspect, and the only way to really get it would be to have it taught from the first word.

There's a scanned version here (via Digg). Same text, I presume.

Also, there's a Wikipedia stub that is moderately helpful for those unfamiliar with the concept of "shock worker".

It sounds like a Soviet course, with the shock workers and loafers and concrete.

Aaah, ударники, that takes me back... :o)
This reminds me a lot of my favorite Spanish textbook (1987, fourth edition). To quote from lesson 1:

No son ustedes cooperativistas?
Si, senorita, nosotros somos cooperativistas.
Los obreros de choque son muy laborioros y ricos.

Oh and as for the concrete mixer, I just have to share this: there is a wonderful Slovak phrase born in the times of the megalomaniacal communist-era projects during which almost a half of Slovak men worked in construction:

Standard Slovak: On má kľúče od miešačky.
Dialect: Vun ma kľučki od mišačky.
Literally: He's got the keys to the concrete mixer.
Figuratively: He is the most important person here (i.e. nothing can be done without him and/or his approval).

I recently heard it from a politican and I laughed my but off.

The full first book is scanned http://newstar.rinet.ru/~goga/biblio/lipson/lipson.html (here). The .jpgs are a bit small, but perfectly legible.

That said, I would love to hear recommendations for what to use to learn Russian. I've got two books and two sets of CDs - all reasonably priced - but it would be quite useful to hear from more experienced speakers about what they used/found useful/found useless.

(My contribution, from Chinese: the Chinese govt. puts out a great set of Chinese textbooks which you can have shipped over for far less than it costs to buy any textbook here. Peking University Press put out a series of books that run 30-50 yuan a pop; each have a solid semester worth of content. As for CDs, I'd try to get something in "Beijing" accent; the Northeast provinces are more clear, but if you learn accented Chinese from the start, the more standard pronunciation will be a snap to understand.)

Awesome. My Russian is getting rusty, and the library has two copies plus the teacher’s guide. I think I’ll practice some Russian this weekend!

It sounds like a Soviet course, with the shock workers and loafers and concrete.

There's all the difference in the world between a Soviet course, produced in the Soviet Union and full of solemn evocations of friendship between peoples and the like, and a course that uses Soviet cliches for laughs.

A pure gem! Contents that include "Stories" and "Rituals" -- all life is there. And page 316 of the scanned version: "How to avoid answering a question - Advanced Level". Any language teachers' course that doesn't include Lipson should be decertified immediately (mine didn't).

BTW Does anyone know more about Alexander Lipson? I can't find any biographical details or reminiscences.

Lipson's Russian text is a work of art in itself. There's some humor but not much satire, and overall it's a pretty complex text. Sometimes it reads like a script for a Kira Muratova movie, sometimes like something post-Zoschenko, post-Platonov, post-Kharms.

That "In tuxedos" destroyed me.

Roger, you might want to hunt down Alexander Lipson in Memoriam, published in 1994 by Slavica. Or if you have access to JSTOR, you could check out this review of the book (with some biographical info on Lipson) from Slavic and East European Journal.

My heartfelt thanks for uncovering this gem, which has caused hilarity all round in the office this morning.

The best textbook ever - remember the concrete tigers in the concrete zoos? Looked after by concrete zoo-keepers? Although when I went to Russia as an exchange student in the late '70s with nothing but Lipson vocabulary, and said "Ah! a shock-worker?" pointing to a statue, I got a pretty cross reply: "NO! It is the great poet Mayakovskij!"

Wasn't Slavica the outfit that published the wonderful "Dictionary of Russian Obscenity"?

As for odd things to learn to say, in what language other than Sanskrit would one of the adjectives learned in the first semester be "three-headed"?

I just remember that Ionesco wrote a French textbook in English with absurdist and surrealist sentence examples.I saw it and didn't buy it. I could kick myself.

"Mise en train": Michel Benamou et Eugene Ionesco.

"Our plant is a concrete plant. Our brigade is a concrete one. Our plant is a concrete plant. And our task is concrete. Concrete, concrete, concrete, concrete..."

That sounds really stressing !

I assume this post is responsible for the current ad in the sidebar - "Fork Truck Training". Which rather tickles my fancy.

Thanks, Ben, for the references. The publicly available first page of the review article contained its own revelations:

“…Alexander Lipson’s death just short of his fifty-second birthday in 1980,…”
“…Lipson, language pedagogue extraordinaire, maverick entrepreneur, linguist’s linguist, travel tour designer and enfant terrible.”

Now to work out, as a freelance bear of very little brain, how to join JSTOR.

Roger, many libraries subscribe to JSTOR and provide access from computer terminals onsite. Some may provide offsite access as well for library cardholders.

I just noticed that the Russian words for "park" "trolleybus" and "enthusiasm" are cognate with the English. Hmph. How unexotic.

And I can't get that bok out of my head now. I quote it with enthusiasm an the trolleybuses. It's my new Monty Python.

I learned what Russian I know from Lipson's books (and patient teachers). They were hysterically funny. I think I still have my beat-up copies of the paperback "preliminary editions".