If the answer is that you only need to be understood, my objections are:

1. why not speak in English then? Learning a language implies some linguistical curiousity (that is curiousity about new grammar as well!) and curiousity about those subtleties of meaning that can only be expressed by means of this language.

2. I often speak about Russian word order. The reason is that it is a very important element of Russian which even advanced English-speaking learners of Russian usually ignore.

Partly they do so because it is ignored in textbooks, so maybe you'll never have this problem:)

Partly, because in most cases you can say it with basic Subject-Verb-Object order - and there are some kinds of Russian, those affected by translation from other languages the most, that are quite similar to any other European language. Your language is going to be dry this way, a bit like my English.

But the result is somewhat sad: people start learnign Russian because of "Russian classic literature" and then they are avoiding exactly what makes Russian Russian:/ I remember an Argentinian beginner who was playing with those "Russian" elements of Russian... and she sounded warmer and more "native" than advanced learners, despite her numerous mistakes:)

For example: one of such "Russian" elements of Russian is "a". It is something between "and" and "while". It joins two pieces of reality as two pieces of a puzzle: we need it for statements like "men are ... a women are ..." (men have beards and women have breasts? something like this). The other conjunction, и , "and" lists things.

It is one of the most common Russian words (in books it is 10th most common, in speech it is almost the most common word), and learners avoid it.

Your goal is just being understood. But I don't think you want to "avoid everything that makes Russian Russian even when it is one of the most common words". It is not about "studying" - as I said, people who study textbooks do this. It is about grammar.

I get what you're saying, but I can't agree with the idea that you shouldn't study <em>any </em>grammar. I think it's true that there's no need to study grammar <em>rigorously</em>, the way you might do in a classroom; but whenever you learn a new rule about how to form a certain kind of sentence, you are, even if only subconsciously, learning grammar. In fact I think the only way to really study a language <em>without </em>studying grammar would be to learn only individual words, and not how to put them into sentences.

Besides, there are times when you absolutely have to look up a grammar rule in order to figure out what a certain sentence or structure means. The meaning of grammatical elements in a sentence can't always be picked up from context or guessed intuitively. Sometimes you'll encounter a sentence that just doesn't seem to make any sense, but becomes clear once you learn a particular rule (about word order, the use of a particular form of a word, etc.). If you ask a native speaker about it, and their answer is, "Oh, well, we always say it like [X] when we mean [Y]," then you've just learned a grammar rule.

I guess it's fair to say that children don't actively "study" the (most basic) grammar of their native language (though they certainly do start studying it once they're in school) -- but they're also immersed in the language 24/7, so they hear hundreds of correctly-formed sentences every day, and they get corrections on their mistakes all the time. Their parents explain how to say things, and tell them the meanings of things they don't understand. But when you're learning a language as an adult, you can't get these kinds of constant examples or corrections, and if you don't understand something, you usually have to look it up. If your confusion was due to not knowing a certain grammar rule, I think it's usually more efficient to just learn the rule than to wait until you've naturally assimilated it from hearing several dozen or several hundred examples, the way children do.

You know, every time I read something along the lines of "grammar is not needed", I can't help thinking... why do people demonise grammar teaching in the first place? What makes them think that you have to choose between the two extremes, between "the past perfect, also called the pluperfect, is a verb tense used to talk about actions that were completed before some point in the past... now, the next rule is...", and "don't say a word about grammar, all you need is to feel the language", when there are so many intermediate states between them? Because... correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that grammar books contain a lot of useful summarised information which is virtually impossible to obtain on your own if you're a beginner. And I seriously don't understand... why reinvent the wheel when you can use this information, save yourself a lot of guesswork and spend more time on something that can't be summarised that easily (or at all) -- for example, vocabulary?

As for this guy's main point, I agree that most of the times grammar mistakes do not impede communication as much as lack of vocabulary does. So, yes, of course, once you've learnt the basic word order, you can just throw words (one by one) at the person you're speaking to -- and there's a good chance you'll be understood even if you don't bother with tenses, cases, genders and other stuff. I don't know, maybe that's how it worked for our earliest speaking ancestors? But I think the main problem about this approach is not that you won't be taken seriously ("oh those uneducated immigrants" / "oh isn't that cute, this foreigner is trying to speak our very difficult language" etc.) -- after all, this nonsense is easy to ignore -- but that deciphering grammar-less speech requires effort. People are not used to matching mental jigsaw puzzles when speaking with someone. And I don't know about you, but I feel bad when I see that the people I like struggle to understand me or find it tiresome to listen to me.

Som Bhatta (my fault for asking your name, now you probably expect me to learn to pronounce voiced aspirates such as BH… argh), your (admittedly short) sentences in Spanish and German are grammatically correct, so clearly you *have* learned some grammar. How you learn it is up to you, but what works for most adults is to get a theoretical overview (or “cheatsheet”) and then practice intensively in controlled, simulated conversations. My (admittedly naïve) impression is that Russian, with its highly flexible word order, is practically gibberish without the proper case endings. The real grammar that we use in communication is not, however, the nonsense that gets force-fed to six-year-old native speakers in elementary school. In fact, grammar (and pronunciation) *is* the language. Vocabulary, on the other hand, varies by region, social class, field of interest, generation, etc. I explained my thoughts in great detail in a discussion last year. It’s worth reading not just the original post, but many of the comments as well:

<a href="https://www.italki.com/discussion/174528" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(0, 113, 185);">Grammar — is it necessary?</a>

Just popping in to say that I agree with Gray, drasvi, Misha and Phil.