Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

Listen to this moron, Mark Osbourne, who was Oswald's Marine buddy at Santa Ana. That's where Oswald went after Japan. Osbourne said that Oswald would "go into town on his own" and come back with Russian newspapers (they had a large Russian-speaking community in Santa Ana did they?) and then with a Russian dictionary, he made himself "semi-proficient" in Russian. It's very short, so listen to him:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_Y7SzBqvQA


This is nonsense! Here is a Russian newspaper:

You can't learn Russian with a newspaper such as that and a Russian dictionary. Forget about it! This is fantasy. It's nonsense. 

The fact is that there is a process by which the mind can be pried open to get a new language into it, but that process is not served by just a newspaper and a dictionary. That doesn't begin to cut it. It just doesn't work. And let's remember: an English-to-Russian dictionary wouldn't help. It would have to be a Russian-to-English dictionary. In other words, you couldn't start with English words and look up their Russian equivalents because the Russian newspaper has no English words. You could only go from Russian to English. So, it would be something like this:

The feasibility of actually acquiring useful and meaningful knowledge of Russian that way is zero. You could learn a few words, but only visually. You wouldn't know how to pronounce them. You think you could figure it out with a phonetic guide? Try it and see. The whole grammatical structure of Russian is categorically different from English. Unlike Spanish, it requires a whole different linguistic thought process, and you can't wade through it on your own. I demand that people stop being childish and stupid about this. The idea that Oswald taught himself Russian with a Russian newspaper and a Russian dictionary and became "semi-proficient" that way is ridiculous. It stops now. The fact is that there is NO basis by which Oswald could have taught himself Russian.  

It was after Japan that the Russian-speaking Harvey took over the identity of the New Orleans born Lee. The 9th grade dropout Lee Harvey Oswald most certainly did not teach himself Russian.