By all means, have a fluent Russian read your work - and if possible even translate it back to English - to uncover any grammatical or semantic errors. Russian (I had a few courses) is still a rathe "literal" written language, but as you noted, the speaking of it DOES use inflection and other audible cues to get it understood correctly. Also make sure you concentrate on teh dialect - While Russian and Ukranian (for example) are similar, they are not the same -and there is some mingling of the two in the border areas....

Good luck and Das Vedanya!!

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BND

"Life is a choice, so choose wisely"