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Russian vs Japanese - difficulty? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| albysky Triglot Senior Member Italy lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4379 days ago 287 posts - 393 votes  Speaks: Italian*, English, German | Message 1 of 22 28 July 2013 at 9:05pm | IP Logged |
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If japanese used a phonetic alphabet , would it be more difficult than russian for an Italian speaker to
learn ? Edited by Fasulye on 10 August 2013 at 8:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4706 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 3 of 22 28 July 2013 at 11:02pm | IP Logged |
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I'd say Japanese would still be harder in terms of vocabulary, because Russian has a lot of cognates with Latin languages and even English. I've never really studied Japanese, but I don't think it applies.
On the other hand, Russian grammar can be tough... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| yuriFromRoma Groupie Italy Joined 4704 days ago 48 posts - 69 votes Speaks: Italian* Studies: English, Russian | Message 4 of 22 29 July 2013 at 2:32am | IP Logged |
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EDIT
Though I'm admittedly not studying any Japanese at the present and so I'm no expert on it, I'm Italian too and I agree with fabriciocarraro: I think that Japanese will still be harder than Russian because of the different culture and vocabulary. At least for me. :) Yuri Edited by yuriFromRoma on 29 July 2013 at 11:21am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4763 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 5 of 22 29 July 2013 at 7:00am | IP Logged |
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I've addressed the opinion that Japanese would be an easy language without the kanji in another thread. Having said all that, I can sorta see how someone with a Western European linguistic background could find Russian more difficult than Japanese. While it's certainly not true that Japanese lacks conjugations, the Russian ones definitely beat the Japanese ones in variance and inconsistency. I can't judge fairly though, so insights from someone who has attempted to learn both languages as a non-native would be appreciated.
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| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4835 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 6 of 22 29 July 2013 at 11:37am | IP Logged |
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For a German, Russian is definitely easier. Japanese has a completely different way of building sentences and phrasing thoughts while Russian, complicated as it may be, still has an Indo-European grammar. For an Italian or an Englishman, however, getting cases and aspects right might be a great challenge.
On the other hand, Japanese uses particles for indicating subject and object, too. Some grammars even call this "case", but I wouldn't agree on that. Vocabulary is of course easier in Russian, too. Edited by Josquin on 29 July 2013 at 12:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| LanguagePhysics Newbie United States Joined 4137 days ago 34 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English* | Message 7 of 22 29 July 2013 at 3:47pm | IP Logged |
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I think Japanese would be easier, especially for an English speaker.
Japanese grammar, while considerably different from Indo-European languages, is very regular and much more regular than Russian. Once you have learnt a grammatical concept in Japanese, there is rarely a significant exception, while in Russian, there are often dozens of exceptions to a rule. Furthermore, there aren't many obvious cognates between English and Russian either. The words that are similar in Russian also tend to be similar in Japanese too and mostly relate to modern concepts and inventions. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4835 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 8 of 22 29 July 2013 at 7:49pm | IP Logged |
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Maybe I should add that I had already studied Latin, Icelandic, and some Greek before I started Russian, so I had a very good understanding of grammatical concepts and how Indo-European inflecting languages work. As a result, Russian grammar fitted very well into the categories I had built. Additionally, the way Russian expresses things is very close to German.
Japanese however is just foreign and exotic to me, because it's totally different. Adjectives are conjugated, verbs can take adjectival endings, and there's always the problem of politeness levels and word order. So, for me, it took longer to be able to think in Japanese than it took for Russian. Of course, Russian verbs are a royal pain in the neck (aspect pairs, irregular verbs, verbs of motion) and verbal aspect is very subtle, but it didn't take me very long to grasp the concept. Japanese, however, is still very confusing for me. I should add that I had a very good Russian course from Langenscheidt, which I studied very regularly and intensively, while now I only have a mediocre resource for Japanese (Colloquial) and I'm just dabbling in it. So, any advanced student of Japanese may prove me wrong. Probably, an Italian or Englishman who has never heard of cases will struggle more with Russian than I did, but I nevertheless think Japanese is harder because it takes longer to grasp the very different grammar. But maybe I'm only biased... 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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