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German or Russian? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5325 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 9 of 14 07 September 2013 at 8:15pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Those who find spelling errors are welcome to keep them :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| JiriT Triglot Groupie Czech Republic Joined 4788 days ago 60 posts - 95 votes Speaks: Czech*, English, German | Message 10 of 14 08 September 2013 at 11:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Learning a language just for a trip, it is not very useful. It takes a lot of time to
learn a language. Will you live in such a country at least half a year? Do not learn Russian for the Czech Republic. Czech people do not know Russian, only some people who are above 50 years. More people know English here. And more importantly, a lot of people do not like Russians, because they occupied the country until 1990. In Poland it is perhaps even worse, the Poles hate Russians. In Croatian it is similar. Perhaps in Serbia people would be glad if you spoke good Russian. But even there, they will speak English as well and I guess their knowledge should be generally good. I do not recommend you any of the language of the countries. Czechs, Croatians, Serbs - are small nations. Poland is a more populated country, nearly 40 million people. But it is spoken only in this country and practically nowhere else. German is spoken in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, 100 million native speakers and a lot of non native speakers in Europe (and perhaps Argentina). Russian is spoken by more people and the other nations of the former Soviet Union speak it also very well. In my opinion, Russian is more important as a world language but German is more useful in Europe. For an American Russian seems slightly better. But German would certainly be easier for you, it is related to English. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5000 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 11 of 14 09 September 2013 at 4:37pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I agree, don't speak Russian here. English is totally ok for basic communication quite anywhere in Europe. Not many czechs speak German (despite many learning it at school) and even fewer speak Russian, except for the immigrants. And really, Russian will not work like "hey, he speaks our language, that is nice", quite the opposite because it is not our language, it is symbol of the worst several decades in our history. And calling Central Europe "Eastern" may not be a good choice as well. I am not the only person who hates this nonsense.
Unless you have some good reason to learn either German or Russian, don't learn them. Speak English during the journey and should you find a place and culture you like and want to return to, learn its language. Polish could be an excellent choice but should you, for example, fall in love with Serbia, than why not Serbian. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7147 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 12 of 14 09 September 2013 at 11:08pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
If you're going to the Slavonic parts of Eastern Europe excepting the former USSR, then I would suggest that you learn German of those two (although it's not THAT useful). English will most likely be good enough since most people up to about age 40 speak at least enough to effect basic exchanges. If you'll be hosted by people on the trip, try to figure out which languages they know and adjust accordingly. If you feel like being a bit of a guinea pig or at least replicating something that I did in part when travelling in the area, then learn Slovak. You'll be understood no problem in Czech Republic and Slovakia, and it does have a reputation of being the most intelligible Slavonic language to a randomly-picked Slav if you're too lazy to determine what that Slav's background is. In desperation when in Croatia many years ago I resorted a few times to very dumbed-down Slovak since my attempt at explaining or asking for things in BCMS/SC failed me utterly. I seemed to get my point across then, although it wasn't a quantum leap better. See also "Popularity of German in East Europe?" and "Russian in ex USSR republics and allies" Edited by Chung on 09 September 2013 at 11:17pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5047 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 13 of 14 25 October 2013 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
You become angry because of such jokes. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4698 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 14 of 14 25 October 2013 at 2:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Sorry, couldn't resist, the joke was too obvious not to make X)
Then stop making terrible ones. Edited by tarvos on 25 October 2013 at 2:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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