Skandinaver som studerar RYSKA? (Skandinavisk & Nordisk) Language Learning Forum

Skandinaver som studerar RYSKA?
Tags: Scandinavia \| Russian
Language Learning Forum : Skandinavisk & Nordisk

19 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3

polyglHot
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5069 days ago
173 posts - 229 votes

Speaks: Norwegian*, English, German, Spanish, Indonesian
Studies: Russian

Message 17 of 19

07 February 2011 at 7:24pm | IP Logged

I have found about 40 words with the same meaning in Norwegian and Russian but not in
English. This helps. Loan words?

I was thinking about getting a new dictionary, (as my eyesight is suffering from the
small print in the one I have now, and as my hands are shaking when holding it, not
nice when adressing a person hehe) - any suggestions?

To answer the thread starter;

...a Collins Gem Russian dictionary. Too small. (Physically! Not vocabulary wise...)
...a notebook with a picture of a Russian cathedral
...The new Pengiun Russian course
...access to locals, as I am completely immersed in Russia at the moment

1 person has voted this message useful

Maypal
Pentaglot
Newbie
Russian Federation
Joined 5064 days ago
32 posts - 40 votes
Speaks: Russian*, Icelandic, English, Danish, Faroese
Studies: Greenlandic, Scottish Gaelic

Message 18 of 19

07 February 2011 at 7:30pm | IP Logged

Iversen wrote:

I have realized the hard way that the key to surviving Russian words is
ALWAYS to split them down in their components. To pronounce, not to speak of
memorizing, a two meter long convoluted word with four or five affixes, a well hidden
root and an ending is a receipt for disaster, - you must see it as a sequence of
short, wellknown elements. Which I discovered after having spent a lot of time trying
to learn 'complete' words by heart.

Yes, it makes sense in most cases, the truth is that it's easier to remember long words
as a sum of smaller units than as a whole (although the meaning of the sum can well be
idiomatic, i.e. different from the sum of the original meanings of the parts).

Quote:

The optimal kind of dictionary for this kind of language would be something like
a dictionary with roots, each illustrated with a wellstructured series of derivations.
I actually have something like that in my Bahasa dictionaries so I know it can be done.
Besides all morphological indications should be immediately understandable - not just
references by number to one of 70 ways of conjugating a verb. But I haven't seen such a
dictrionary.

Writing such a dictionary would not be as easy as you seem to believe (although I do
like the idea), not least because, as I said above, such complexes are very often
idiomatic and some things could only be explained with die-hard linguistic terminology
(or am I too pessimistic?).

There's a book on Russian verbs and prefixes, I haven't read it yet, but I'm sure it's
not for beginners:

Кронгауз М.А. «Приставки и глаголы в русском языке: Семантическая грамматика» (1998)
1 person has voted this message useful

lingoleng
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5301 days ago
605 posts - 1290 votes

Message 19 of 19

07 February 2011 at 11:26pm | IP Logged

Iversen wrote:

I once bought something called "Roots of the Russian language", but it was just about the most incompetent junk I have ever seen - OK, there were examples, but no morphological information at all, and no attempts to be systematic about anything. I'm still looking for something better.

If I remember correctly the book lists the important prefixes and suffixes, talks about the sound changes connected to the process of derivation and then gives many examples which are clear enough to give a lively impression how the derivation works, how it is used in the actual language.
The explanations should be more verbose, more systematic, more sophisticated, I agree, but the learner can get the most important informations about the elements of Russian vocabulary and learn about their composition.
It is not a dictionary, but more a tool for (self-)teaching, and it can be successful when used this way.
Of course, this kind of information is elementary, every course or "method" should include the description of these morphological processes, but as many courses don't teach this subject (or do they? well, maybe not explicit enough...) the book can be a useful complement, not more, but I don't see why it is less.

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