"Easy" Slavic Language? (Advice Center) Language Learning Forum

"Easy" Slavic Language?
Tags: Easiness \| Slavic Languages
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44 messages over 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6

Henkkles
Triglot
Senior Member
Finland
Joined 4255 days ago
544 posts - 1141 votes

Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish
Studies: Russian

Message 41 of 44

15 June 2013 at 11:29am | IP Logged

I don't know about you people but as a native Finn I feel noun declension to not be a big of a deal. The verbs are much harder, but doable. I guess all of those concepts are kind of difficult for native English speakers, because English lacks a huge amount of the concepts present in many other languages such as reflexivity, gender, declension... so I understand why most English speaking people have fallen in the pit of "I can't learn a foreign language". I find it easier to just ignore the concepts that are in Finnish that aren't in my target language than to learn the concepts that aren't in Finnish but are in my target language.

I got sidetracked but it just boils down to what you find hard. If you familiarize yourself with the concepts before trying to learn them you're bound to be much more succesful with them.
2 persons have voted this message useful

prz_
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Poland
last.fm/user/prz_rul
Joined 4861 days ago
890 posts - 1190 votes

Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian
Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish

Message 42 of 44

15 June 2013 at 12:19pm | IP Logged

As a Slavic guy I can say that in theory a noun declension is not a problem at all. But when it comes to practice... I can see that surprisingly I make mistakes I really shouldn't. And I only mean the Slavic languages, which should be like a "just a little bit different Polish" for me.
2 persons have voted this message useful

Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 5058 days ago
2096 posts - 2972 votes

Speaks: Russian*

Message 43 of 44

15 June 2013 at 12:34pm | IP Logged

Volte wrote:

First: I agree with what Chung said, and I consider it a reasonable summary of how hard
it is to go from each writing system to the pronunciation of the corresponding
language. I'd also like to point out that both have regular changes in the
pronunciation of consonants that aren't reflected in the orthography - and that
Russian's voicing/devoicing/consonant cluster reduction rules are harder than Polish's
sound changes. The rest of this post deals with the pronunciation itself, without
respect to the writing systems.

Why do you think so?

Volte wrote:

Polish and Russian pronunciation are both 'middlingly difficult' for English speakers,
I'd say: harder than German/Spanish/Italian/Persian/Esperanto/Japanese, about on par
with French, and much easier than Mandarin or Korean.

Why? From my point of view they are very difficult for a native English speaker.

Volte wrote:

Aside from that, Russian and Polish both have a few snags. Both use palatalization,
although Russian does so much more extensively: most consonants have palatalized and
non-palatalized forms. Polish has more contrasting sounds that can be similar-sounding
to English speakers for a few letters: r, z, s, and c have not only contrasting dental
and palatal versions, but also retroflex. Also, Polish has two nasal vowels.

Polish doesn't usually use palatalization exactly, but that' an insignificant point.
There is a very important thing which is usually for left for some reason when
discussing complexities of the Russian phonology and which is rarely explained in
texbooks. It makes this thing impossibly difficult to understand for many learners.
Russian contrasts palatalization and yotation. живём - живьём; падём - подъём and so
on. In Polish you can pronounce a full yot in mia or you can pronounce simply a
palatalized m and add a, native Polish speakers won't even notice the difference. But
in Russian this difference is phonological. And since many textbooks teach that a soft
consonant is a consonant + y, English speakers often pronounce мя like мья and so on.
It is also more difficult to hear palatalized consonants in unstressed syllables.

Volte wrote:

The vowels in both languages are fairly standard European vowels: hence, not that
difficult for speakers of most European languages, and a fairly large pain for
native English speakers, who tend to throw in diphthongs inappropriately all the time.

Russian vowels are easier to pronounce because of the vowel reduction.

Volte wrote:

Neither is all that difficult for English speakers to be able to pronounce in a way
that is comprehensible.

"A comprehensible way" is a vague notion but their pronunciation is very difficult for
a native English speaker even if they want to be understood effortlessly.

3 persons have voted this message useful

Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6599 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, Finnish^C1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

Message 44 of 44

15 June 2013 at 5:25pm | IP Logged

Henkkles wrote:

I feel the same way about the Finnish cases ;) ♥

2 persons have voted this message useful

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