|
 |
The usefulness of Russian... | ||
Tags: Usefulness | Russian | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| zekecoma Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5335 days ago 561 posts - 655 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 9 of 21 06 April 2011 at 11:25pm | IP Logged | ||
|
My reasons are simply because I find the Russian language very sexy and I love the music,
tATu, The sLoT, opera seems pretty interesting, the history of the country. While I may not benefit a lot from the language. It is a language I want to learn to fluency and because I want to travel to Russia. Knowing Russian is a chic language too ;P 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6025 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 10 of 21 07 April 2011 at 12:44pm | IP Logged | ||
Hmm, yes. The figure is approx 15,000 according to Wikipedia. But most of the "Russian diaspora" here consists of people who have emigrated a long time ago, and now are completely assimilated. The place I'm most likely to meet Russians is at the sea resorts. Many Bulgarians working in the tourist industry learn the language but this is not exactly my line of work. There is one advantage, though. Sofia is a pretty good place for studying Russian, as good as it gets without actually moving to Russia or the republics. Here we have a Russian cultural institute that offers courses and certificates. And it only increases the temptation ^_^'. My problem is not learning Russian, it's more like, what am I going to do with it afterwards ? Edited by Sennin on 07 April 2011 at 12:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6573 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 11 of 21 07 April 2011 at 2:30pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Russian is sure to look good on your personal language map on HTLAL. It might not be huge in spread or population, but in pure geography it's ginormous. Honestly, when I've got Spanish down, I'll be very tempted to take on Russian because of how my language map would look. Russia is my biggest "white space".
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6650 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 12 of 21 07 April 2011 at 4:32pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I took a Russian course as a college student in the 1970s. I had taken four years of high school French, and I was told that there were so many people who spoke French and that Russian would be more practical.
In those days, Russian had sort of a James Bond appeal. We figured we'd get jobs working for the government. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kounotori Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5335 days ago 136 posts - 264 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 13 of 21 07 April 2011 at 8:45pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I originally started learning Russian because I needed it in my job. However, what was begun for practical reasons soon grew into love and today being able to read all sorts of literature in Russian also motivates me greatly. Plus, I want to be able to fully follow all the fascinating debates on the debating show Поединок.
More Russian speakers are actually needed in the Finnish job markets right now. There is a problem, though: not that many Finns speak Russian. Demand outstrips supply. Fluent Russian would make me more employable, which makes Russian an even better choice for me. And to think that once I even nearly quit studying Russian because I thought the language sounded ugly! Великий и могучий русский язык, как я тебя люблю! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| FrostBlast Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5090 days ago 168 posts - 254 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Icelandic | Message 14 of 21 07 April 2011 at 9:58pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I can justify my own interest in the Russian language with two simple words :
1- Literature 2- Cinema I realize I've got quite some work ahead of me before I feel at ease handling any of these two arts (be it consuming or producing them) but I'm very determined. I'm a young writer (I write in both French and English at the moment) and the more I study Russian, the more I realize that this language can give a writer a whole other kind of freedom to express thoughts in a lyrical way, to strike the reader with intellectual images of great emotional power. French does that rather easily as well (you need only read Camus to understand this) but, so far as I can see right now, never in the same way as Russian. Edited by FrostBlast on 07 April 2011 at 10:00pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5264 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 15 of 21 08 April 2011 at 5:24am | IP Logged | ||
What about Russian gives you that impression? The unpredictable and moving stress? The verbal aspect? The cases? The sound? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| FrostBlast Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5090 days ago 168 posts - 254 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Icelandic | Message 16 of 21 08 April 2011 at 5:54am | IP Logged | ||
|
I'm not sure, so I'll go one by one and work from there.
- Verbal aspects are in every language I've seen until now, including french - they're just not as obviously distinct as they are in Russian, with its groups of two infinitive forms. Maybe that's part of the feeling Russian gives me, but I'm not sure. - As far as unpredictable and moving stresses are concerned, I think English is pretty hard to beat. Just think about "slaughter" and "laughter" : does it really make sense stress-wise that those words are in no way pronounced the same? Russian has some weird stuff going on too (two different ways to pronounce "дома", with a different meaning for each pronunciation, how logical is that?) but I think it's much simpler than English as far as stress in concerned. - The cases are a pain in the ass for beginners - I'm only starting to get the instinct for them after 3 months, but I've always been a fast learner, especially for languages (don't ask me to do calculus though, I'll fall unconscious before I can figure out algorithms and integrals...). That being said, I think cases are definitely part of the Russian language's charm. And I guess it makes rhymes easier too, which can make the language more musical in a totally involuntary way - thus linking the cases and the sounds of the language rather intrinsically. What I think makes up the rest of its charm is : 1- Most consonants having a hard and a soft pronunciation makes Russian an extremely rich sounding language. Both versions are often present in other languages, although not as clearly defined as in Russian, and I think this give Russian the extra edge. Just think about "угол" vs "уголь", "полка" vs "полька", "вес" vs "весь." 2- The amazing ease with the articulation of words and sentences, thanks to the case/declension system, that allows you to both move words around in a sentence to play with emphasis to a rather extreme degree and to form new words/adjectives/adverbs/etc by simply picking up the root of a word and adding the right declension to it. French allows this to a certain extent but, from what I've seen until now, Russian gives you even more freedom by freely accepting these "new words" as making sense, without any questions asked. What I mean here is for words like "прекрасный" being transformed into an adverb simply by switching the -ный ending for a -но ending, forming the word "прекрасно." In French, it's a tad more complicated and many poets and philosophers have to make up words that have a rather strange twist to them in order to get their ideas across. Now, English also gives you this freedom for words, I think more than French, but I've always felt that English, despite all its qualities, could never be as "complete" a language as French - or Russian. (Don't stone me please, I'm sure you can see that I enjoy being articulate in English, and that alone should be proof of my love for the English language - if anything, the whole existence of the English language was justified by people like Shakespeare, Joyce, Poe, and Faulkner.). And then, maybe I'm only seeing useless complexity as being strong and affirmed personality. In any case, when all is said and done, I absolutely love my native language - French - I also enjoy my second language very much - English - and with each passing day, I'm becoming more and more in love with what I sincerely hope will be my third language - Russian. Languages are like women, they need not be logical to be beautiful. = ) Edited by FrostBlast on 08 April 2011 at 7:17pm 4 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
