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Is Russian Really that Difficult? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 25 of 47 03 September 2013 at 10:14am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Russian definitely has its quirks, and for people who don't already know another Slavic language it may came as a shock that the morphology of adjectives and nouns is so complicated. In for instance Latin the adjectives and the nouns have more or less the same endings, but not in Russian, haha. However this just means that you have to adjust your learning methods.
In my case this meant that I had to make 'green sheets' with both adjectives and nouns on the same page - I couldn't find a grammar which had done this, but then I just did the work myself, and afterwards I could just look at that sheet instead of flipping pages in a grammar. An easily accessible information source is much better than one where you have to fight for each morsel of information. Besides I could at last get the accusative wedged between the nominative and the genitive which provide all its forms. Putting it after the dative is downright idiotic. At least Russian hasn't got any articles, but the choice of number (!) and case after numbers more than makes up for that rare glimmer of leniency. I have also made a green sheet with the cases after the Russian prepositions, where there basically are three groups: those you have to study separately because they are associated with more than one case, those that govern the genitive and 'the rest'. The big problem with Russian verbs is to choose between perfect and imperfect ones - and this problem becomes even more poignant when you can read claims that this is one of the areas where the Russians themselves never commit an error. At one point I did a special study of the practices in subordinate clauses, and at another time I studied the aspects of infinitives in main clauses. Ultimately you must form some kind of semantic idea about the difference, and for some this is best done by unconscient osmosis, but for me this is a prime example of a problem complex where it pays to switch between looking at rules and trying to see how they function in real language. There aren't many verbal forms to learn, and in most cases the endings are predictable, but neverthelesss my red Gyldendal dictionary enumerates more than forty different paradigms. Leaving truly irregular verbs aside (and learning those that don't have past forms ending in -l separately) this can be reduced to a few accent change patterns, a handful of vowel changes (based on stem) and some consonant changes which mostly are predictable. The explosion in the number of paradigms arises when you try to combine these three factors, so the solution is to separate them in your mind. For me the grammar and the vocabulary aren't the most problematic side of Russian - the problem is getting TV with subtitles or nonliterary videos with a transcript. Of course any contemporary textbook gives you texts with audio, but in a framework which isn't really attractive. I have only tried a reading of The Master and Margarita, but that experience was so violently nauseating that I have been reluctant to try any other literary works with a text. And my cable TV provider doesn't offer a Russian channel ... but whine whine, some day I will have to do something about this problem, and then Russian will just become another amiable and non-threatening item on my language list. Edited by Iversen on 04 September 2013 at 1:18pm 11 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| HKlawyer Triglot Newbie Hong Kong Joined 4108 days ago 6 posts - 9 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Japanese Studies: Russian | Message 26 of 47 03 September 2013 at 11:05am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'm also learning Russian purely for reading purposes, and it certainly makes it a lot easier, though still not easy. For cases, context will either tell you what it is or narrow it down to two or maybe three choices that are not that hard to tell apart.
What would really make it a lot easier (for me) would be to give up trying to remember which syllable the stress falls on: pronounce all the vowels with their full un-reduced value, and either apply no stress or put it in a fixed position (e.g. on the penultimate syllable as in Polish). Getting correct pronunciation is pretty much meaningless for my purposes, but for some reason I just can't let go of it. --edited to remove incorrect example-- Edited by HKlawyer on 04 September 2013 at 2:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5056 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 27 of 47 03 September 2013 at 11:26am | IP Logged | ||||||||
You mean for nouns with a zero ending? Otherwise воду, руку and so on. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4707 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 28 of 47 03 September 2013 at 11:31am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I personally consider Russian the second most difficult language I've learned thus far
(after French). But that doesn't really mean anything as it was the first language I tried to learn on my own, so there are plenty failures involved. In terms of grammar, Russian is demanding, but so is Latin. You just have to get used to the fact it's not like Dutch or English or your average European Language. But I hate labelling anything difficult because it produces the wrong mindset. People often asked me in Russia "but it's the most difficult language there is" and I always answered something like "well, there's Chinese" or "what about Hungarian or Finnish or Korean" or whatever. It doesn't really matter. It's quite different, but that's part of the fun when you do Russian, that it ISN'T English. And I think Russian is very fun to speak with other people. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4668 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 29 of 47 03 September 2013 at 4:04pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I may be the only person here who finds Russian very easy.
I can understand 80% of written Russian without learning it (that's why I got me a Norwegian-Russian dictionary @ Play Store). The grammar is more similar to Slovenian and Kajkavian Croatian than to official Croatian and Serbian grammar. (I think SerboCroatian is the easiest Slavic language, because of its simplified pronunciation and grammar). Edited by Medulin on 03 September 2013 at 4:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Humbaraci Ahmet Tetraglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4219 days ago 5 posts - 12 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC2, German, French Studies: Turkish | Message 30 of 47 03 September 2013 at 5:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Can you please explain this? thanks 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| CeciPipe Newbie Australia Joined 4054 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Ukrainian | Message 31 of 47 25 October 2013 at 7:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Say there's a mountain and you need to move it one shovelful at a time. It's going to take you a while, so you chip away at it for a few decades and it'll eventually be done. Instead of that, say you need to sculpt a mountain into a statue. Now thing's get a lot trickier, the skill level involved is much higher, and you're going to need to put a lot more care into your work rather than simply moving a shovelful of dirt, one at a time. Shortening the time you have to move the mountain would make it difficult, or require you to use more advanced machinery (mnemonic devices, to keep with the analogy), but simply taking time doesn't automatically make something hard. Alternatively if you prefer mathematics, think of it like memorising Pi versus calculating Pi. Or memorising the works of Shakespeare versus becoming a great playwright. One of these is achievable at 10mn a day, the other is going to require considerably more focused effort. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| jhaberstro Senior Member United States Joined 4393 days ago 112 posts - 154 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Portuguese | Message 32 of 47 26 October 2013 at 1:39am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Can you explain why French was the most difficult language that you've learned? 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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