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Is Russian Really that Difficult? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Jase27 Newbie United States Joined 5669 days ago 21 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, French | Message 33 of 47 26 October 2013 at 2:17am | IP Logged | |||||
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Russian is definitely frustrating. It's one of my top languages I want to be conversational in, but the grammar just
doesn't sink in for me. Working through the New Penguin Russian Course, the Genitive case alone just gives me a massive headache going through all the rules, exceptions, uses, etc. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Papashaw Newbie Australia Joined 4103 days ago 28 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 34 of 47 05 November 2013 at 3:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't know Russian well, but I have a Thai friend who is self teaching herself. I can say based on what she showed
me that it looks more streamlined than other Slavic tongues such as Czech or Polish. There is one plural rather than one for each gender and no dual, spelling seems regular, fewer declensions than Czech or Polish, verbs look better than the other Slavic language, irregular verbs? Well many languages have them, and English has around 290, although the lack of conjugations means that it won't multiply further which may be a problem with Russian. Perhaps the sheer difficulty is the unfamiliarity. I didn't realize that some prepositions take an indirect object in English and other times a direct one until I looked into German but a person is normally not taught that when learning English so they may see it as another rule in German while picking the English ones up more naturally. Maybe they are doing a better job of just naming everything that goes on in Russian, and those are the idiosyncrasies and exceptions they have made standard. Spanish teachers may just nod their heads to whatever a non-native says if it is understandable. I would also like to add that da- and wo- words are taught in German through some technique while words like thereby, hereby, therein, wherein, therefore, whereby, etc seem to be just taught as memorized vocabulary in English. The presentation can have an effect. Maybe the German words are more dynamic and have different purposes than English ones, but the point remains. Edited by Papashaw on 06 November 2013 at 6:15pm 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 35 of 47 06 November 2013 at 11:11am | IP Logged | |||||
I can, but it has nothing to do with the intrinsic difficulty of the language (which I think is a pretty bogus concept anyway). The reason French was the most difficult for me is because it was the first one where I did not initially have a conversational level in the language, but I was forced into a situation where a conversational level in that language was necessary due to external circumstances, and it thus required force to adapt and consciously improve my French. (Even then, I did that through practice, and through very little formalized study in the beginning - I relied on my old school French and conversational strategies, and later I returned to improving my grammar). This means that for the first two, three languages you learn, what you are learning is less the language itself, but how to learn a language. And that takes a lot of time. I know how much effort it takes to learn how to write academically in English because I had loads of trouble with it. It's a skill you need to learn how to do, and the English/French/Ojibwe is secondary to that skill you are learning concomitantly. The tenth one you do, even if it's Korean or Mandarin, is much easier because you already know what you are doing. For every language I have studied after Russian (which was the first time I tried self-study on my own and thus that one took longer), I have reached quite good levels within six months in all of them. Some went a bit faster due to having more cognates, but in any of the languages I have studied intensively for more than three months, I could write messages in it to you. (not in Icelandic, too little experience, or in Korean, where I haven't hit the 3 month mark yet). In many of the new languages I chose, I didn't have the advantage of 80% cognates either (only in Swedish and Romanian). These are therefore the languages I learned quickest (because I can transfer knowledge faster due to a similar system), but that doesn't mean the other ones are particularly hard. Korean is the biggest challenge I've taken on in a while, and that's mostly because this is the first language that isn't either very analytic like Breton or very fusional like Russian. It works on a different structure, and that's the challenge to deal with - but it is certainly not insurmountable, and the fact that Korean has a very doable pronunciation and a good writing system really help. French was much harder for me because here I had to develop language production skills from scratch, first at school, then in real life. I relied very strongly on memorization in the beginning (because that's what you are taught to do), and the only fortunate thing here is that I can flourish under memorization circumstances, which I happen to have trained more than most people. But still after four years, I didn't speak the language fluently at all and had forgotten most of it. It took a conscious effort to revitalise, improve and adapt to slang that allowed a huge 2-month improvement effort, and then a consistent focus to iron out my grammar. And that latter bit is only something I gained through experience trying, it doesn't have anything to do with the grammatical difficulties of French. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5056 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 36 of 47 07 November 2013 at 7:46am | IP Logged | |||||
Spelling seems regular? Russian spelling is the most difficult among Slavic languages. Even basic pronunciation rules are beyond understanding of many learners. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Papashaw Newbie Australia Joined 4103 days ago 28 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 37 of 47 07 November 2013 at 3:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Regular compared to French maybe.... I should take another look, thanks.
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 38 of 47 07 November 2013 at 3:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think that may be the explanatory material more than the actual rules, though, Mark. I do not find the rules that hard to comprehend, except for moving stress and vowel reduction. Soft consonants are not that big a deal, but most textbooks don't actually explain what they are. That's more of an issue than the writing system itself. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4234 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 39 of 47 07 November 2013 at 3:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Personally I think that spelling problem depends. It's really hard for Russian natives to remember the actual rules. I just see spelling mistakes in Russian every f*cking day, and it seems that people will never learn how to avoid it. They keep saying "I'm not at Russian lesson in school" and thinking that this is enough of a excuse. Damn!
On the other hand, English spelling seems quite normal to me because I see words, I learn them from written, not spoken form. Although it's generally known that English spelling is a disaster, I've problems only with long words and, of course, words which are unknown to me. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4844 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 40 of 47 07 November 2013 at 4:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
French pronunciation is very regular. The only problem is that the rules are quite complicated. The same can be said about Russian pronunciation. If you want to see irregular spelling and pronunciation, try Irish! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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