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Is Russian Really that Difficult? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| horshod Pentaglot Groupie India Joined 5770 days ago 74 posts - 107 votes  Speaks: Hindi, Marathi*, Bengali, Gujarati, English Studies: German, Spanish, Turkish | Message 41 of 47 07 November 2013 at 6:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
Or English, obviously. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Scorpicus Triglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5335 days ago 27 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English*, ItalianB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Russian | Message 42 of 47 07 November 2013 at 7:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The rules associated with Russian pronunciation are complicated, more so than French, but learnable. The real problem is remembering where the stress is in a word, particularly when it shifts.
Stress is also the biggest problem I have with Russian orthography. After almost two years of study, I still confuse "a" and unstressed "o". Not to mention unstressed "е", "и" and "ы". Then it turns out to be unstressed "я" all along and I really start to tear my hair out. Seriously, I've lost count of how many times I've muddled the vowels in an otherwise simple word such as "четыре". I'm sure there are more time consuming languages to learn, but Russian certainly is no picnic. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5056 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 43 of 47 07 November 2013 at 7:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Paashaw, you are right that Russian grammar is simlified in comparison with other
Slavic languages in some ways (no genders in plural, no changes of velars in declension, few verbal forms) but it has its own comlexities. The main one is Russian phonetics. Russian (unlike Czech and Polish) has free mobile stress, which is not reflected in writing. Becides making impossible to pronounce an unknown word, it also creates significant problems with declension and conjugation multiplying paradigmes (there can be unpredictable stresss shifts). For example, the words конь, слон, волк and страх, which seem to have identical endings (конь has a predictable gen. pl. коней), decline differently in fact because of the stress. The second point is soft/hard opposition and the nastiest opposition of yotation and palatalization. Not only is it difficult to hear and pronounce, but also it is badly explained in textbooks. So learners often don't know what ь and ъ in бьём and объём mean. The second (minor) point is Russian spelling. It makes impossible to spell a word based on its pronunciation. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Papashaw Newbie Australia Joined 4103 days ago 28 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 44 of 47 08 November 2013 at 8:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I can see something similar in English orthography. The plural using an s can be said as s, z, or es, and the past
tense could be said as t, d, or ed based on the previous vowel but is nevertheless spelled the same no matter the case. (topped, learned, departed are all said differently by me). But there is the exceptions of whether the word ending with an f turns into a z sound or stays an s (Roofs vs thieves) which may just have to be remembered at times. English is not the only language to do this I know but it is not as simple as slapping on an s as many say. They say we only have 3 articles but I could count 5 if you consider changing the pronunciation of "the" behind a vowel to be a different word and "some" as a partitive article as well. The alternate "the" is also used for emphasis and I question if we should standardize that as a rule and make it into a separate article. Stress is also unpredictable in English, but we need not worry about conjugation and declining though and most of our homonyms are monosyllabic as well. Has there been a push for spelling reform for Russian? It may be able to happen with that language since it is still confined to an area. Edited by Papashaw on 08 November 2013 at 8:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5056 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 45 of 47 08 November 2013 at 9:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
Stress is much more predictable in English than in Russian. For example, bisyllabic words are likely to have the first syllable stressed in English, while there is no such preference in Russian. Plus stress shifts are much more common in Russian than in English. They often happen between different forms of one and the same word. For example, the plural of войнА is вОйны, while the plural of мечтА is мечтЫ (I capitalized the stressed vowel). There was one big reform in 1918. Several letters were excluded from the alphabet. There were suggestions to make further reforms but they failed. Edited by Марк on 08 November 2013 at 9:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Papashaw Newbie Australia Joined 4103 days ago 28 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 46 of 47 08 November 2013 at 10:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I hear you, but one the main reasons is a lack of bisyllabic homonyms in my opinion, and yes there is far less
shifting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_(linguistics)#Lexical_st ress This is what I kinda meant, I know Russian stress is miles harder. But back to the grammar, is Russian grammar really that deadly? Perhaps it could be that they just really record every detail better than English, which is what makes it seem so scary. I kind of think that Russian grammar is seen as less "optional" than English. And I can imagine it may be more difficult due to geographic isolation keeping irregular words from disappearing but not due to the inherent language itself. A person can easily speak English without any of the numerous analytical techniques in English yet they still can pass. You won't see a sentence coming out of their mouths such as: "Ten years henceforth on that night were they going to have been coming, weren't they? Yet the truth of their arrival you did know. Whereby you came here first." Nonsensical, yes, but an example. Edited by Papashaw on 08 November 2013 at 11:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5056 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 47 of 47 09 November 2013 at 6:21am | IP Logged | |||||
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Russian grammar is as optional as the English one.
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