Luigi Diglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6941 days ago 113 posts - 135 votes Speaks: Italian*, English Studies: German, Russian
| Message 1 of 37 13 March 2007 at 11:14am | IP Logged |
Even though Russian and Polish are ranked at the same level of difficulty, I'd like to know if one of the two is in some way easier to learn than the other.
Thank you in advance for your replies.
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Eriol Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6867 days ago 118 posts - 130 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Portuguese
| Message 2 of 37 13 March 2007 at 11:49am | IP Logged |
The only thing I can think of is that it is easier to find good learning materials for Russian. In terms of difficulty of grammar and vocabulary they are very similar.
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Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6666 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil
| Message 3 of 37 13 March 2007 at 11:49am | IP Logged |
I once asked the same questions on usenet (look for the topic "Polnisch oder Russisch lernen" on de.etc.sprache.misc) Apparently Polish is marginally more difficult.
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andee Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 7078 days ago 681 posts - 724 votes 3 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Korean, French
| Message 4 of 37 14 March 2007 at 2:56am | IP Logged |
Ardaschir wrote on the Slavic family and their learning sequence. I remember that he suggested Polish may be easier if vocabulary is your weakness as Polish has a number of latin origin words.
Definitely more materials and speakers around for Russian learning though.
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Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 5 of 37 14 March 2007 at 5:50am | IP Logged |
I don't see the Russian vocabulary as a big problem. I have just started to learn Russian, and I have chosen the unconventional method of working my way through the dictionary from А to Я (I'm at Г right now) as one of the key ingredients of my study. The thing that has struck me most is the immense proportion of loanwords from Western European languages, not least German and French. It must be at least half the words you get for free that way, if not more. I'm more concerned about just about every other aspect of the Russian language than the vocabulary.
Edited by Iversen on 14 March 2007 at 5:50am
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Seth Diglot Changed to RedKingsDream Senior Member United States Joined 7225 days ago 240 posts - 252 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Persian
| Message 6 of 37 14 March 2007 at 9:58am | IP Logged |
One easier thing about Polish, in my opion, is predictable stress.
Otherwise, both are going to be a challenge for any native English speaker.
Iverson, there are indeed a huge humber of loanwords in Russian. However, it must be noted that most of the everyday conversational stock of vocabulary items are not borrowed. My point is only that just because 30% of the words in language X are familiar (when all the tallying is done) does not mean that one will recognise 30% of the words used when people speak.
Edited by Seth on 14 March 2007 at 10:00am
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orion Senior Member United States Joined 7022 days ago 622 posts - 678 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian
| Message 7 of 37 14 March 2007 at 10:50am | IP Logged |
Another consideration, albeit a small one, is that Polish uses the Latin alphabet. I still find it relatively slow going when reading Cyrillic text, as Russian uses. Both are cool languages though. Good luck!
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andee Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 7078 days ago 681 posts - 724 votes 3 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Korean, French
| Message 8 of 37 14 March 2007 at 5:38pm | IP Logged |
Regarding the alphabets, I personally would prefer Polish to use Cyrillic or something similar. That way a sound would have one or two letters and not a mass of consonants - the consonant clusters can become a problem for beginners.
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