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Russian difficulty | ||
Tags: Difficulty | Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Tomohiro Octoglot Newbie Japan Joined 4343 days ago 20 posts - 41 votes Speaks: Japanese*, Korean, Galician, GermanC2, SpanishC2, Portuguese, Mandarin, English Studies: Russian, Old English, Armenian | Message 1 of 40 28 March 2014 at 2:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have recently talked to native speakers or people who reached the advanced fluency in
Russian. They are people from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and some are from the former Soviet Union countries. I have not talked to many people yet, maybe only about 36-37 people. They all have told me that Russian grammar is so damn hard. I would like to ask you whether the Russian grammar difficulty is overrated or not by most people, including native speakers. I asked them for some reasons, but they could not give me any satisfactory arguments and opinions based on scientific proof. For instance, most of them have stated that it is almost impossible for a Japanese people to reach very good level in Russian. I found this statement very surprising, but not intimidating because that opinion only encouraged me to learn Russian one day and “feel” how difficult it is. I was told that “Russian cases are incredibly crazy system” and “impossible to master them”. Tabasaran has 52 cases which 50 of them are noun cases; however, that number will vary from 48 to 52 depending on the criteria and case theories which is not the main discussion I would like to propose here. Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian are some of the few languages of my interest and they have more cases than Russian, but still they don’t intimidate me. Not yet, at least for now. Here another question. What were the most challenging aspects while you were learning Russian? I have taken one Russian trial lesson online and the teacher said more than five times in less than one hour that Russian grammar is pretty hard and that Russian is one of the three most difficult languages in the world to master. This is the joke of the day. I mean, it might be indeed difficult, but it is like that person has studied all the languages in the world to make such a statement. She “lost” some points by not giving me more motivational comments. If she thinks so, she could have stayed quiet, but anyway, there will be always many people against my will, my goals etc. By the way, I am not sure if I am allowed to post my log about my next challenge. I could not find any rules, so, hopefully the moderators won’t mind posting my experience. I will definitely start with Russian and English, besides Estonian, another language I was told that it is pretty difficult to master. I am in A2 level of English, but I am not ashamed of writing here. If I want to improve, I need to start from a certain point, don’t I? Without shame to make any kind of mistakes in Russian and Estonian, I will start learning them by next week. I have not previous experience in learning any Slavic and Uralic languages. So, I truly believe that it may be a little more difficult when getting started, but once you are on the right track, the grammar will be rather logical and you will get used to the lexicon as well. There is no challenge in Russian, Estonian, English or any other language that I cannot overcome, assuming there are enough good resources, motivation, time and the fact that I don’t have any mental or physical problems (i.e related to speech etc). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bart Triglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 7160 days ago 155 posts - 159 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, French, English Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese, Swedish | Message 2 of 40 28 March 2014 at 4:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Russian is indeed a difficult language, but that is still only relative. If your mother
tongue is Ukranian for example, I doubt it would take you a lot of time or effort to attain a decent level of fluency in Russian. Anyway, don't let the fact that Russian has many cases and difficulties such as the verbal aspect and confusing verbs of motion discourage you. It is a beautiful language and studying it is a very worthwhile pursuit. I would encourage you to just go for it and worry about the difficulties if and when you meet them. By the way, your English is way better than A1. Don't sell yourself short like that! 4 persons have 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 3 of 40 28 March 2014 at 4:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Russian grammar is what it is. Cases are hard if you are not used to the Russian way of
organising things. Is it doable? More than certainly. Do you need to change your mindset? Totally. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 4 of 40 28 March 2014 at 4:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
Russian is different from Japanese, and that probably explains how speakers of Russian state that it'd be difficult for Japanese speakers to learn it (if all that they know is Japanese). It would take some time for a learner unfamiliar with any Balto-Slavonic language to adjust to Russian.
Your last statement shows that you have the right attitude to learning. I've never studied Russian but have got my feet wet in several Slavonic languages including Ukrainian which is quite similar to it. In general, the grammar of any Slavonic language shows a lot of patterns and if you master or figure out a handful of them which occur frequently in the beginners' material that you encounter, you'll have a reasonably good chance at getting it right with unfamiliar or new words. I wouldn't say that the grammar is "logical" as much as after some exposure it exhibits a certain predictability once you've seen a handful of patterns or examples (this is also related to how language teachers speak of "exceptions" in grammar. "Exceptions" imply that they run counter to a plurality or majority of occurrences or patterns that are very similar if not identical to each other). Assuming that you're an adult, you'll probably never be able to learn Russian (or any foreign language) to the point that you can express yourself over 95% of the time idiomatically or without an accent, but getting even close to the level is more than enough and impressive (is it really worth spending 95% of your effort to tie up the loose ends that comprise the last 5%?). Being a fluent but non-native speaker of Russian (or any foreign language) is an accomplishment that will be positively regarded by native speakers (with the caveat that native speakers tolerate foreign accents to varying degrees with one native speaker possibly being less bothered by or judgmental over an accent than a fellow native speaker). You may find the following links handy: Russian vs Japanese - difficulty? Is Russian Really that Difficult? Russian is not hard Comparing the difficulty of Slavonic lang Russian too hard for a second language? Edited by Chung on 28 March 2014 at 4:39pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4253 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 5 of 40 28 March 2014 at 5:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am probably biased against it but I find the difficulty of cases thoroughly overrated. Russian grammar is not very tricky in my opinion, just forces you to think of things you might have not thought about, will the action be complete or incomplete? That sort of things just take some practice but that's the thing with all languages. I find the so called "easy" romance languages really difficult because you have to drop in so many of these little words that I can't keep track of them in my head.
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| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5056 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 6 of 40 28 March 2014 at 7:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Of course statements like "Russian is one of the three most difficult languages in the world" are nonsense. Russian is not more difficult than any other language (at least not more difficult than an average language). However it has some tricky things. Russian morphology is rather irregular. There are very many declension types for example and they are often unpredictable (it is more obvious if you recall such a thing as stress...) Edited by Марк on 29 March 2014 at 4:05am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lykeio Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4244 days ago 120 posts - 357 votes | Message 7 of 40 28 March 2014 at 8:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Yes Russian is a difficult language. You know what else is? Every single language
you'll ever learn. Mastering a new grammar to the point where word formation becomes automatic and you can create syntactically valid sentence with anything approaching aromaticity is bloody hard. Understanding a veritable hoard of words so you do that is hard. Listening to what at first appears to be gibberish but somehow crafting meaning from that is hard. Turning those fuzzy ideas in your head into speech or writing is...yep hard. You might have some particular talent or your native language (or another one you've studied) might give you an advantage (perhaps its similar, perhaps one has influenced the other greatly, perhaps they're closely related etc etc) but even so it's still hard. So don't worry, just keep chipping away at the mountain and eventually you'll get somewhere. Also perceptions of difficult vary. I could read Hittite before I had got over myself enough to realise that no one was going to stab my for speaking French aloud. Well no Frenchman has stabbed me yet anyway. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cristianoo Triglot Senior Member Brazil https://projetopoligRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4121 days ago 175 posts - 289 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, FrenchB2, English Studies: Russian | Message 8 of 40 29 March 2014 at 5:27am | IP Logged | |||||
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It's grammar is as hard as any language. Don't be scared about the case system.
It is not easy... not even close to "easy", but far from impossible. The alphabet is simple, although it takes a lot of time to get used to. I didn't yet, but I'm improving everyday Pronunciation is as hard as every language aswell... surely there are some words that take a lot of time to proper speak but it is like that with every language, isn't it? Take portuguese for example. It's very rare to find a foreigner that can be mistaken by a native, and the language is considered 'easy' for English speakers What is damn hard? In my newbie opinion, it's the vocabulary. Sometimes it drives me crazy. You see.. I study french and russian in a daily basis. For each russian word I manage to remember, I learn a lot of new words in french. Why? Because french words sound much more logical to my ears, since it is very close to my native language. Vocabulary is tough... other things are manageable. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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