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Is Russian Really that Difficult? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Qaanaaq Newbie United States Joined 4124 days ago 14 posts - 25 votes Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 47 31 August 2013 at 7:09am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi all,
So I don't know how accurate this list exactly is (http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language- guide/language-difficulty), but it seems relatively accurate to me. However, I was surprised to see Russian ranked so highly, in Category IV. Is it really as hard to learn as languages as exotic and unfamiliar as Amharic, Bengali, Hebrew, and Lao? Is it just because of the grammar? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Tsopivo Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4471 days ago 258 posts - 411 votes  Speaks: French*, English Studies: Esperanto | Message 2 of 47 31 August 2013 at 8:07am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know much about Russian but Category I and II is exclusively comprised of Germanic and Romantic languages and Category III is comprised of only 3 languages, all of which use the Latin alphabet and are somewhat perceived as being "relatively easy" despite being exotic. So I am not too surprised that Russian is not in those categories.
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| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4622 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 3 of 47 31 August 2013 at 9:33am | IP Logged | ||
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Russian does have fearsome reputation but it's not as alien as some people imagine. There are plenty of
words that have an obvious link to English, German or French. Yes, the case system is complex but there are certain patterns you can spot. And there are far fewer tenses. Edited by beano on 31 August 2013 at 9:34am 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 4 of 47 31 August 2013 at 10:20am | IP Logged | ||
I learn French and Spanish by candlelight! Hebrew is definitely not category IV. Russian, might be. Edited by tarvos on 31 August 2013 at 10:26am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 5 of 47 31 August 2013 at 11:01am | IP Logged | ||
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I think it's pretty clear why Russian is more difficult than German or Spanish, so let me compare it to Indonesian. Both languages have quite many loan words, though to an average Westerner, Russian is more transparent. (if you speak Hindi or Arabic, Indonesian will be more transparent) But Indonesian has a more clear pronunciation and uses the Latin alphabet... and more importantly the grammar is quirky but simple.
I would say that linguistically the third category is just somewhat harder than the second one, but culturally these can feel as different as category five languages. Also, the scale is based on the time required. But time-consuming doesn't equal difficult. 2 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 6 of 47 31 August 2013 at 11:16am | IP Logged | ||
Thisthisthis I can't stress how much it annoys me when people use the two interchangeably. 11 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| anime Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6360 days ago 161 posts - 207 votes Speaks: Spanish, Swedish*, English Studies: German, Portuguese, French, Russian | Message 7 of 47 31 August 2013 at 2:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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I just started a little bit with Russian and don't know much yet but so far The Cyrilic Alphabet is actually really
easy to learn, problem is they seem to change pronunciation of letters if they are unstressed etc. The gender of words also seem more straightforward than German for example. Unfortunately most vocab looks really alien and pronouncing the sentences correctly is definitely a challenge. But yeah so far it looks quite fierce but definitely more managable than Chinese for example 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tanya b Senior Member United States Joined 4778 days ago 159 posts - 518 votes Speaks: Russian | Message 8 of 47 31 August 2013 at 11:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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I once read a website written by a graduate of the American Defense Language Institute who was fluent in Arabic who put Russian on the same level of difficulty as Mandarin, Korean, Japanese and Arabic. For a native English speaker, there is no way Russian is difficult as any of those 4 languages, despite the complexity of its grammar. In my opinion, an American who speaks Mandarin poorly is more of a superstar than an American who speaks Russian fluently.
The difficulty of Russian is not speaking it but speaking it well, because there are so many opportunities to make mistakes, because it has so many irregular verbs, not only in the past tense but also the present and future tenses. Throw case and gender into the equation and a simple word like "lake" in the genitive plural doesn't bear a lot of resemblance to the word you thought you had already learned. Having learned the Armenian and Persian alphabets I can safely say that the Russian alphabet is easier than those two. But I think Russian is more difficult to learn than Armenian which is often considered the same level of difficulty. I used to think Russian was like German with a funny alphabet--all ice and no spice. But Russian has a spice all it's own--just more subtle and someone who had never learned it probably wouldn't detect it. I like Russian because it has a heavy sound and sounds more distant from English than any other Slavic language I have heard. So no Russian should not be put in the same category as Mandarin. It really isn't the cruel master that some imagine it to be. 8 persons have voted this message useful |
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