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The endless matrioshka of Russian grammar | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| markdhemming Triglot Newbie Russian Federation Joined 4717 days ago 16 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English*, Russian, French Studies: Georgian, Spanish | Message 9 of 33 26 October 2013 at 9:14am | IP Logged | |||||
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So true - Russian has so many idiosyncrasies that you never seem to get to the bottom of
as a learner! I've studied Russian on and off for 9 years and lived in Moscow for the last 2 and find new holes in my grasp of the language on a constant basis, whether it's nouns that change stress in different cases, irregular plurals or which aspect of verb to use in the infinitive. Whatever you do, don't give up - I've met many foreign learners out here that have proved speaking Russian well is an achievable goal. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Alamo Joe Newbie United States Joined 4060 days ago 17 posts - 31 votes | Message 10 of 33 30 October 2013 at 1:03am | IP Logged | |||||
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And here I am complaining about the category 1 difficulty languages that I've been trying to learn. I can only imagine what some of you who are learning Cat 4 and 5 difficulty languages are going through. I guess it would be like when I took a semester of Organic chemistry and I thought it was impossibly difficult. Then I heard from chemistry and biochem majors that organic was easy compared to physical chemistry and some of the other advanced courses in that curriculum.
Languages, like sciences, can be challenging, but not impossible. That fact that you have even reached an advanced level in Russian should be encouraging. It's like you're at mile 20 of a marathon and it seems to be getting even more grueling, but it's too late to stop now. This forum is like the spectators on the sidelines cheering for you to finish the race. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| deniz2 Groupie TurkeyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5152 days ago 53 posts - 62 votes  | Message 11 of 33 31 October 2013 at 9:59am | IP Logged | |||||
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[QUOTE=Alamo Joe] I guess it would be like when I took a semester of Organic chemistry and I thought it was impossibly difficult. Then I heard from chemistry and biochem majors that organic was easy compared to physical chemistry and some of the other advanced courses in that curriculum.
I think there is something wrong here. As a lesson organic chemistry might be easier than physical chemistry but as a subject nothing can be more complex than organic chemistry as it represents the ultimate goal of evolution otherwise it means one does not understand the evolution. Surely organic materials are much more complex than inorganic materials and the human DNA and the human brain are the most complex ones. If organic chemistry is easier than physical chemistry like you say so then it means the scientists have not been able to solve the human DNA entirely yet. As to the languages as I know the grammars of French and German entirely I am so curious about Russian as the grammar books claim its case system to be the most complex one. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 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 12 of 33 31 October 2013 at 10:22am | IP Logged | |||||
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Those grammar books are wrong. Slovenian has the same cases as Russian, but tops it up with a real living dualis so in essence they have 1½ times as many case endings to learn.
Everything could always be worse. Edited by Iversen on 04 November 2013 at 12:13pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 13 of 33 31 October 2013 at 11:23am | IP Logged | |||||
And this is one of the reasons why you are my hero :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| deniz2 Groupie TurkeyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5152 days ago 53 posts - 62 votes | Message 14 of 33 31 October 2013 at 1:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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[QUOTE=Iversen] Slovenian have the same cases as the Russian, but tops it up with a real living dualis so in essence they have 1½ times as many case endings to learn.
The number of cases cannot be the indicator or measure of any difficulty as though there are 5 cases in Turkish there are no exceptions and it is so simple. There are 4 cases in German but they are much more difficult. 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 15 of 33 31 October 2013 at 2:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
Organic materials are more complex in their construction because there are many more molecules that combine together to form a huge molecule, but the principles of organic chemistry are not so hard and mathematically you can only do very simple things with organic chemistry - meaning it is much easier to teach. What is complex is predicting how complex organic molecules organize themselves in macrostructures, and how to model that mathematically. But the principles of organic chemistry are super easy (apart from learning how reaction mechanisms work, curly arrows and all that) and it was one of the easiest subjects for me to pass at university (I have a degree in chemical engineering!)
Source? 1 person has 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 16 of 33 31 October 2013 at 5:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I would vote for the Icelandic case system being ten times more complicated than the Russian one. Russian has three declensions, but Icelandic has about 13 or so with interfering endings, vowel gradation, and lots of irregularities.
I have never studied Lithuanian, but from what I gather from the Wikipedia article, the declension paradigms are quite complex as well. And then, there is, of course, the complete overkill: Sanskrit! In fact, once you have understood that there are two sets of endings for hard and soft stems, the Russian case system is very straightforward. What's interesting in Russian though are the remnants of the partitive and the locative, which might be counted as irregularities. I think the verbal system in Russian is much worse than the case system. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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