|
 |
Study languages you are bound to fail in | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6595 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 57 of 96 14 March 2014 at 12:22am | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
Well, Polish has a fixed stress, and someone who has an experience with German/French/Latin will see much more loan words than in Russian.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 4030 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 58 of 96 14 March 2014 at 12:59am | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
Exactly, Russian is the hardest of all no matter what. At least for Indo European languages, all that mobile stress
and palatization/vowel reductions/verb irregularity/exceptions stuff. It has the most exceptions of all European languages, and I am not sarcastic, I actually think Russian is scraping the upper limit on how much detail a language can have before it is too irregular to learn. I want to figure out how it happened in this particular one. Edit: Wait, if the orthography were reformed, how much would be alleviated? Amoy_tones.svg.png">And to those who think mobile stress is hard Try tone sandhi! Edit: So what makes Russian vowel reduction different than English? Edited by Stolan on 14 March 2014 at 4:39am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| DaisyMaisy Senior Member United States Joined 5378 days ago 115 posts - 178 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish Studies: Swedish, Finnish | Message 59 of 96 14 March 2014 at 3:28am | IP Logged | ||||||||
hey, thanks! Now I have an excuse to play with Welsh :) I didn't realize there was a Southern and Northern Welsh. Any advice on which one is more common or has has more resources? Or I guess in general which makes more sense for a beginner to work on? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 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 60 of 96 14 March 2014 at 8:44am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Folks can say what they want, that doesn't make it true. Historically conservative =/= difficult. Historically conservative means that the language hasn't changed much over time. Its simplicity doesn't play a role in that. A historically conservative language could be as simple as Toki Pona. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Dragon27 Diglot Groupie Russian Federation Joined 4239 days ago 41 posts - 71 votes Speaks: Russian*, English | Message 61 of 96 14 March 2014 at 9:48am | IP Logged | ||||||||
If I'm not mistaken, for example, in English, a vowel that is right next to the stressed one is the most reducted one. While in Russian the further a vowel is from the stressed one, the more it's reducted. Or kind of. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 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 62 of 96 14 March 2014 at 9:54am | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
Basically the stress rules in English (and in Dutch for example) are such that you reduce
every other vowel. Historically Dutch (and I think English too) have a pattern that goes stress/unstress/stress/unstress within a word. Whereas in Russian, you reduce the vowel in front of the stressed syllable slightly less (there an o becomes an a, not a schwa). Whereas in English that's where you'd find the reduction because the vowel two syllables before would receive more stress due to the Germanic 1-2 pattern. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| aabram Pentaglot Senior Member Estonia Joined 5531 days ago 138 posts - 263 votes Speaks: Estonian*, English, Spanish, Russian, Finnish Studies: Mandarin, French | Message 63 of 96 14 March 2014 at 10:21am | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
I've been following this discussion and wondering what on earth are you all talking about. Whence all this about Russian being the most difficult? True, I can't compare my experiences with most of you since I've been hearing Russian from the third grade but -- or perhaps exactly because of it -- I do not find Russian particularly strange or difficult. Really, it's not.
It's like every other language, you just need decent amount of exposure and things fall into their places. Every language is hard when all you have is a textbook and no native speakers to interact with. Btw, I've been thinking that there should be special forms of speech therapy aimed at language learners to help them pronounce those exotic sounds just right. If we can fix kids with speech impediments we should be able to fix adults who are unable roll their r or produce their ж or ц. I'd take Russian over Mandarin in a heartbeat. I mean, there's no comparison based on writing systems alone. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 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 64 of 96 14 March 2014 at 10:38am | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
Mandarin has its own easy stuff. All languages have upsides and downsides.
1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
