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Russian : why so popular ? | ||
Tags: Reasons for study | Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Everything Diglot Groupie France Joined 4702 days ago 87 posts - 167 votes  Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 107 24 February 2012 at 5:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hello.
I wonder why Russian is so popular amon foreign language learners. I don't know the Russian culture so this is a very sincere question, no troll. Thanks. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 2 of 107 24 February 2012 at 5:52pm | IP Logged | ||
Among what learners? On the forum? Or where? Could detail your question? I don't see extreme popularity of the Russian language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6440 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 3 of 107 24 February 2012 at 6:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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Everything: Russian is 8th in number of native speakers. It's a source of literature and music that is internationally admired - you've probably heard of names like Tolstoy and perhaps Dostoyevsky. It was also considered one of the two superpowers of the second half of the 20th century.
Марк has written at length on this forum about how he thinks Russian is understudied. Frankly, while I disagree with many of his details, I think he has a point. People west of the former iron curtain tend not to know much about Russia. That said, if you walk into a library or book store in North America or Europe, there tend to be a lot of materials for Russian: it's one of the more popular languages to study. While it's perhaps not as popular as one might expect, it is a relatively common option. Edited by Volte on 24 February 2012 at 6:17pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Hekje Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4704 days ago 842 posts - 1330 votes Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: French, Indonesian | Message 4 of 107 24 February 2012 at 6:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'd guess it's a combination of famous literature, a haze of mystique left over from the Soviet era, and the perceived
beauty of the language itself - its euphony, the soft sounds, and so forth. It also can't hurt that Russian people (especially the women) are reputed to be very good-looking. For me the language is attractive for all those reasons. I doubt I'll ever learn it, but the idea of reading Dostoevsky in the original while a handsome Russian man murmurs nice things and feeds me grapes is admittedly a compelling vision. 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 5 of 107 24 February 2012 at 6:32pm | IP Logged | ||
The number of native Russian speakers given in the list is not correct. 90 % of Russian population, all Belorussia, most part of Kazakhstanians, half of Ukraine and Russians in other places. Russian is very uniform now. The difference between Russian and Ukrainian is smaller than between Arabic "dialects". Edited by Марк on 24 February 2012 at 6:47pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Itikar Groupie Italy Joined 4670 days ago 94 posts - 158 votes Speaks: Italian* | Message 6 of 107 24 February 2012 at 6:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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Personally I study Russian, because in the first place I like both the culture and the history of that country from a very tender age.
Were it not for this I would nor have studied, neither have continued to study that language. Ironically, although I won't say I find the language easy, I think its difficulty is often overestimated and considered too scary. I believe this is maybe because of the cyrillic script, since it may result a bit confusing at a first approach. I mean that Latin H is Cyrillic N, Latin P is Russian R, and so on. To do a small comparison Russian seems me like a kind of Latin, with a slightly difficult vocabulary and a phonology, but with far less troublesome verb conjugations and syntaxis. So way "better" than Latin. :P Personally I found much more greater problems in learning German, both with its alien vocabulary and its convoluted syntaxis. And even the pronunciation of German, although quite regular, seems me stranger and odder than that of Russian. The only part where Latin and German are easier are the motion verbs идти/ходить, ехать/ехдить, etc. Anyway for me the thing that was absolutely the hardest thing was learning to type in Cyrillic on my PC with a (physical) Italian keyboard, and without using sticks. I firmly believe anyway, that a language like Dutch can be 100 times more scary than Russian. And even the other Slavic languages, included Bulgarian, seem me more scary too. Edited by Itikar on 24 February 2012 at 7:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5561 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 7 of 107 24 February 2012 at 7:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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1. Literatur
2. I haven't got any facts to support this, but I think up to about ten years ago, Russian was the obvious "hard" language to learn, if the Germanic and Romance languages were too conventional for you. Now that people realise that it's possible to actually speak Japanese, Chinese or even Korean, the attractiveness of learning Russian has diminished. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kartof Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5067 days ago 391 posts - 550 votes Speaks: English*, Bulgarian*, Spanish Studies: Danish | Message 8 of 107 24 February 2012 at 7:55pm | IP Logged | ||
Why do you say that? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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