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Latin vs. Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Michael K. Senior Member United States Joined 5720 days ago 568 posts - 886 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto | Message 1 of 19 29 May 2012 at 10:56pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I've tried some Latin and I'm thinking about trying some Russian. I want to know about the difficulties of both languages.
From my brief dabblings in Latin, I think it's about as difficult a language as I would want to try. The cases can get downright confusing sometimes. The course I'm using for Latin is "Learn Latin" by Peter Jones, and I'm on lesson 17. I was thinking of continuing my Latin studies, but I'm not so sure anymore. My first question: what are the particular difficulties of learning Russian for native English speakers? I think I heard there were three particular hard parts, but I don't know if that's the case. For those who have studied Latin and Russian, what are your thoughts? Is one significantly more difficult than the other? Are there any Russian courses that come highly recommended? I have TYS Russian and I'm thinking about getting the New Penguin Russian Course. I'm borrowing a Penguin course from the 60s from the library. Are Latin and Russian similarly grammatically, or are there significant differences? As is evident from this post, I don't know much about either language. Thanks for any help. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Kartof Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5057 days ago 391 posts - 550 votes Speaks: English*, Bulgarian*, Spanish Studies: Danish | Message 2 of 19 29 May 2012 at 11:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Well I haven't studied Latin or Russian but certainly the greatest difficulty that you'll have with your language
background will be Russian vocabulary acquisition. With Spanish and Esperanto, you certainly have a good grasp of mostly Romance vocabulary which will make learning Latin at least a bit more manageable. You should be aware that Slavic vocabulary is not very transparent for speakers of other language groups. That may be the most difficult obstacle for you to overcome in learning Russian which is less of a problem in Latin. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4835 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 3 of 19 29 May 2012 at 11:48pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Well, there are some similarties between Latin and Russian, but of course they are absolutely distinct languages. One can roughly say that the complexity of Latin and Russian is on one level, but the most important thing to remember is that Latin is a dead language while Russian is vitally alive. That means that you only have to be able to analyse the complexity of Latin while you must also be able to produce it in Russian.
I guess the three difficulties of Russian you mentioned are pronunciation, cases, and verbal aspects. Russian distinguishes between 'hard' and 'soft' consonants. 'Hard' consonants are the normal ones which exist in English and most of the other European languages, while 'soft' consonants are palatalised. This means that the front part of the tongue is pressed against the roof of the mouth. It sounds a little bit like simultaneously pronouncing a consonant and a 'y'. The distinction between 'soft' and 'hard' consonants is vital, because the difference in pronunciation may be a difference in meaning. Moreover, nouns and adjectives take their endings according to the 'softness' or 'hardness' of the word's stem consonant. Russian has six cases, while Latin has five (without vocative). There are three genders, just as in Latin, and there are several declination groups. You will have to learn which verbs and which prepositions take which case. There is also a handful of irregular nouns in Russian that are declined somewhat different from the standard declensions. The strangest grammatical aspect of Russian is verbal aspects. Of each verb there exist two forms: the perfective and the imperfective aspect. You will use the perfective aspect for actions that have been completed or that take place only once, while the imperfective aspect is used for actions that are still in process, have not been completed, or that repeat themselves. While this is rather difficult for a non-Slav, the good news is that there are only two conjugation groups and three tenses (present, past, and future). But verbs may change their stem consonants in the present tense, which can be rather confusing, and there are several irregular verbs. I believe there is no passive voice in Russian, and the conditional is simply formed by adding the particle бы to the past tense. The Latin verbal system is much more complex, as there are more tenses, moods, and voices, but there are no verbal aspects in Latin. Moreover, Latin seems to be more logical and less irregular than Russian. And - you don't have to use it actively, as I already said at the beginning. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7147 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 4 of 19 29 May 2012 at 11:56pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
1) On difficulties in Russian for speakers of English, check out this thread, and in particular, TixhiiDon's succint list in the thread. For some detail and demonstration why an English-speaking learner should work on proper pronunciation in Russian from the very beginning, no matter how complicated it is to outsiders, see this study done by the University of Victoria (Canada) on how students fared with learning Russian pronunciation. The conclusion begins thusly:
2) For courses, there are plenty of choices. I'm sure that others will chime in with their favourite courses or suggestions. I haven't studied Russian properly but have accumulated a few courses for browsing or if I will ever feel like taking it up after having become bored with my "hit-list" or current target languages (not bloody likely ;-)) 3) There is an excellent article by Chauncey Finch called "Latin and Russian as a Teaching Combination". It's available on JSTOR and if you have access to the database via a library (be it public or at a university) you'll get the entire article. As the title suggests it deals with the question from the teacher's point of view rather than the student's but one should be able to get an idea of what you would be up against. Here're some excerpts that I found useful to create a kind of extended abstract.
I don't intend to quote the entire text for fear of copyright infringement but I think that this improvised abstract should give a decent idea of how knowing Latin will help someone grasp some concepts in Russian more readily than someone not knowing the former. 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Michael K. Senior Member United States Joined 5720 days ago 568 posts - 886 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto | Message 5 of 19 30 May 2012 at 1:26am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thank you very much, Kartof, Chung, and Josquin. I'm glad I asked :)
A question about perfective vs. imperfective aspect: is this like the difference between imperfect and preterite in Spanish? They're both past tenses, of course, but imperfect suggests it was ongoing while preterite suggests it was completed once (or something like that). I had a lot of trouble trying to tell the difference between those two. OT, but how strange would you sound in Spanish if you used the imperfect instead of the preterite, or vice versa? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7147 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 6 of 19 30 May 2012 at 1:35am | IP Logged | ||||||||
No problem.
That's the idea but see this thread for more discussion. English does mark aspect too, it's just that we have other means. (Cf. "I ate (up) a pie" versus "I was eating a pie." or "I had eaten a pie before you came home." versus "I had been eating a pie before you came home.") 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Michael K. Senior Member United States Joined 5720 days ago 568 posts - 886 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto | Message 7 of 19 30 May 2012 at 1:47am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thanks again, Chung. I'm sure your links will come in handy if I decide to pursue Russian seriously.
The Princeton course mentioned in one of your links sounds good, I'll check it out. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tanya b Senior Member United States Joined 4769 days ago 159 posts - 518 votes Speaks: Russian | Message 8 of 19 30 May 2012 at 2:16am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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First, if you want a recommendation on an excellent Russian course for English learners, there is Living Language Ultimate Russian. I completed the course in less than 1 year, entirely through self-study, and am now fully fluent, and am sometimes mistaken for a native speaker (by Russians, that is).
I also used the Living Language Russian-English Dictionary and Phrasebook, Living Language Russian Grammar and Vocabulary, and Katzner's English-Russian Russian-English Dictionary. With regard to perfective and imperfective verbs, the concept for most verbs is relatively simple. Generally, perfective verbs are in the past and future tense. Yesterday I BOUGHT a pair of shoes. Tomorrow I WILL BUY a pair of shoes. Generally, imperfective verbs are in the present tense. Every day I BUY a pair of shoes. Russian has specific verbs to indicate a one-time action or a repetitive action and there are very clear rules on when they should be used. The rules themselves are not inordinately complicated. However, the rules become much more tricky when they apply to verbs of motion, which justify a separate Russian textbook on their own. Verbs of motion are often irregular, and there is some disagreement among Russian native speakers on whether the perfective or imperfective should be used. I generally use the imperfective verb to describe a one-time action because an imperfective verb implies arriving AND returning. Yesterday I WENT to the park. The sentence implies that I returned home afterward, indicating a completed multi-directional action, justifying the imperfective. If I lived in the park, then I would use the perfective, because going to the park in that case is a uni-directional action. I hope in my clumsy way I have explained this satisfactorily. In Russian, there are 5 major obstacles to fluency. 1) Pronounciation 2) Cases 3) Gender 4) Verb Aspect 5) Verb Conjugation Other than that, it's a breeze. Edited by tanya b on 30 May 2012 at 2:22am 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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