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Changing language from Czech to Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Sionis Newbie United States Joined 4900 days ago 33 posts - 34 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Romanian | Message 1 of 27 28 August 2011 at 5:50am | IP Logged | ||
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I know I have asked a few questions on this forum about learning Czech as an English speaker, but I have actually decided to start my language learning journey with learning Russian. After having a few conversations with native speakers of both Russian and Czech, I feel it's much more logical, practical, and to be honest easier to start with Russian, especially if I'm interested in learning both languages.
Anyways, by first question if the most basic and probably has already been asked, but where should I start? I was going to pick up a workbook to start learning the alphabet and a grammar book to start reading up on the Russian grammar. Any thoughts? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sionis Newbie United States Joined 4900 days ago 33 posts - 34 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Romanian | Message 2 of 27 28 August 2011 at 6:15am | IP Logged | ||
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Also, just out of curoisty, has anyone here who has done a lot of studying into various Slavic languages come across any problems when picking up a second, third, fourth, etc. Slavic language after your first one? Such as false friends, mistaking similar but different grammatical rules, vocabulary, etc.?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5056 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes  Speaks: Russian* | Message 3 of 27 28 August 2011 at 6:48am | IP Logged | ||
There were a lot of funny cases in Montenegro with false friends, but, in general, all this is not a problem in comparison with learning a non-Slavic language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| floydak Tetraglot Groupie Slovakia Joined 4854 days ago 60 posts - 85 votes Speaks: Slovak*, English, German, Spanish Studies: French | Message 4 of 27 28 August 2011 at 11:32am | IP Logged | ||
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I would say that learning a slavic language after another one is something comparable
to learn french after Spanish or so..it will more help you than harm. however differences between czech and russian might be slightly bigger than diferences between Spanish and Italian. and about method, I'm for conventional one. To get some good workbook with texts, grammar and recordings. I do not recommend to skip grammar and learn only via byki or some similar method however I know, that different people like different aproaches.. edit: byki is good..when you mastered basics and can construct sentences and you want to amplify your vocabulary. Edited by floydak on 28 August 2011 at 11:34am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 5 of 27 28 August 2011 at 6:11pm | IP Logged | ||
See the following threads: Balto-Slavonic Profile (this has a point-by-point comparison of the languages, as well as some comments about things that make Russian difficult for other Slavs) Czech and Russian Czech through Russian Russian and the other Slavic languages In my experience, Czech is overall easier than Russian. Czech and Russian grammar are fairly similar and would ultimately be equally difficult for a non-Slav to figure out. The killer is that Russian is rather difficult to learn how to pronounce properly as it has mobile stress (i.e. the position of a word's stress varies depending on inflection) and vowel reduction (i.e. a vowel that does not bear the word's stress is pronounced differently from the one that does bear stress). On a related note, in comparison to spelling in say Czech, Russian spelling is not a very accurate representation of the language's sounds partially because it doesn't normally indicate the place of the stress or the quality of the unstressed vowels and partially because it's guided by some historical considerations - i.e. Russians spell some words as they were pronounced several centuries ago even though modern pronunciation practices have changed. In contrast, Czech pronunciation does not have mobile stress or vowel reduction and its spelling is a more accurate representation of the sounds used today. This regularity means that you're more likely to know how to pronounce or spell a Czech word when you encounter it for the first time than a new Russian word. The only notable complication that I can recall from Czech is that Czechs don't often use the language as taught in the textbook. There's a noticeable distinction between Standard Czech and Common/"Colloquial" Czech (this is different from slang) with the former reserved for classrooms and official/formal contexts. It's acceptable for a foreigner to use only Standard Czech but that foreigner may have a hell of a time participating in conversations with other Czechs whose tendency is to use the Common/"Colloquial" language in such situations. At some point the learner will need to learn some Common/"Colloquial" language. Standard Czech is basically codified on Prague's dialect(s) as used in the 16th and 17th centuries while Common/Colloquial Czech basically arose from Prague's dialect(s) as used in the 18th and 19th centuries. The difference between the two "languages" lies in grammar and pronunciation and can confuse someone who is not aware of the differences. If you were to base your choice on which of the two would be easier to learn, I would choose Czech. Even though Russian is flooded with learning materials for the English-speaking student, there's enough material for Czech to get started. If your choice were for reasons other than linguistic characteristics, then what I've just said about Russian vowel reduction, mobile stress and orthography or Common Czech would mean little to you. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5298 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 6 of 27 28 August 2011 at 6:47pm | IP Logged | ||
I am not sure if you mean what you are saying here, but learning a language by reading a grammar is for experienced language learners only, so don't do this. What you want is structured instruction, introducing grammar in a graded way, from easy to more complex. The usual suspects like Teach Yourself, Colloquial, Linguaphone, Assimil ... to name just a few are much better suited for a beginner, else you may experience considerable difficulties and frustration from the very beginning. Having a good, not too thick grammar for looking things up and for deepening certain themes is a good idea, of course, but it should not be your primary source for studying, imo. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5056 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 7 of 27 28 August 2011 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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Considering pronunciation, Russian vowels are easier than those of Czech because of vowel
reduction. English speakers certainly have problems to pronouns clear and long unstressed vowels, but in Czech there are only three pairs of hard/soft consonants (15 in Russian). Czech has syllabic R and L. Russian spelling is much more complex. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5009 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 8 of 27 28 August 2011 at 8:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you do not have much of experience with learning languages, than Russian gives you a huge advantage in the amount of learning resources.
As you intend to learn both, I believe it quite doesn't matter which one you start with, none will help you with the other significantly more than the other way around. And if you stop in the half of your plan, having learnt only one, Russian will surely be more practical (unless you would want to move here in future, which I suppose you don't). By the way, how do you write cyrillics (or how is it spelled) on normal keyboard? You install the russian one and try to guess where things lie until you get used to it? Or do the russian letters correspond to their latin equivalents? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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