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Russian is not hard | ||
Tags: Difficulty | Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Arti Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 7017 days ago 130 posts - 165 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: French, Czech | Message 41 of 47 13 January 2011 at 12:58pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Your view on the language is standard, however I can add that there are 9 cases in Russian. The linguists argue a lot here, I just give you another point of view. 6 cases you know already and -partitive (налей мне + Род. падеж - мёдУ, чаЮ) -locative (думаю о садЕ, нахожусь в садУ) -vocative (мама - мам, папа - пап, Таня - Тань и т.д.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6277 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 42 of 47 13 January 2011 at 1:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I did Russian for four years at university. I do not think it is inordinately hard. I have not listed it on this forum as one of the languages I speak, as I lack practice in speaking the language.
I may add it as one of the languages I speak, however. This follows an interesting incident. I found a woman's address book on the street just after Christmas. It clearly belonged to a Russian speaker, probably a Ukrainian as there was some Ukrainian poetry written in the book. I made several unsuccessful calls to numbers given in the book (nobody answered) until a Russian woman finally answered, and said a friend of hers had lost such a book and gave her number, which was a new one not in the address book. I arranged one meeting to hand the book over, but the woman did not turn up. A second meeting was successful and I then handed the book over. I spoke Russian on the phone throughout, and it went fine although once or twice I needed to ask the other person to speak more slowly. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| CheeseInsider Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5127 days ago 193 posts - 238 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin* Studies: French, German | Message 43 of 47 16 January 2011 at 1:54am | IP Logged | ||||||||
That's a very encouraging anecdote William :) Thanks for that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6555 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 44 of 47 16 January 2011 at 7:14am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Nice -phone calls are tough. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6277 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 45 of 47 18 January 2011 at 4:07pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
My Russian and my background to learning it makes an interesting comparison with my Turkish. It is also a contrast between formal learning and teaching yourself. I learned Russian from scratch at university in a course lasting four years (I also studied German). In the past 15 years, however, I have had relatively few opportunities to practise it and it is quite rusty. In contrast, my Turkish is almost entirely self-taught. I have not learned it in a formal learning or academic environment, but on the other hand I have had many opportunities to practise the language. However, while my spoken Russian is not as good as my spoken Turkish, due to lack of use, I wouldn't say it was very much worse. Indeed, actually using Russian in the situation I described caused it to start coming back, as if it had just been hibernating for a while. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Skantz Newbie UkraineRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5347 days ago 5 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 46 of 47 20 January 2011 at 4:08pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hi,
I thought I might be able to add a perspective. I just finished a 16 month teaching contract in Ukraine (in the eastern part, where everybody speaks Russian). I also have taken some German courses and spent some time in the country. Generally, I think Russian is considered difficult because it is so widely studied, and it is probably one of the most difficult widely studied languages. In the US, most people who study another language study first Spanish, then French and, finally, German. German is therefore considered a difficult language. In Germany, Russian is fairly widely studied, but on a different level than something like English, French or Spanish (which seem like they are almost the same language sometimes). Of course, if more people studied Chinese or Arabic, or Georgian or Polish or Basque, Russian would be considered pretty average, I imagine. I would say that I can pick up German about four times faster than Russian. My Russian is probably a solid upper-intermediate right now. In the beginning, the grammar seems insane. When I first heard 2 мальчика but 5 мальчиков it blew my mind. But the grammar can be learned. The grammar actually isn't what bothers me, and everyone says my grammar is quite good (though, then again, most people want to be nice, so who knows?). I would say I am about a B-2. I do misuse those aspects sometimes, but for the most part that's not really a problem (though I do have to brush up on those participles). The problem is words. German has a reputation for long words, but typical root words seem to be longer in Russian. And they have so many unpredictable forms. The nouns aren't too difficult, although there are certainly some irregularities to learn. But verbs are killer. You have to learn the infinitive, the root and any stress changes associated, and that is what kills me. With time though, even that is getting easier. Since the language is so synthetic, there are patterns and roots to verbs you can learn. Since understand is понимать, понять and conjugates пойму, поймёшь, you can get the conjugation of other words that have мать, нять as part of the root, although even then they can have different stress changes . So in general, Russian is significantly harder than German. And both are certainly hard enough for an amateur like me. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| karabatov Diglot Newbie Russian Federation semanticvictory.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5073 days ago 15 posts - 37 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Japanese, French | Message 47 of 47 20 January 2011 at 5:22pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Yes, Russian words are generally longer than, say, English or French. I often really hate it when translating a poem
or lyrics from English to Russian — Russian words just won't fit! And a little note: Russian is awful for software designed in short-worded English. Cellphone interfaces are crammed with contracted Russian words, sometimes to the point of unintelligibility. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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