joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5474 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German
| Message 1 of 9 19 December 2009 at 2:27pm | IP Logged |
I know it hasn't started yet, but I need to say this:
AAAARGH! RUSSIAN CASES ARE OUT TO GET ME! HELP! HELP! MERCY! NOOOOOO! PLEEEAAaaase....
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Sprachjunge Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 7169 days ago 368 posts - 548 votes Speaks: English*, GermanC2 Studies: Spanish, Russian
| Message 2 of 9 22 December 2009 at 12:54am | IP Logged |
We can do it, teammate! Here's to the New Year!
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Icaria909 Senior Member United States Joined 5595 days ago 201 posts - 346 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 3 of 9 23 December 2009 at 2:28am | IP Logged |
I was just thinking the same thing about cases....
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meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5971 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map
| Message 4 of 9 23 December 2009 at 7:41am | IP Logged |
Yes, I sometimes feel like a trong>basket case myself over the complexities of language. Don't worry too much, this sense of threat will pass; it's just a trong>case of anxiety.
Maybe you can avoid getting trong>cased by grammatical cases by setting out to get THEM before they get you? Otherwise, you could suffer unspeakable injuries in this battle, and if you later want to file legal charges against the language for grammatical damage, you won't have a trong>case. But, trong>in any case, make sure that you're well-armed and ready--you don't want to trong>Russian to anything!
But don't think you won't be successful, because that's trong>just not the case! After a year and a lot of study, you'll be happy to look back on your learning and feel that many things that seemed once impossible to learn are now understandable. And that's a great feeling and a real achievement. trong>Case closed.
(you might want to file charges against me though, for excessive use of puns!)
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joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5474 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German
| Message 5 of 9 27 December 2009 at 8:43pm | IP Logged |
You're studying German, at least the German case system is pretty straightforward. But I already hated German cases, and Russian ones make no sense at all! Then again I know I'll eventually get it, it's just that for each use of a case you have to learn how to use it. For instance now I'm studying how to talk about numbers of things. Well, when it's just one thing, you have to use the nominative case. When it's two, three of for you use the genitive singular for some reason. And when it's more than five, you use the genitive plural. And there's a lot of those case-cases (yeah, I can't help punning myself, so I'll forgive you). Basically, every time you learn a new structure you need to learn which cases to use.
Sprachjunge, I didn't want to believe that Russian cases were that much more complex that German ones but there are an d oh, how much more! Then again it's fun to try to reorganise your brain to make it believe it understands why the hell they would use this case in that situation...
And then there's that -AX ending that I've seen and doesn't seem to correspond to any case at all. Or maybe it's a plural declension of some sort?
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joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5474 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German
| Message 6 of 9 27 December 2009 at 8:45pm | IP Logged |
Oh, and thanks Sprachjunge! I haven't given up, it just blew my mind for a while but I think I managed to piece it back together
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meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5971 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map
| Message 7 of 9 27 December 2009 at 10:01pm | IP Logged |
ACH!!! I didn't check that post and I really messed up the formatting! Sorry about that, but it was a bit too silly anyway! Yes, I've heard that the case system is far more complex. I might be brave enough to tackle it one day. I am interested in learning some Polish one day, as it was spoken in my family when I was very young, but I've been told that there are fourteen cases and I'm not ready for that yet. Good luck!
trong> ???? That should have been either bold or italic, how embarrassing!
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Siberiano Tetraglot Senior Member Russian Federation one-giant-leap.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6497 days ago 465 posts - 696 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, ItalianC1, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Serbian
| Message 8 of 9 27 December 2009 at 11:13pm | IP Logged |
DonĀ“t worry too much. Russians have difficulties with cases too.
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