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Hardest part about Russian | ||
Tags: Difficulty | Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Sprachgenie Decaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5709 days ago 128 posts - 165 votes  Speaks: German*, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Faroese, Icelandic, Flemish, Persian, Swiss-German Studies: English, Belarusian | Message 1 of 29 08 May 2009 at 1:42am | IP Logged | ||
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I would appreciate some advice from people who are learning or have learned Russian. I have just started with this language and I am finding that the words seem to be pronounced almost exactly as they are pronounced. And mastering the cyrillic alphabet was also quite a bit easier than I has imagined. Also I am noticing a fair amount of common vocabulary with German (Fakel, Rücksack).
What I think is going to give me some trouble is the changing ending of the nouns based on gender and case. In German we also take gender and case into consideration, but the nouns themselves normally don't change (except for sometimes an n is added to the end) but instead we have a complex system of definite articles and adjective endings. Is Russian grammar possible to learn for someone who only has experience with Germanic languages? What do you think is the most difficult part of learning Russian? Any insights would be very helpful. Thanks. 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 2 of 29 08 May 2009 at 2:13am | IP Logged | ||
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I am a little surprised at your post. For me, it was the other way around with Russian. The cases were relatively straightforward (I suppose that I can "cheat" because I already knew a bit about other Slavonic languages), but getting proper pronunciation was (and still is) a bee-yatch (Russian palatalization, and getting a handle on mobile stress and vowel reduction is often a killer on a non-Russian tongue). Yet it's still possible to learn Russian grammar knowing only a Germanic language. Come to a university in England or the USA and you'll find quite a few lecturers or graduate students who can use Russian correctly (and fluently) even when they had begun their Russian studies from scratch as monolingual English-speakers.
At least with German and Icelandic, the case system is relatively elaborate for a modern Germanic language so I'm not following how you would be overly fazed by Russian cases. The only thing that you need to get used to is that modern Germanic declension (wherever it exists) has quite a lot of duplication of case endings which you may have come to regard as "simpler" (e.g. der, die, das in German nominative, but dem, der, dem in German dative - notice how "der" in isolation is nominative singular masculine or dative singular feminine). Russian endings do not have quite as much duplication so you're learning that there are more possibilities when it comes to declensional endings. It's still surmountable. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| guesto Groupie Australia Joined 5741 days ago 76 posts - 118 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 3 of 29 08 May 2009 at 3:29am | IP Logged | ||
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For me declension was easy conceptually and I absorbed it naturally, although it can be troublesome when speaking. You have to learn to plan ahead or else you will get to the end of a long chain of adjectives and realise you have the wrong gender, at which point you have to start all over again.
On the other hand aspect is very very difficult and subtle. I still don't get it fully and make loads of mistakes, even when it seems clear cut. Also word stress is a pain to memorise, but not conceptually difficult. Prepositions are kind of hard, but probably not any more than in other languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| SII Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5792 days ago 184 posts - 194 votes Speaks: Russian* Studies: English | Message 4 of 29 08 May 2009 at 8:05am | IP Logged | ||
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The declension is the "formal" part of grammar and it may be learned relatively easy, the correct pronunciation is much more difficult but the most difficult part of Russian is the free word order. With the different word order we express shades of meaning, irony, mockery, approval/disapproval and more others, but there are almost no the strong and clear rules about the word order in Russian.
About the common vocabulary with German I say that we (Russians) adopted many words from some languages including German. Edited by SII on 08 May 2009 at 8:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| SII Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5792 days ago 184 posts - 194 votes Speaks: Russian* Studies: English | Message 6 of 29 08 May 2009 at 10:16am | IP Logged | ||
And listening, listening, listening :) It is need to analyze any cases of using the non-standard word order. The main sense of Russian sentence usually don't modify when the word order changes but very often the shade of meaning changes what is very important. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| snovymgodom Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5725 days ago 136 posts - 149 votes Speaks: English*, Russian | Message 7 of 29 08 May 2009 at 10:25am | IP Logged | ||
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I've studied Russian for some years, and I can tell you that it is essential to understand the case system and know the endings if you plan to read more advanced-level texts. Even though the system seems daunting in the beginning, however, with practice you will get a feel for the language and speaking and reading using cases will be natural. The pronunciation has a few difficulties, namely the stress which is not marked in writing and can change the meaning of a word in some instances. I also initially struggled with producing the "soft" consonants as well as the vowel ы.
As for the free word order, you will find that knowing the cases will help you a lot here. You have to break down a sentence and see what agrees with what, and you can't skip through that - it's the only way you'll understand the meaning. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5838 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 8 of 29 08 May 2009 at 10:31am | IP Logged | ||
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For the moment I find it frustrating to learn new words with the letter "e".
I wish Russians would be more consistent with whether or not the the umlauts are used! Sometimes it's used, but usually not! I also think that Humbert and SII are right. Listening and reading are the keys to getting good at any language. It's because English is all around that people tend to learn English as a second language a lot faster than they learn their second language (or native English speakers learn their first) If you can mimick that situation with another language then you'll speed up the learning (radio, tv, films, music...) Edited by cordelia0507 on 08 May 2009 at 10:42am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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