|
 |
Do Russians find English difficult? | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| chucknorrisman Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5448 days ago 321 posts - 435 votes  Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French | Message 1 of 28 16 March 2010 at 1:51am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Many English speakers find Russian difficult due to the declensions and such. Although the declension rules didn't cause as much problems as did the exceptions, I'm just wondering, what do Russian speakers think of learning English? What do they think of the rigid word order, prepositions instead of declensions, and such? Edited by chucknorrisman on 16 March 2010 at 1:53am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Siberiano Tetraglot Senior Member Russian Federation one-giant-leap.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6493 days ago 465 posts - 696 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, ItalianC1, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Serbian | Message 2 of 28 16 March 2010 at 9:15am | IP Logged | |||||
|
1. For Russians the very concept of article is alien. We never really, REALLY, learn how to use them, and I seem to have missed one in the previous sentence.
2. English has too many tenses to master xD I can't remember myself use past perfect or present perfect continuous, and often I use continuous when simple tense could do the job. (And, btw, "remember some1 do smth" - is not easy either. In Russian you just put "how" and then continue in the same tense.) 3. Prepositions. In English, only a direct object needs no preposition. In Russian, even indirect objects can be used without a preposition thanks to noun cases. When we start learning English, we don't see the difference between direct and indirect object, and often use no preposition. ...Then, you need to remember which preposition you use and when. 4. Vowels are the hardest part of speech. We have no ear for them. I still can't hear the difference between grid and greed, and can't pronounce them distinctively. 5. There's a conceptional limitation: in Russian we can make a verb of a noun by adding suffixes. In English there's no such tool for us, so we hardly get used to nouns becoming adjectives, not to speak of verbs. English speakers can take the noun "fax" and say "fax me this", or even "xerox this paper for me". I was already 15 years into learning English when I 1st time heard "fax" used like this. I also remember, at 8th grade, 8 years learning, was the first time the concept of a "noun train" became clear to me (article + adjectives + noun (locomotive)). Just few years ago I read a simple explanation why there are articles (to distinct nouns from verbs (-: ). Edited by Siberiano on 16 March 2010 at 11:20am 12 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| nadia Triglot Groupie Russian Federation Joined 5514 days ago 50 posts - 98 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, French Studies: Hindi | Message 3 of 28 16 March 2010 at 10:44am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Yes, I agree with everything Siberiano said. English is an analytical language, more so than French, for instance, and as such it's just extremely alien to Russian, which is very synthetic. The tenses were at some point the bane of my life (Russian has only 3 tenses). Phrasal verbs require quite a lot of getting used to. English is difficult to understand when spoken (particularly in films, tv series, etc, where more sophisticated language is used than in simple everyday conversations). It's all sort of blurry, unlike French, Spanish and many other languages, which seem to be more distinct. I have now reached a good level of understanding but it took me several years of very intense listening -- I practically didn't watch anything except English films/tv series). Many sounds are quite difficult, especially for beginners, because they are absent in Russian, like [w], [th]ink, [th]ese, and the distinctins between bad--bed, sheep-ship, etc. And so on, and so forth.
English is just as difficult for Russians, as Russian is for English speakers... Some people master English beautifully but I'd say they are few and far between. And the accent is often quite strong. As a teacher of English I saw a lot of people struggle with English horribly. Even when I was at school, virtually no one in my class could actually "speak" English (myself included) -- as in really produce speech as opposed to parroting sentences learned by heart; many couldn't even read transcription. And this after studying English since the first grade (7 years old)! Edited by nadia on 17 March 2010 at 6:33am 9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5556 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 4 of 28 16 March 2010 at 11:58am | IP Logged | |||||
|
All languages have their difficulties when learning them for the first time. It seems to really depend upon how similar they are to languages you already know, and to a large extent how much you enjoy studying and using them. For example, there are many similarities between Russian and English, but not as many as there are say between Russian and Polish, or English and German. This explains to a certain degree why I find learning Russian so much more difficult than studying German.
People can also benefit in other ways from various aspects of their native language(s). Someone who grew up speaking Mandarin for example, may enjoy a strong advantage when it comes to learning other tonal languages, or perhaps has recourse to a good memory for learning new signs and symbols. I think one of the advantages of speaking something like Russian or Polish as a native language is that you have a very good grasp of complex grammar from the start. I know that's what I find most difficult whilst learning Russian, despite my love for the language. Getting all those endings right can be a devil of a task, I can tell you :) Of course, everyone is individual, but the main thing here is that all languages offer up their own wonderful strengths and advantages, and the good news is that these can be employed in learning new languages too. I'm meeting up with a Russian friend fluent in English later today, so I'll take this opportunity to ask them whether they found it difficult to learn, and if so, what they found hardest, and then post their reply up here later. I'm already guessing, akin to Siberiano, that articles are going to be at the top of that list ;) Edited by Teango on 16 March 2010 at 11:59am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5556 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 5 of 28 16 March 2010 at 2:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
Here's that follow-up I promised. My friend said it wasn't particularly difficult to learn English, and that as a Russian, the most challenging aspects in the beginning were...
- English is often not written as it's spoken, especially when you consider bizarre words like "gnome", knight", "Worcester", etc; - English has a large number of tenses (e.g. past indefinite, past continuous, past perfect, present perfect, etc. - all are used to mean something in the past) and it's not particularly easy at first to know which is the right one to use; - English uses articles throughout, for which the concept doesn't even exist in Russian. As a final note, I can only imagine that there are also a lot of exceptions to the rules that simply just need to be learned in English, as at the end of the day, it's really a large melting pot of so many different languages, and a colourful blend of a variety of cultures and borrowings mixed together over the centuries. Edited by Teango on 16 March 2010 at 2:27pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6437 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 6 of 28 16 March 2010 at 7:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
Interesting thread. It's interesting to me to hear what people thought of English while learning it.
"Grid" vs. "Greed" reminds me of the difficulties I have with Korean. I've noticed some English learners, coming from non-article languages, confuse "a" and "the." "a" (and "an") are general. "the" is specific. I want an apple (means I don't care which one, I just want one). Like if I was just sitting at home and got hungry for an apple, I would say "I want an apple." I want the apple (means a specific one that was already referenced). "I want the apple that Bob is holding." If you say "I want an apple Bob is holding" it doesn't make sense, unless Bob is holding many apples and you want one of those." Did you Russians have trouble with "a" vs. "the," or just with articles in general? Edited by IronFist on 16 March 2010 at 7:56pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| dantalian Diglot Senior Member Bouvet Island Joined 5682 days ago 125 posts - 156 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 7 of 28 16 March 2010 at 10:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
Both of them. Sorry, in general articles have seemed redundant to me. When I started learning English I nearly hated them. :)) For instance, I still can’t figure out why I needn't the indefinite article in the phrase: There is room for improvement. I was taught that in predicative constructions you should use the indefinite article after the verb "to be" but it seems I needn't (or is it better to say "I don't need" ?:)) any article here at all. The abstract noun? 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 8 of 28 16 March 2010 at 10:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
It seems to have something to do with "improvement" being a non-countable noun in this sentence (notwithstanding that it is possible to say "improvements" - thus turning an abstract noun (i.e. non-countable) into a physically-defined noun (i.e. countable)). Non-countable nouns tend to accept only "the" as the article (if at all). Countable nouns tend to accept either "a(n)" or "the" as articles depending on the user's intentions. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
