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Do Russians find English difficult?

  Tags: Difficulty | Russian | English
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages Post Reply
28 messages over 4 pages: 1 24  Next >>
Volte
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
Joined 6439 days ago

4474 posts - 6726 votes 
Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian
Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 17 of 28
17 March 2010 at 8:50pm | IP Logged 
arkady wrote:
I can tell you based on my entire family that it is very hard. Words like 'the', 'an', 'a' are never every properly used even after 10,15,20 years of English usage. I have no problem with them because I came here when I was 8, but the older generation will forever suffer with this and it appears to be impossible to eradicate. Maybe some specific courses can stamp this out, but I have yet to see anything.

In fact I would gladly buy anything that would work so that I can reduce mom's concern of her English.


One thing that seems to be slowly improving my mangling of the Italian articles is anything which requires me to actively copy correct phrases - shadowing and scriptorium both help. I'm not sure whether it's a matter of producing things correctly, having essentially instant feedback when the internalized form is wrong, or simply a matter of paying enough close attention, but it does help.

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LanguageSponge
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5766 days ago

1197 posts - 1487 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, French
Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian

 
 Message 18 of 28
18 March 2010 at 4:07pm | IP Logged 
I have never asked my Russian teachers or friends what is the most difficult part of learning English for them personally. I think part of the reason I have not really done that is because I almost don't even have to ask them - every Russian native I know personally always makes, by far and away, the most mistakes with articles - definite article, indefinite article, or indeed no article at all! My own observation is that my Slovenian teacher makes very very few mistakes when choosing between definite or indefinite - if she makes mistakes with the articles at all it is generally because she puts an article where you don't need one at all. I wonder if there's something in this at all.

When I began Russian at university last year I initially corrected my Russian lecturer's mistakes with the articles - something for which she didn't seem particularly grateful and eventually she told me not to bother anymore because "I didn't understand it at school and doubt I ever will, often just forget they even exist".

I imagine that English speakers (and speakers of other non-Slavonic languages) make mistakes with Russian word order in equal measure. I have been learning Russian for a few years and still feel extremely self conscious whenever I write anything at all. This is mainly because my knowledge of word order is rubbish and I laugh at myself every time I think of how weird my Russian must sound. The textbooks and grammars say Russian word order effectively doesn't matter (and that's what they tell us at uni) and yet I know that's not true. I imagine that the lack of concrete rules regarding the articles annoys Russians as much as a lack of rules on Russian word order annoys me.

Jack
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ArtVision
Newbie
Russian Federation
Joined 5366 days ago

5 posts - 5 votes
Studies: Russian*, English
Studies: French, Italian

 
 Message 19 of 28
18 March 2010 at 6:03pm | IP Logged 
The word order in Russian language is not so critical as in English, you can swap words around and the meaning
will not change by much, or at least the slight change in the emphasis in the sentence on a particular part/word
does not change the general meaning. Consequently , Russian speaker often neglect strict rules of word order in
English.

One of the challenging features of English language to master is definite and indefinite articles, this might sounds
easy, but Russian language is devoid of any articles, therefore the notion of using a, an, the is in many cases is
tricky and has to be learnt by heart, for example:
"I have a cold", but you say "I have the flu", why do we use "a" in one case and "the" in the other? It is the way it is.
Similarly, idiomatic expressions require some prior knowledge, learning those takes years of practice.
In short, any structure of the language which does not follow the logic of basic grammatical rules has to be learnt
by heart, and English is full of exceptions :)
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IronFist
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6437 days ago

663 posts - 941 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Korean

 
 Message 20 of 28
18 March 2010 at 9:23pm | IP Logged 
ArtVision wrote:
"I have a cold", but you say "I have the flu", why do we use "a" in one case and "the" in the other?


When I was a kid I thought it was because there were many colds (hence you catch one of them) but only one flu (hence you catch the flu).

Then I learned that there are many strains of colds, both bacterial and viral, although I believe more than half of them are viral (rhinovirus), but there are also many strains of flu, which is why you are supposed to get a flu shot every year.

So technically it should be "I have a cold" and also "I have a flu." But people don't say that.

Another reason it might be "the" flu is because flus tend to be seasonal, and like if one person in an office gets sick with influenza (how did you like that? I avoided using an article altogether! :D ), it is likely that other people at the office will get it, too. So they say "yeah, I caught the flu (that is going around our office)." The flu --> that one particular flu that everyone else has.

Whereas with colds, they are more common, so while it is still correct to say "yeah, I caught the cold that everyone else at the office has," it's more casual to just say "i caught a cold" because there are so many and they are more frequent.

Also, "the flu" is typically more serious than "a cold." Serious things tend to take "the" as an article, such as "the Bible" or even "the book" (referring to the bible).

Sometimes people will emphasize it by pronouncing "the" as "thee" when referring to a special or serious thing. I'm trying to come up with an example right now but I can't, although I hear this somewhat frequently. It's more of a casual thing than an official English thing, however.

Quote:
Similarly, idiomatic expressions require some prior knowledge,


This is true.

Edited by IronFist on 18 March 2010 at 9:28pm

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ArtVision
Newbie
Russian Federation
Joined 5366 days ago

5 posts - 5 votes
Studies: Russian*, English
Studies: French, Italian

 
 Message 21 of 28
19 March 2010 at 10:20pm | IP Logged 
Thanks for "the flu" explanation, this is the most extensive coverage of "the flu" I have ever heard, many friends of
mine would also say, that flu is one, but we have many types of colds, however this is not correct statement as you
indicated
The importance of something brings "the" in front is interesting point! I haven't thought about it, so
the Earth, the Moon might fall into this category :)
Thank you again for your help, it will take a life time to cover all possible cases.


Edited by ArtVision on 19 March 2010 at 10:23pm

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TixhiiDon
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Japan
Joined 5464 days ago

772 posts - 1474 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian
Studies: Georgian

 
 Message 22 of 28
19 March 2010 at 10:45pm | IP Logged 
To make it easier for you, ArtVision, I always say "I caught cold", "I've got cold", and
"I've got 'flu", so you can lose the article altogether in these cases. I don't know if
this is British English, or even North-Eastern English English, but it's perfectly
acceptable.

Having said that, I wouldn't say "I have cold"...Definitely "I have a cold". Maybe I'm
just confusing you even more... ;)
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IronFist
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6437 days ago

663 posts - 941 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Korean

 
 Message 23 of 28
20 March 2010 at 2:30am | IP Logged 
ArtVision wrote:
The importance of something brings "the" in front is interesting point! I haven't thought about it, so
the Earth, the Moon might fall into this category :)
Thank you again for your help, it will take a life time to cover all possible cases.


That's true. Our moon is the moon.

Some other planets have moons, but they are not the moon. The moon is ours :)

There are also other suns in the galaxy, but only ours is the sun.


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IronFist
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6437 days ago

663 posts - 941 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Korean

 
 Message 24 of 28
20 March 2010 at 2:32am | IP Logged 
TixhiiDon wrote:
To make it easier for you, ArtVision, I always say "I caught cold", "I've got cold", and
"I've got 'flu", so you can lose the article altogether in these cases. I don't know if
this is British English, or even North-Eastern English English, but it's perfectly
acceptable.

Having said that, I wouldn't say "I have cold"...Definitely "I have a cold". Maybe I'm
just confusing you even more... ;)


I think that's a British thing.

Like how British people say "I was in hospital" instead of "I was in the hospital."

See the last example on this page:

http://www.kronhead.com/as_time_goes_by.php

Edited by IronFist on 20 March 2010 at 2:32am



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