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Russian v arabic - alphabets | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| unrealcity Newbie Great Britain Joined 5822 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes | Message 1 of 11 22 December 2008 at 5:13pm | IP Logged |
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I'm looking to learn either Russian or Arabic. Both look fascinating, so I'm struggling to pick one! Does anyone have any views on which language's alphabet is easier to learn? Thanks!
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| Eimii Groupie United States Joined 5838 days ago 44 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Polish | Message 2 of 11 22 December 2008 at 6:25pm | IP Logged |
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I don't know about Arabic. But Russian, it isn't hard at all to learn the alphabet. It just takes a little while to get used to.
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| Razekial Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6026 days ago 13 posts - 15 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 3 of 11 23 December 2008 at 3:22am | IP Logged |
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The alphabet for Russian is pretty easy to learn. If you sit down and work at it for a couple of hours you should be able to sound out words with relative ease. It also helps that there are several letters that share the same form and sound with English.
Keep in mind though that the alphabet is by far one of the easier points of Russian. I can't speak for Arabic, but the alphabet as well does not look impossible. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| FrancescoP Octoglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5956 days ago 169 posts - 258 votes  Speaks: Italian*, French, English, German, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian, Norwegian Studies: Georgian, Japanese, Croatian, Greek | Message 4 of 11 23 December 2008 at 3:34am | IP Logged |
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Speaking by experience, the cyrillic alphabet is about 9/10 times easier to learn than the Arabic script (which technically doesn't exactly qualify as an alphabet, but anyway), both for subjective and objective reasons. Add a simple but shocking truth: in Russian, accents permitting, you'll be able to pronounce unknown words and verb forms more or less correctly; in Arabic it takes a lot of experience and training to get unfamiliar words right, because *short vowels are almost never written*. This is a major catch for a beginner. Go for cyrillic first (a week will do) and then see for yourself if you need more challenge
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| Ham Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5995 days ago 21 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 5 of 11 23 December 2008 at 5:03am | IP Logged |
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I would agree, the cyrilic alphabet is no harder than the latin alphabet, whereas in arabic the spelling is far from phonetic, as FrancescoP said short vowles aren't written, neither are double consonants marked usualy and neither are many other things. Some times it seems to me that arabic spelling is based more on its own internal rules and grammar rather than pronounciation.
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| stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5838 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin | Message 6 of 11 23 December 2008 at 5:58am | IP Logged |
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Another difficulty about the Arabic alphabet not mentioned is that each letter can have upto 4 forms, initial, medial, end and isolate. It takes some practise combining these forms correctly to form words.
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| FrancescoP Octoglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5956 days ago 169 posts - 258 votes Speaks: Italian*, French, English, German, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian, Norwegian Studies: Georgian, Japanese, Croatian, Greek | Message 7 of 11 23 December 2008 at 8:24am | IP Logged |
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That's true, even if that's not as hard as it sounds (as far as my modest experience is concerned). Initial, medial and final forms are usually quite similar or recognizable, not completely different signs (with exceptions). On the other hand, italic and handwritten cyrillic are quite a challenge in themselves: a lot of letters are different, some are deceptive, etc. It's still much easier than the Arabic script, though, and by far
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| Juan M. Senior Member Colombia Joined 5905 days ago 460 posts - 597 votes | Message 8 of 11 23 December 2008 at 8:49am | IP Logged |
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You shouldn't regard the Russian alphabet as an obstacle. As others have mentioned, you become comfortable with it after a relatively short while.
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