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Hardest languages for Slavic natives

 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages Post Reply
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Zireael
Triglot
Senior Member
Poland
Joined 4410 days ago

518 posts - 636 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish
Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English

 
 Message 1 of 28
06 March 2013 at 7:13pm | IP Logged 
We have a lot of lists and resources detailing what languages are hardest for native speakers of English. What about Slavic languages? Do you think other inflectional languages are hard for us? Or maybe isolate languages, such as English?
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Aquila123
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Norway
mydeltapi.com
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Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Italian, Spanish
Studies: Finnish, Russian

 
 Message 2 of 28
07 March 2013 at 12:42am | IP Logged 

I eould guess languages with a complicated syntax will be a challenge, so I will put German at the top. Italian will also get high up, also because Italien has a very tricky use of articles and many verbal tenses.
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Majka
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
kofoholici.wordpress
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307 posts - 755 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, German, English
Studies: French
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 3 of 28
07 March 2013 at 10:45am | IP Logged 
I haven't studied any "exotic" languages, but here we go for the perspective of the main European languages and my perspective as native speaker of Czech:

German - not many problems. This could be because I had the most native resources at the time (30 years ago, no internet). You get over the use of articles and the "verb at the end of sentence" and you are set. The pronunciation is not very complicated. I cannot remember anything in Grammar giving me big problems.

Russian - almost free. I had to learn the script (not bad), learn the language on its own, but I got huge discount from Czech.

English - "easy" in the beginning. You learn to live with the pronunciation, and trim the use of verb tenses to few. At advanced level, it took me years to master the verb tenses. From today's point of view, the problem was with the method and my inexperience with language learning, even though I did learn for years at this point of time.

French - harder then English in the beginning, then about the same or perhaps even slightly easier. The verb tenses here did actually help me with my English, even if they don't correspond 1:1.

All of them learned roughly at the same time, slightly staggered (German, 2 years later Russian, 1 year later English and another year later French, if I remember correctly)

Currently learning:

Italian - quite easy. Might be that I get discounts from French. Quite easy listening and reading comprehension.
But I can remember interpreting from Italian on a trip to Italy without any formal experience with the language.

Spanish - easy, but slightly harder than Italian. Listening comprehension harder, reading or LR slightly harder than Italian but comprehensible.

Edited by Majka on 07 March 2013 at 10:45am

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renaissancemedi
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
Greece
Joined 4117 days ago

941 posts - 1309 votes 
Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2
Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew

 
 Message 4 of 28
07 March 2013 at 11:21am | IP Logged 
There are many slavic natives living in Greece (russians and former yugoslavs) , and they learn greek very well. The only issues they seem to have is the subjunctive case, and the accent which they never lose. But they have no problem with other grammatical traps like word gender for example, plus they always have a more than decent vocabulary and a good grasp of colloquial language.
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Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 4815 days ago

2096 posts - 2972 votes 
Speaks: Russian*

 
 Message 5 of 28
07 March 2013 at 12:43pm | IP Logged 
renaissancemedi wrote:
There are many slavic natives living in Greece (russians and
former yugoslavs) , and they learn greek very well. The only issues they seem to have is
the subjunctive case, and the accent which they never lose. But they have no problem
with other grammatical traps like word gender for example, plus they always have a more
than decent vocabulary and a good grasp of colloquial language.

And how do other immigrants learn Greek?
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renaissancemedi
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
Greece
Joined 4117 days ago

941 posts - 1309 votes 
Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2
Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew

 
 Message 6 of 28
07 March 2013 at 12:45pm | IP Logged 
This is a thread about slavic natives. What other nationalities are you interested in?
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William Camden
Hexaglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 6031 days ago

1936 posts - 2333 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French

 
 Message 7 of 28
07 March 2013 at 12:59pm | IP Logged 
Perhaps Turkic or Finno-Ugric languages would cause particular problems. Otherwise the languages that give English speakers the most trouble, like Chinese or Arabic, would probably also be difficult for Slavic speakers.   
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Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 4815 days ago

2096 posts - 2972 votes 
Speaks: Russian*

 
 Message 8 of 28
07 March 2013 at 1:05pm | IP Logged 
renaissancemedi wrote:
This is a thread about slavic natives. What other nationalities
are you interested in?

We usually say "very well" in comparison with something else. They learn Greek very well
in comparison with whom?


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