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Study languages you are bound to fail in | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| PolyNotYet Diglot Newbie Japan Joined 3794 days ago 10 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English*, Irish Studies: French, German, Persian | Message 33 of 96 13 March 2014 at 1:14am | IP Logged | ||
Absolutely, I have been dipping in and out of 'Teach Yourself Hungarian' and 'Hippocrene: Beginner's Serbian' for a while. I will probably never become proficient in either language, but I did get the 'ooooh, shiny' feeling when I read through the books online. I only know a few phrases in either language. I won't be looking at the Serbian for a while because I am getting back into Russian and I don't want any interference from another Slavic language. My only logic for getting the books was that I knew, and still know, very little about Hungarian and I had just watched a television series on the collapse of Yugoslavia. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kimb1 Newbie United States Joined 3716 days ago 12 posts - 17 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 34 of 96 13 March 2014 at 3:07am | IP Logged | ||
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No way! I have big plans for any language that I have an interest in. If I go to the trouble of checking out a language book from the library or starting an online course, I fully intend to become functional in that language.
Of course, once I start working through the book and come to terms with the reality that trying to work on another language will just slow down progress on the ones I really need to work on, I lose interest. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 3826 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 35 of 96 13 March 2014 at 4:56am | IP Logged | ||
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To be more on topic to this thread, it seems everybody talks of how difficult Russian is and how little progress
they're making. It seems to be the hardest Indo-European languages according to how many posts have popped up on just how difficult it is. Ironically the most widely spoken Slavic language is the hardest allegedly. So irregular and full of strange words like "vowel reduction" "palatalization" "stress" "exceptions" popping up again and again, beating Icelandic and Lithuanian in complexity yada yada. Tons of exceptions....try Min Chinese sandhi and then complain about irregular changes. So it seems that folks in the USSR could just learn it but everyone here is barely getting through. A language spoken by millions beats small ingrown languages, looks like they really have something. Edited by Stolan on 13 March 2014 at 6:05am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5128 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 36 of 96 13 March 2014 at 7:23am | IP Logged | ||
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@ Stolan: Having no knowledge of the languages you mention (1.5 hour studying Icelandic is all I can boast)
I cannot compare Russan to them. I have however dabbled in dozens of languages, including Arabic and Hebrew, and I can truthfully say, that although I love the language to death, there is no language which I have found so hard to learn as Russian. I have been at it for 5 years - admittedly with some very, very long breaks now and then, and I am still only at A2. I jokingly say that with the amount of effort I have put in I should have been able not just to read Dostojevski, I should have been able to write like Dostojevski. And I am no novice, I have studied other languages before. Some of the factors that play a role is that now I am much older and have much less time to study, but since I see how many other struggle as well, I suspect that that is not the whole explanation. A colleague of mine studied Russian at the University for three full years, and he still says that he would be embarrassed to say that he speaks Russian, even though he got an A on every exam. And this is not to discourage anyone - Russian is an amazing language, and I encourage everyone to study it - but you should be patient with yourself, and not give up if it takes a little bit more time than you first expected :-) It is so worth the effort. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6233 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 37 of 96 13 March 2014 at 8:43am | IP Logged | ||
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Stolen: any Slavic language is difficult as your first one. Vowel reduction and unpredictable stress are annoying, but not a huge barrier - English has both, and isn't considered astonishingly difficult. Palatalization isn't a big deal either. But the grammar really is complex, full of exceptions, and subtle in ways that take a long time to get your head around - the aspect system is not easy. It seems a bit harder than Polish to me, but not by much.
Is Russian the hardest language in the world? No. I can't compare it to Arabic or Mandarin meaningfully, so I won't. Is it harder to get decent at than a Romance or Germanic language, for native speakers of a Germanic or Romance language? Yes. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| albysky Triglot Senior Member Italy lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4182 days ago 287 posts - 393 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German | Message 38 of 96 13 March 2014 at 3:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have been at it for 5 years - admittedly with some very, very long breaks now and then, and I am still only at A2. I jokingly say that with the amount of effort I have put in I should have been able not just to read Dostojevski, I should have been able to write like Dostojevski. And I am no novice, I have studied other languages before. Have you ever thought that you may have followed a wrong /ineffective approach in learning russian ? You may have concentrated too much on the nuts and bolts (grammar and classroom studies ) and too less on the general picture (listening ,reading and passive vocabulary acquisition) . As far as i know steve kaufmann is by any means functional in russian and he learnt it in a about 5 years . If he is made it ,i think you can make it too , it could be just a matter of changing perspective . Edited by albysky on 13 March 2014 at 3:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5128 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 39 of 96 13 March 2014 at 4:12pm | IP Logged | ||
I guess that between the breaks (up to 18 months breaks in some cases), a busy life, a series of life altering events and losses over that specific period of time, and the fact that the method which works best for me (immersion) is not available to me, there are some very good reasons why it has taken longer than it should have. I also suspect that Steve Kaufmann can dedicate more of his time to languages than I can :-) My dyslexia does not exactly help either. Learning to read again when you are dyslectic and past 50 is not a walk in the park. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 3826 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 40 of 96 13 March 2014 at 4:45pm | IP Logged | ||
In English, stress is only lexical, not mobile, nobody ever mentions vowel reduction in English for some reason so I assume something in Russian sets it apart. What exceptions exist outside the plain irregular morphology I am led to believe it has making it harder than Polish? Is it the hardest Indo European language then? Hardest Slavic language? Sorry, its just I have this preconception an ingrown language with fewer speakers (Icelandic, Czech) tend to be more difficult than what used to be a lingua franca for the USSR. Edited by Stolan on 13 March 2014 at 4:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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