How tough is russian to learn?
Monday, July 26th, 2010 at
8:35 pm
I learned spanish back in high school and did well learning it but here in college i want to start russian, how tough of a language is it to learn? I heard you have to learn a whole different type of speaking alphabet or something. Has anyone taken it in college and how tough do you think itd be learn at a college pace.
thanks
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I have taken russian at the university. Russian language will be more difficult for you because it is structured very differently from spanish or english, the two languages which still have a lot of grammar patterns in common. In a nutshell, apart from the new script which you can learn within three days, there are three new grammar concepts that you will certainly find tricky.
1. a case system – 6 cases in combination with two numbers and three genders will result in many different suffixes you need to add at the end of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, numerals….it influences everything in the sentence.
2. perfective and imperfective verbal aspect – most of the time, there are two variations for each verb, one that applies to a one-time action and one describing repetitive action.
Let´s take a verb – to go. Perfective aspect is idti, imperfective is chodiť.
I am going to school. Ja idu v škólu.
I go to school. Ja chažu v škólu.
I will go to school. Ja pajdu v škólu.
I am doing it. Ja éto délaju.
I will do it or I will have done it. Ja éto sdélaju.
As you can see, in russian we don´t form tenses by modal verbs but using an aspect. It is not objectively a harder thing, but it is very different.
3. Vocabulary is very isolated from english when compared to romance or germanic languages. Some basic words include:
book – kníga, pen – rúčka, beer – pivo, church – cerkov, decide – rešiť, work – rabótať…..
Anyway, russian is not harder than spanish or english, it is just very different. Some things are harder, some others easier. For example, there are no articles, only three tenses, subjunctive mood is very simple (whereas in spanish it is a nightmare). The most difficult part of any language is not a grammar or pronunciation but to learn to speak the language like natives.
Good luck. Želaju udáči (Желаю удачи).
It’s not an easy language, but it’s oh so beautiful. I recommend taking Russian in college, maybe go to some intensive language program, and of course, you should go to russia and stay there for awhile. What an amazing country that is.
It depends on how much effort you put into learning it.
Russian is harder than Spanish. There are a lot more things that you have to keep in mind when you’re speaking. They have a different alphabet, three genders, six cases (like conjugations for nouns) and have fewer cognates (words similar to English with the same meaning). It’s not impossible to learn though, and you’ll earn a lot more respect from people knowing Russian than Spanish.