Russia forum: How difficult is learning Russian?
Posted in the Russia forum
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Daria Muresan
07 Oct 2008, 14:22How difficult is learning Russian?How long does it take to get a basic knowledge of the Russian language? Is it very hard to learn (especially the writing)?
Daria
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Broadly speaking YES. Russian is not easy to learn. I am Russian, but I do make mistakes.
Last edited 05 Dec 2008, 10:59
I know some foreigns who learnt Russian (living in Russia) and it took about 5-10 years to pronounce, understand and write more or less good. But people with slavonic native language will learn faster.
One must love Russia, Russian culture and anything about Russia in order to really, really learn language. Same about any language I guess. -
Daria Muresan
06 Nov 2008, 11:39
Wow, I already expected it to be quite hard, but 5-10 years are very long!
I got some friends in Russia and speaking English with them is really annoying after a while...but I think a few sentences in Russian will have to do for the next time...as learning German for communicating in Austria eats up a lot of my time already! -
Andrew Smith
11 Dec 2008, 12:30Hi Daria
Actually, if you speak other European languages, it will not be too difficult for you to learn Russian. There are many words in Russian which are exactly the same as in English or German. Like "manager" or "computer" and many others. Also, you can reach really good conversational levels without 5-10 years of studying. You only need so many years if you need your Russian to be very fluent. It is the same for other languages. I have friends who learned Russian in the UK and they speak really well, then they went to Moscow and after that their accent almost turned into native Russian.Also, there are easy Audio training lessons which you can download. or get a CD which covers many conversational situations. You can learn those very quickly by listening and following the guides.
Here's the linkhttp://easyrussian.co.uk/
http://www.interactive.eu.com/er/
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Daria Muresan
12 Dec 2008, 12:01
Hi Andrew! Thanks for those tips.
I'm a bit surprised to hear that Russian is easy...I mean, they have a total different writing! -
Чёрный призрак 46Ghost
30 Dec 2008, 14:15
Очень легко - я же тоже знаю!
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Daria Muresan
20 Jan 2009, 10:40
Yes, that's exactly what I mean...without a translating machine I would have no idea what you were saying! It's not like you can understand something because some words look similar...
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It sounds like some sex site, but it's a very cool site that taught me conversational Russian, but focused on conversations with the opposite gender.
It helped make me some great friends and this site has free audio lessons. This audio program was powerful.
REAL conversational russian. Not just the hi's and how are you's. there's plenty of cheeky russian slang I found.
Thi Zabavnaya Dyevichka
http://www.speaktorussianwomen.com
Greg Dean
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Maxim Buyakov
24 Apr 2009, 19:58Being a Russian native, I never gave a thought to how we Russians were handling pluralization. That is, until I was recently asked by a customer.
See below and cheer that you do not have to learn Russian (yet ) Or - that you are a native Russian .
So, here we go.
A client asked: "Do you have separate words for singular and plural in Russian, e.g. would you have one word for 'comment' and another word for 'comments'?"
Our Reply:
Re your question, yes, there are 'comment' and 'comments' in Russian, eg there may be a comment on a report, or a comments column in a table. (But there isn't plural for 'bikini', or, say, 'kangaroo', as these are foreign words that do not end in a consonant or -a like Russian.
"Another question regarding pluralisation:
With regards to the Russian words if we need to pluralize a words such as "item" does the pluralization depend on the quantity of items that are being pluralized?
Phrased in a more general way: Is there ever more than one way to pluralize a single Russian word?"
Our Reply:
* When explicitly used with a counting number, the form for 2,3 and 4 items is identical to singular genitive case.
For 5 - 20 items it's plural genitive.Then,
21, 31, ..., 101 ... = 1 - always singular (like '21 item').
22-24, ..., 102-104, 122-124 ... = 2 - 4
25-30, ... 105-120, ... = 5 - 20So, we have 1 item (singular), 2,3 and 4 'item-a', 5-20 'item-ov'
* When not counted, then it's a singular 'item' and plural 'item-y', either subject to 6 cases including the nominative (original).
Our Reply 2:
-- I just realised that it's a noun only that is singular genitive, but an adjective to it would be plural genitive.
It is a plural adjective coupled with a singular noun, both genitive.In addition, if the numbers 2, 3 and 4 are themselves in the genitive or other indirect case ("Of 2 items..." then the trailing adjectives and nouns are all plural.
I guess we Russians don't get confused because 2, 3 and 4 end in a vovel, while 5-20 - in a consonant, and that reflects in our heads.
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Originally posted at englishdic.livejournal.com/1942.html-----------------
Last edited 24 Apr 2009, 20:01
Maxim Buyakov
Principal, Maxim Global Services
Russian/English Technical and Legal Translation, Voiceover
http://www.AskMaxim.com/ -
Russian is a very difficult language for me. I have been trying to learn it for nine years, even before we arrived in St Petersburg in June 2000.
Its foundation isn't Germanic or Romance, so my knowledge of Spanish and French only helps with some cognates.So, I am old, now 66, and have never shined in languages, although I enjoy learning what I can. Now I can start and continue a conversation in my neighborhood, which makes me very happy, as for years I have felt quite isolated... and now I find Russians can be sociable and kind... but they tend to be stick nia itsa, not the first to talk.
My wife deserves a lot of credit for spending many hours in the first few years going over verbs, texts, and padejay (the last an area where I am rather hopeless!). At home we speak a lot of Russian nouns and phrases but often American English.
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مجید فرقانی
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yes, Russian is fourth difficult language in the world, but to the other hand it's not SO difficult as it seems to be.
I teach Russian as a foreign language and almost all my students are able to express their thoughts and speak in Russian somehow after few monthes of learning Russian. And a lot of them speak Russian with a slight accent or even without it.
All i want to say is that everything's possible and if you really want to speak Russian, you will do it) sooner or later!)
Best regards,
Yulia -
Juan Ubide Barreda
12 Nov 2009, 17:16Hello everybody.
I think that is very difficould. But Chinese is too difficoult about the accent.
But i can read more or less cirilic, but not all the letters.
Yana .
Robert MacDonald
yulia zhizhanova