Этот трудный русский язык

[gera.livejournal.com]

Dear Russian learners,

what aspects of the Russian language do you find most difficult?

Comments

[soidisantfille.livejournal.com]

Verbal aspect, for sure.

[gera.livejournal.com]

Can you elaborate, please?

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

It's either pronunciation (three years and I still slip up on a lot of the basics) or all of those small idiomatic phrases used to emphasize, compare, or just fill space.

[gera.livejournal.com]

all of those small idiomatic phrases

For example?

[frostflake.livejournal.com]

I have trouble with verbs of motion. There are so many nuances and specific usages that often seem completely illogical (contrary to the rest of the language, which is very logical).

[lizphiz.livejournal.com]

I second that. I'm finally beginning to use the cases intuitively (and correctly, sometimes, even!), but verbs of motion baffle me, no matter how many times I try to memorize them - there's always some new prefix that changes their meaning entirely.

[lexabear.livejournal.com]

Perhaps my biggest problem wasn't so much a language one as a literature one, but in some of the stories I read/translated, the sentences just went on foreeeeeeeeeever. With the verb at the very end. I think in "Господин из Сан-Франциско" there were entire paragraphs that were one sentence.

I suppose that was just the style of the era, though. I can't stand English prose when it goes on and on like that either.

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

It took a while for me to learn not to try to make sense of a sentence until I had translated all of it. I was incredibly confused until I figured out that I was going about it the wrong way.

[nemica.livejournal.com]

I always thought that it's much easier to read long sentences in Russian than in English because in Russian we use *a lot* of commas to separate one part of a sentence from other.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

You haven't read much German literature, then, I suppose ;-)

[tectonic-drift.livejournal.com]

Most definitely pronunciation. There are some vowel combinations I just can’t seem to pronounce right (yet) such as the “аешь” in думаешь or the “лая” in весёлая. I also find the sound щ and ц difficult in some words. And learning to speak a word is very difficult without hearing it because stress is so important, and even when a stress mark is provided I find it difficult because I am not good at distinguishing stresses.

[freedomcry.livejournal.com]

There are some vowel combinations I just can’t seem to pronounce right (yet) such as the “аешь” in думаешь or the “лая” in весёлая.

It's the closest that Russian comes to diphtongs. Most people would pronounce "лая" in "весёлая" somewhat like the English word "lair" (with a British accent), but less distinctly and further back in the mouth.

[globus-nahok.livejournal.com]

['dumaiesh]
[ve'siolaia]

ia, ie,io - short sounds, close to the first two sounds German name Jens.

[red-kitti.livejournal.com]

I would have to say verbal aspect too... and then after that, the cases.

Believe it or not, I speak Finnish and Estonian, which are much harder languages (14+ cases), but because I have never actually lived in Russia, Russian is much harder for me...

[kaersaij.livejournal.com]

That'll be comforting to me when I take up Finnish, but to tell you the truth, I find Russian easier than German, and that only has 3 usable cases (genitive is almost obsolete, and wasn't really taught in any of my German college courses.)

[schwarzer-tod.livejournal.com]

For me, I embarassedly admit that it's memorising the vocabulary. Ответственность and откладывание don't have any meaning for me. The only way I can remember is if I break them down into roots.

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

I feel you there. My Russian book tries to get us to memorize all the titles for exercises, which is sort of funny. They want you to memorize “Игровая Ситуация” at the same time as “компьютер”, and “Что Чему Соответсвует” at the same time as “тетрадь“.

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

So far, it’s mostly vocabulary, but that’s always difficult for me. Specifically in Russian, probably stress on words — Russian is almost as irregular as English on that.

[quem98.livejournal.com]

Completely off topic, but I adore your icon.

Yay for Queen of Wands.

[quem98.livejournal.com]

Aspect is killer as are verbs of motion...

That and trying to regulate my grammar when I'm speaking. I tend to think five times faster than I speak in English, so it's even harder for my Russian to catch up to my thought processes.

But as of now, participles and verbal adverbs are killing me...
I seem to keep screwing up past passive and past active.

[tikvi.livejournal.com]

I can't speak fast enough in Russian to keep up with my brain. That's not such a terrible thing, but I instinctively start thinking in English just to keep up with myself. Not good if one is trying to think in Russian.

Verbs of motion are hard, but they do makes sense after a little memorization.

In terms of actual grammar, the hardest thing is remembering all of the prepositions and which cases they belong with. That said, I love the case system, so I'm willing to fight through it.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

> I love the case system
Sounds a bit masochist :)

You know, Russian and Bulgarian languages are pretty close, except that Bulgarian has no cases :) My Bulgarian friends say that their worst torture at school was the Russian case system (many Bulgarian high schols teach Russian.)

[belacane.livejournal.com]

DEFINITELY colloquial speak and idiomatic things that just can't be translated into english.......

[negativeentropy.livejournal.com]

Aspect is difficult for me. Not so much in figuring out whether perfective or imperfective is appropriate for a Russian sentence, but in trying to communicate an English thought in Russian. I'm partial to all sorts of shades of mixed verb tenses in English to get a very specific idea of time across, and trying to find a way to express certain nuances of time as either past or non-past sometimes seems impossible. Use of ли and бы and where you put them also confuses me, but that could be because I haven't been studying the language for very long.

Stress on words and verbs of motion also give me lots of trouble.

[beowabbit]

Two things:

(1) All the exceptions. After I’d had a few years of Russian, I went back and looked at the first few pages of a beginning Russian textbook, and picked out the nouns. Out of maybe twenty nouns introduced (of course just in the nominative singular at that point in the text) maybe four or five were completely regular in all forms. And so many of the exceptions are not just a nonstandard ending for a particular form, but a nonstandard ending in a particular usage. For instance, о лесе but в лесу, both considered prepositional case in modern Russian. And numbers and the cases and numbers of the nouns they govern are complex, for instance. And there are lots and lots of fossilized phrases where old forms poke out, like oblique cases of short adjectives. This makes sense, in an intellectual way, if you assume that Russian had (even) more cases, numbers, tenses, and other grammatical forms in the past than it does now, but it means an awful lot of memorizing.

(2) The large vocabulary. Russian and English both have this feature. In the case of English, it’s because so much of the vocabulary was French, and there were also direct borrowings from Latin, so you end up with collections of words like pig and pork, or house, residence, and domicile, or cow versus beef and the adjective bovine. In the case of Russian, it’s because of the influence of Church Slavonic as a liturgical and literary language, so there’s a similar situation where there are plain, ordinary words that are native Russian, and fancy, formal words that are borrowed from Church Slavonic. The difference is that Russian and Church Slavonic are much more closely related than Middle English and Norman French were — which helps with learning vocabulary, but also means you have two (or more) very similar forms, and you have to remember which phrases or compounds use one and which use the other.

(3) The tendency of Russian authors to be extremely descriptive. A 20th-century American author will say "He admired the flowers among the grass by the road." A 20th-century Russian author will say the equivalent of "He gazed with an unalloyed but somehow sombre pleasure upon the cream-coloured petals of the pollen-bespeckled daisies among the riotous verdure that edged the bucolic sun-dappled lane." (Of course, 19th- and 18th-century English-language literature was much more descriptive; this is a matter of literary style rather than the language itself. But it does mean that I have to know more vocabulary to make sense of a recent story in Russian than I would to make sense of a recent story in English or French or German.)

[hopeinagpa.livejournal.com]

I think individually, the topics of grammar I can tackle, but putting it all together is definitely the hardest part :D. The sum of the parts do not equal the whole, in this case. A good basic knowledge of grammar and a decent vocab do not a good little writer make. ;(

[wolfie-18.livejournal.com]

Speaking, because I'm stupid. I say something, realize I said it wrong, correct it, realized there was a word that was supposed to be in the genitive, say the sentence again, corrected, then realize the verb is in the incorrect aspect, then repeat. I just need to think quicker/more naturally in Russian.

That, and those effin' prepositions. Not prepositions by itself, but prepositions tacked on to verbs. Especially when there are two prepositions that can be used to identify a perfective i.e. почитать прочитать

word-building

[cmubu.livejournal.com]

for me, a lot of the basic stuff comes easily, but expanding from the basic level is the most difficult, namely word-building. i seem to fail at each attempt to form a word from the wide array of roots, prefixes, etc. i was trying to compound the word 'restart' in russian as perenachat', but it wasn't in the dictionary, so another strike on the wall of failure/shame (i got tired of running from one wall to the other, so i just combined the two...lol). then again, dictionaries aren't always right. but i ended up with nachat' opyat'. oh well. i do with what i have, i guess.

Re: word-building

[gera.livejournal.com]

i was trying to compound the word 'restart' in russian as perenachat'

It actually makes sense :) Although, of course, there's no such no word.
restart => начать сначала (speaking of a game, for example; not applicaple to rebooting your computer).

[gjertsen.livejournal.com]

I agree with the poster who said that it was hardest to try and put an english thought into russian, particulalry with regards to aspect. Prepositions are also hard this way too. I can read an example of a sentence and understand it, but when I try to frame my own sentences I always seem to run into some grammatical issue or idiomatic thing...