(no subject)

[because-i-dream.livejournal.com]

Hiya,
My names Candace, and next year when i go off to college, i'm going to take Russian. I know nothing of the language. :/

I understand that it is not a Romantic language, and that itself will make it more difficult to learn than say, French or Spanish.. but how hard ISSS it?

Just saying hi. :) I look forward to speaking (and thinking) fluently soemday.

Comments

[scuttle.livejournal.com]

Russian broke my brain today (was studying for a final).

I don't really like saying that anyone language is harder than others, because I think all have aspects that are tougher. Anyway, as a new student to the language I would say that Russian is very different from English, probably as it is a Slavic language with Greek influence rather than a Germanic with Latin like English. I speak German as well as found Russian tricky as I could not rely on cognates as with German. It is also far more synthetic and the declensions are more complex. But there are things such as simple sentence structure (due to the synethic nature) which I found easier. I also think the Cyrillic alphabet makes more sense as it has diphthongs.

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

The Cyrillic alphabet has dipthongs? Which would these be?

[scuttle.livejournal.com]

Oops, after checking an online Linguistics lexicon I see I obviously did not understand the meaning of diphthong. I thought it refered to any blended sound, such as the ch and sh Cyrillics.

My apologies.

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

Okay, now I have to ask what a blended sound is ... :P

[scuttle.livejournal.com]

laymen's term I made up. There are Cyrillic characters for ch, sh, , ch(as in the German or Greek ch or x), ya, ye, yo, yu and so on.

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

It's not such a good term because it sounds like you're imply that the sound is, in fact, two sounds blended together.

You can make this case for affricates ("ch") because they're basically a stop (like "t") followed by a fricative (like "sh"). To a lesser extent, you can make this case for the soft vowels, because occasionally they do represent two sounds -- the consonant "y" followed by the vowel. (But not always, and they're not "blended", really.)

But sounds like and "zh", "sh", "x" are single sounds. For example, the sound "sh" is not "s+h". It's an unvoiced alveolar fricative. The reason why English represents it as "sh" is that the basic Latin alphabet doesn't have a single letter for the sound, so a digraph was used instead (some languages use diacritics, for example using a hacek over the s). A digraph is a pair of letters that represent a single sound.

[scuttle.livejournal.com]

thanks. I obviously don't understand the tecnical terms.

[noktulo.livejournal.com]

X = k+s

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

It's been so long since I typed that comment, but I think that I was referring to the Russian x. :)

[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

Russian is a beautiful language, and is both easier than English and more challenging at the same time. As a slavic, language you can't really rely on Romance cognates that you would find with French or Spanish. This doesn't mean that it is more difficult, just that it is harder to relate it to English immediately. I've been at it for like 5 months now in self study, and although I'm not even near conversational, I get happy when I translate songs without outside help.

I suggest listening to Russian music, as it really helped me out a lot. I suggest Tatu, though some people will strongly disagree.

Random fact: French is 27% compatable with English, and Russian is 24%. Thats not that much of a difference. (Don't recall my source, but I'm pretty sure its pretty accurate.)

[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

Forgot to mention some pros and cons of Russian:

Pros: Simple sentences
You can say a lot with few words
Somewhat flexible syntax
Cyrillic alphabet easier to read, after practice of course
Certain words used very often
I believe there are about 150000 words in Russian, as opposed to English's 600000+

Cons: 4 ways to conjugate verbs
Declentions that kick my ass
Sounds not in English are hard to say/hear for non-native speakers (there are only a few of these, such as ы).

[definite.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't like to disillusion you, but as far as I remember, in Russian there are about 500000 words. :)

[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

May I wask you what your source was? Mine was on a history of the English language, and comparing it to other languagaes. It said that after English, the next largest language was Chinese, with 200000. Don't know how reliable it was though (video in an English class)

[definite.livejournal.com]

And mine was www.gramota.ru - highly reliable resource for all kinds of questions on Russian language in Russian. Concerning number of words look here: http://spravka.gramota.ru/buro.html?gotoq=129082 .
In any case, it's practically impossible to define more ore less exact number of words in any language since it depends on methodology of counting.

[quem98.livejournal.com]

First year is usually pretty simple, but it gets more difficult from there. The payoff is great, but if you want an easy A, Russian is probably not the best way to go. The grammar is a bitch and a half for English speakers. Lots of memorization. Because in Spanish and French, only verbs conjugate. In Russian, word endings change depending on what part of speach they are.

If your department is anything like mine is, it will suck you in. (Where are you going, if you don't mind my asking? Totally ok if you don't want to disclose that kind of info over the net)
If you're really serious about learning the language, go abroad your junior year. It's really the only way to get a real handle on the language. Going abroad is, in general one of the best things you can do for yourself. (I reccomend ACTR, but I'm a wee bit biased)

If you do decide to study Russian, Welcome to the insanity, hun. It's well worth the effort.

[kasak.livejournal.com]

What college are you going to be studying Russian at?

I myself at at the University of Iowa, and I find their program absolutely excellent. Russian is, of course, a completely differnt beast in comparison to, say, Spanish or German, both of which I speak already.

The hardest part for someone learning Russian, in my opinion, is the fact it's a highly inflected language. The endings of nouns and adjectives (and participles) change according to the part of the sentance they happen to be fulfulling.

Once you get past that, it's no different than any other Indo-European language; no harder, no easier, in my opinion.

If you ever need any help, let me know.

-Ryan

PS. Welcome to learn_russsian!

A matter of opinion ...

[blackfeather.livejournal.com]

I'd say Russian was Romantic! But it is not a Romance language, no. (Romantic meaning, good for intimate speech, for speaking lovingly to one's beloved; and Romance meaning, descended from Latin).

As for the inflections, if I understand correctly, many do not inflect: adverbs, conjunctions and interjections are not declined, except perhaps for poetry. Nouns, pronouns, and adjective are inflected, but the endings are often similar for a given case. For example, the -yemoo (letters which look like "emy") sound is common to both pronouns and adjectives for masculine singular dative.

Also a lot of the case charts collapse, especially masculine/neuter are often the same.

I hope this doesn't turn you off learning Russian! :)

[svl.livejournal.com]

Russian is VERY difficult. Believe me, I`m English- and French-speaking Russian native:), and I know some about my native language:) and how it compares to others:)

[welgar.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, I think that Russian is truly difficult for a non-native speaker. However, there are some who speak it more correctly than native Russians and without nearly any accent (but that's a very rare case). I think the biggest problem is that it has lots of exceptions for all the rules and its morphology is also often unclear (even for native speakers).

Regarding the number of words in Russian, I've also heard of research which revealed some 500,000 words in Russian and about 1,000,000 words in English. I just think that different scientists use different techniques and therefore get different results.

[svl.livejournal.com]

All I`ve heard about words count from different sources said that Russian is next to English in regard to words quantity, and English is #1.