I'm new!

[happy-accidents.livejournal.com]

Hey, I just joined. I'm Aimee, a russophile. Anyway, I've begun to learn Russian through a computer program and various online sources, and I plan on taking a class next year.

My question for you guys is this:

For those of you who have learned multiple languages, how has learning Russian compared to say, French, German, etc. ?

Thank you!

-A

Comments

knowing German helps with learning Russian grammar

[ex-disinterm476.livejournal.com]

If you know German, you already have a major advantage because Russian is also a case-inflected language and even uses some of the same cases (nominative, accusative, dative, genetive with the addition of the prepositional and instrumental cases which don't exist in German). I learned Russian after already having mastered German, and I don't think I would've done as well with Russian grammar otherwise.

[rainbowbubble19.livejournal.com]

I've only been schooled in French and Russian. From my experience, French is much much closer to English language, in terms of sentence structure, grammar, and vocabulary.

Learning Russian has been difficult; not only is there a completely different alphabet (which you get used to after a while), but there are declensions, cases, and other grammatically rules that make sense except there are exceptions that throw you off. Then you have to try and put all those rules together. For me, it's difficult to try to keep all the endings straight.

The Russian t.a. at our school is taking German and French. She tells me that as a native Russian, they're easy if you are fluent in English. I guess it depends on the experience.

[vyacheslav.livejournal.com]

I've studied German, French, and Russian. For an english speaker, German is much easier than Russian and French is also quite easier. That's just because German and English are related and English has a lot of romantic influences.

[lemur-cat.livejournal.com]

I'm advanced level on Spanish and Japanese, intermediate on German, and beginning on Russian, and even taking into account that all languages seem craziest when you're first starting out Russian is by far the most full of crazy. There are patterns and rules, but most of them don't make any sense at a beginning level. There are lots of irregular things. Stress is unpredictable and it's really obvious when you get it wrong. There are three genders, lots of declensions, at least two endings per gender per declension, plus the plurals, and lots of declensions are used in ways that are completely outside my realm of experience, like the genitive replacing the nominative for things that don't exist. So, Russian is by far the hardest language I've ever studied. They say Chinese and Sanskrit are hard too, so maybe I should try them and reevaluate.

Russian does have one advantage over German, and that is that there are rules for making nouns plural and you can almost kinda tell which one applies when.

[happy-accidents.livejournal.com]

Thank you all!
Unfortunately though, I regret to inform that I know absolutely no German, I just used it as an example.
I do, however, know French, (though I sense it isn't going to be of much help!)

- :-)

[cema.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, after having learned Russian, German will be a piece of cake.

Seriously: jump in and do not be afraid. Russian is fun!

[raeyn.livejournal.com]

Actually, the russian pretty much obliterated my french, and I was fairly fluent. Now I'm playing catch up!

Russian is a blast, once you realize that the only constant rule is that every single rule gets broken, whatever the Russians themselves say *giggles*

xox

[mokele-mbembe.livejournal.com]

Russian is harder than German was, at least for me, but all things considered it's still not very hard. What makes it harder for me is that word meanings and syntax are harder to memorize since they bear less similarity to those in English. On the other hand, one need not worry about articles in Russian. Noun genders are also more regularly determined than in German. Again, it's not that hard.

[xnrrn.livejournal.com]

As a russian my comment can be thus. Basic russian, is quite a bit easier as basic french and german, but harder then basic english. After basic, russian -is- harder, then french and german, and moreso then english. Still, there -are- similiarities between russian and french, as well as russian and german (what do you know, when they remade rules for russian in the times of Mr. Lomonosov, a lot of it was based from german, and the period when russian nobility spoke french much, also influenced the language, although after this much time, its much less apparent)...

Still, Russian is good and fun thing to learn. At least to read a lot of interesting people, whose native language is russian. ;)

[snowwhitetan.livejournal.com]

All I know from studying French in the past (and being proficient), and now studying Russian, is that Russian is an extremely difficult language. French is much closer to English even though you have to conjugate verbs as in Russian. I think studying French for three years has really helped me study Russian.

[wretched-girl.livejournal.com]

I think that Spanish is easier to learn, but Russian is more beautiful to me, and that makes me want to try harder.