Yes. French, Italian and even German are much easier to learn for a native English speaker. But don't let that discourage you; Russian is still a much better language in general.
Name:
Anonymous2010-03-08 18:19
Native Russian speaker here.
Russian probably has more sounds than say.. American English.
Written Russian is not phonemic. Some examples: unstressed e becomes i as in песок (pesok, pronounced piSOK), unstressed o becomes a (or a neutralish vowel) as in молоко (moloko, pronounced malaKO), and all sorts of stuff like that.
Name:
Anonymous2010-03-08 18:24
Also, I've already written about this on /int/, but I'll put this here because I want to scare anyone who wants or tries to learn Russian.
Russian verbs work pretty much like German verbs, in the sense that they take a shit load of weird prepositions to change the meaning or in case of Russian, the TENSE or ASPECT.
срал = was shitting
посрал = shat a little
насрал = shat and "left it there"
обосрал = shat something so it's all covered in shit
высрал = shat something out (you might use that word when you have constipation)
засрал = made a mess
>>10
lol no.
Look.
Girl was shitting - девушка сра*ла*
Boy was shitting - парень сра*л*
Sun was shitting - солнце сра*ло* >>7
Скажи, а ты преподавал русскому когда-нибудь? Мне тут предстоит скоро такая работа, хотел бы узнать какой стафф стоит использовать.
>>4
All problem is in changes of words. You must always change almost every word in each sentence. But u can try. Ive seen one guy who was speaking pretty good but slow. He is American.
But he spend 2 years in university and 3-5 years in Ukrain for this result.
Name:
Anonymous2010-03-09 2:42
>>7 Russian probably has more sounds than say.. American English.
You think? Except for the hard/soft consonant thing (which isn't so much an extra sound as an extra combination), I would have put them about the same. I mean, English has (over?) twice as many vowels, doesn't it?
Name:
Anonymous2010-03-10 2:15
At least, Russian has a phonemic spelling. You can predict how the word is written.
Has Inglish an orthografy? Or is just prety randomik like Han caracters?
Name:
Anonymous2010-03-10 3:12
>>13
You can't... you always can read a word, but the spelling for it often has to be memorized. Because vowel reduction and shit.
You might think that the pronunciation is a bit irregular and forgive it, but then comes the STRESS which is completely random and often changes in different inflections of a word.
Name:
Anonymous2010-03-10 16:35
>>14
The errors in spelling are minimal, and in reading are just a few common words, mostly particles.
>>15
Stress is a problem, really. Like in English.
However, when two words can only differ by the stressed syllabe, acute accent is used.
I think BOTH (Eng and Rus) would use obligatory stress-marking...
Name:
Anonymous2010-03-10 22:43
>>16 I think BOTH (Eng and Rus) would use obligatory stress-marking...
Seems like kind of a waste of time unless you're trying to create the next lojban.
Name:
Anonymous2010-03-10 23:20
>>16
minimal you say... i know a lot of people who can't spell shit, maybe you need to go outside of chans and look at real people.
>>20
I'm not creating Lojban II, this isn't reforming the LANGUAGE, but its ORTHOGRAPHY.
(BTW, Lojban is like Polish AFIK; ONLY second-to-last syllabes stressed.)
Name:
Anonymous2010-03-12 17:14
I don't think that russian is the toughest to learn among indoeuropean languages. Perhaps, lithuanian and latvian are more difficult. The difficulty level of russian is at the same level with like czech, polish, ukrainian, serb(except, probably , bulgarian). Languages with different vocabulary but the same grammar(minor differences) and semantic.
The main difficulty is prefixes and declensions. If you can manage to remember cases and declensions, learning how prefixes work is a bitch. Also in russian words may be in future/past while still in infinitive.
писать(to write)
First word is perfect(has done smth), second is imperfect(did smth).
(он)написал/писал : (he) has wrote / (he) wrote
приписать/приписывать : add/attach
описать/описывать : describe
записать/записывать : write down
прописать/прописывать : prescribe/write something very properly(like kid writes his first words)
предписать/предписывать : order to do something/regulate
исписать/исписывать : cover with writing
вписать/вписывать : inscribe/include
...
and so on
Well, you can use logic for some words like о+писать is about+write, so "write about" or "describe", or в+писать: in+write. Or even пред+писать(before+write), so it's like someone sees something written before something telling him to do something. But there are lots of exceptions or just ethymology is lost in time.
Name:
Anonymous2010-04-05 13:15
I'm now in the curious position of being able to speak around 20 sentences in russian without writing it.
>>25
Then you obviously need the book "PHOИICS FOЯ ЯUSSIAИ CHILDЯЭИ"
Name:
Anonymous2010-04-06 20:22
For an English speaker, yes: it is more difficult than Romance (Spanish, French, Italian) languages, and FUCKING MOOOOAR difficult than Germanic (German, Scottish, Sweden, Icelandic, etc.) languages.
The alphabet, however, is pretty straightforward. There IS some quirks (like O/A sounding the same when unstressed), but not too many.
Name:
Anonymous2010-04-10 5:31
In Russian Moscow spells "MOSKVA"
btw "KWA"(-KWA-KWA) is how a frog speaks (in russian too)=>Moscow is a frog`s swamp
>>43
russai sucks >>42
ok, vova. ddanish has sounds that doesn't exist in russian, danish speech seems like they've got hot mashed potatoes in their mouth. oh shi~ i'm drunk as a hatter