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RUSSIAN FEATURES
i guss there must be sb here who can speak Russian,so would u tell me campared with English,what is like in Russian ?the grammar ,the sound?
and what do u think about the tendency the RUssian speaker' number? growing?shrinking? (UKRAIN is supposedly protesting against Russian) what do you think?
Russian is difficult for native english speaker in both pronounciation, grammar and vocabulary.
Grammar - 6 cases, after deeper learning - 9 cases for nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals - 3 genders - verbs have aspect - many irregularities Phonetics: -17 soft consonants - no any other language have so many of them There are many Russian speakers aroud the world, in ex-USSR countries you 'll be feeling OK with your Russian, in Ukraine about 70% speak it natively.
I agree that for english native speaker Russian could be difficult because English grammar compared to Russian is just poor.
The alphabet? It's very simple. I use latin alphabet in my native language. I've learnt cyrilic in one week. After few hours I could read words very slowly decoding almost letter by letter but after few days I was reading whole sentences fluently. Now when I see russian letters something just changes in my mind that I forgot it's cyrilic. It seems to me just like a normal text with latin letters. What's more I think that for native english speakers it's hardly possible to divide and to find the difference between sounds like ш, сь or to say щ. Maybe I'm wrong but the last sound is difficult to pronounce correctly even for me (polish native speaker)
What, you mean like high cheekbones and women named "Olga"? Just kidding!
Hi JakubikF,
If your mother tongue is Polish, I wanted to ask you something. Is it true, that grammatically and phonetically speaking, Polish is the most difficult Slavic language at all? The matter of the alphabeth seems to be not important for the answer of this question, because I have managed as well to read perfectly anything in cyrillic after two days. Obviously, I didn't have the slightest clue of the meaning of what I was reading!!!.. But the phonollogy of Russian seems to be quite symetrical, for the vowels (hard-soft) as well as for the consonant (voiced-devoiced, etc.). In stead of this relativlely easy system, there are more complicated sounds in standard Polish, aren't there? I am talking about the ą, ć, ę, ó, and ś, which as far as I understand, don't exist in Russian at all. On the other hand: Polish has 7 cases vs. Russian having only 6 cases. What do you think?
«What, you mean like high cheekbones and women named "Olga"? Just kidding!»
Hahaha...no, no, no! You mean women named "Svetlana". Very funny, though - I actually laughed...it's been a while.
Hi Arthur
I am not sure if Polish is definitely the most difficult slavic language, however it is one of the hardest from this group. Nevertheless, sometimes when I think over some polish grammar rules deeper than just-use-it I am surprised that foreign native speakers could learn and understand it :). I admire it much. I agree Russian doesn't have ą, ę, ś, ź, but ą, ę - I hear these sounds in French (not exactly the same but they are similar) ś - I would say it's much more harder сь in Russian, so soft s ć - it is like ть but much harder. That sound must be similar because in Polish all the verbs end on ć (jechać, biegać, pływać, robić, stać) in Russian: ехать, бегать, плавать, делать, стоять. ż - russian ж (almost the same in pronunciation) ź - if I could explain you... something like soft ż? ó - and this letter is interesting. It comes from long "o" which existed in Polish but it still exists in Russian. In Russian now it's stressed "o". In Polish at first people write it down like "oo" than it started to change in long sound "u" still written down like "oo". Finally people added this diacritic and nowadays we read it like normal "u" which causes a lot of problems for polish kids learning polish orthography :). there are also sounds built by two different letters: dż dź dz for the beginner the simpliest way to read them it is try to say e.g. d and ż almost in the same time (first d and than ż) Concerning causes, yes Polish has 7 causes but this 7th one, called vocative, is rarely used and only when you call somebody. Now it sounds a little bit obsolete. It's often used in lofty style e.g. in prayers or orations or when you talk to somebody very politely. To sum up I can't answer the question if Russian or Polish is more difficult. Probably pronunciation and phonetic could be more difficult in Polish because of that Polish has more hard but complicated sounds.
Hi JakubikF,
Thank you for you explanation. Yes, Polish and Russian share a lot of consonants, but I still have the impression that Polish uses more consonant clusters which appear only in this language. I know too little about this interesting language though, so that I can't give more concrete examples. When I was 16 years old, I tried to learn Czech (hahaha, how naive from me, ain't) simultaneously with German. After one month, I abandoned the idea of learning it, because of its much higher complexity in comparison with German. But I liked the language nevertheless. How intelligible are standard Polish and Czech, by the way? On the other hand, within the three Scandinavian languages, it is easier for a Norwegian to understand Swedish and Danish, than either way round. So, let's call it the most neutral language, for this comparison. What would you say to be the case for the Slavic languages? if there is such, of course.
Hi Brennus,
No, no, no.... I think so as well. But trying to learn two such complicated languages at the same time, not being in either of both countries was naive from me. But I agree with you. I was achieving a sort of passive understanding of the written language, till I just let it go in favour of focusing in learning German faster.
Arthur - hmm that's a very good question if Polish is understood for other slavic-language native speakers. So I don't know Czech or Slovak and I haven't had chance to hear it or just to get to know a bit about this language. The only foreign (for me) slavic language which I know a little is Russian. It would be a good idea to ask Russian or Czech who learns Polish what they think about its complexity.
However when I was in Czech Republic with my father, he asked a shop-asistance the way using Polish. Suprisingly, not only she understood him but also my father understood her explanation in Czech. Later I asked him if he had learnt Czech. Of course he hadn't, however it was possible to understand basic words for both - Czech and Pole. Acctualy I think this "neutral" language for slavic region could be Russian, though. The reason is Russian seems to be basic. It has a lot of original forms of slavic words which are understood (I guess so) for other nationalities, although the same words are not used now. What's more some of the same words changed their meaning, although at the very begining it has the same one e.g.: in the past: polish - bystry (fast) russian - быстрый (fast) now: polish - bystry (clever) but we use old proverb "bystra woda" (fast water) russian word has the same old meaning I'm sorry about the mess in this post but not only it's a bit late but also I have migraine.
Russian features: People with bad dental work, and women named Svetlana.
You know there's a new word now among plastic surgery recipients to describe overly-prominent cheekbones. They say, "Doc, I have to get rid of these Slavic cheekbones!!!"
Apam, don't forget about the Olgas. You know, the big boned women whose faces look like they are about to implode, and who are collecting fire word for their comrades... "Back in the USSR!" |