Question by Gentlemintos: How difficult is russian?
I have heard people say its difficult but also that it is sometimes made out to be harder than what it really is. What are some difficulties or russian? what are some aspects of russian that are easy to learn? The russian alphabet was not very hard to learn in my opinion.
My first language is spanish and I speak some french, I dont think that would make it easier but just putting it out there.
Answers and Views:
Answer by miamistar007
russian is very difficult.
Answer by Brussell
Russian is difficult for English speakers primarily.
The problem I have had in learning Russian has been the pronunciation of words (which AREN’T always pronounced how they are written, despite what most Russians will try to tell you) and the word order, which is very important but has virtually no standards – it just changes on a whim for inexplicable reasons and you basically just need to memorize the way certain words work in certain contexts.
Other than that it isn’t especially hard. It is vastly different from any other language I have ever learned, but the grammar itself really isn’t that hard. It has a lack of many words we use in English, which actually makes that part a bit easier. The difficulty, once again, lies in the fact that it is just so different from languages most Americans are familiar with. The sounds are different, the way they say things is a bit different, the thought process of forming a sentence is a bit different.
And to dispute one of the answerers above, there are MANY Russian words that are similar to English words, and there are more every year now that the country has been opened up to the western world more than it was before.
Answer by aThornONaRose
its pretty easy to learn..if you where born there and thats what you learned to speak
Answer by Ryan
well alphabets r the easiest. its like kindergarten all ova for me
Answer by answer dude
very
Answer by SadieAnn_1917
More difficult than French
Answer by bunglebeans29
it is difficult
Answer by Calboy
extremely. none of the words are similar to english words. spanish is very easy in that sense.
Read all the answers in the comments.
What do you think?
Enzo Enzo says
Difficult but melodical. earning software for beginners from Verbilis: http://www.verbilis.com
Zmejka says
There are 6 cases, not 7.
I think cases and that’s why nouns ending should be the most difficult, also declensions. There’re many rules and even more exceptions. And in spoken language new words can be constantly formed because of adding different endings to the base of the world. But in general i don’t think that Russian is that difficult, i find Chinese with their systems of tones is much more difficult because if you take a wrong tone it could mean a different word – in Russian even if you add a wrong ending or use a wrong case still the word will be understood.
razekial says
Russian is probably one of the harder European languages. The grammar and words seem alien to a native English speaker.
There are 7 cases, 3 genders, and the verb conjugation can be tricky; there are also very few cognates. If you’re disciplined enough to do grammatical drills in your spare time you can probably get all the grammar up to speed, but it’s still one of the harder languages to learn.
Some of the grammar is refreshingly simple – such as the word “Я” meaning both “I” and “I am” and such, but at other times it’s really complicated.
So, it’s quite a challenge, but not impossible. Definitely harder than most Romance and Germanic languages. Some people struggle with just learning the alphabet, so at least you’ve got that advantage! 🙂
samianquazi says
Russian’s actually quite easy!
The Russian alphabet is so cool!!
I learned an incredible amt. of Russian over just 1 semester…the grammar system is simpler than English and they have SO many English loanwords…its simple ))
Prince213 says
its pretty easy. i chose to learn basic russian for my high school senior project. not all high schools have one. but it was pretty simple. the only hard part for me was memorizing all the cases and spelling rules but besides that writing and pronounciation was pretty easy.
Shadow says
It is mostly hard.