Question by Free Spirit: How hard is Russian to learn in college?
I am interested in Russian language and culture, and have decided to take Beginning Russian next year as a college freshman. I would like to be fluent in Russian and be able to read advanced Russian texts by authors such as Tolstoy by the time I graduate. I plan on studying abroad for a semester during my junior year or during a summer in college, so that should help. If I take a Russian class every semester, how long would it take for me to become fluent? I have taken 3 years of Spanish and can understand it decently.
Answers and Views:
Answer by bluebellbkk
Russian is much harder than Spanish. Not because of the alphabet, which you will m aster easily just by practising, within a couple of weeks; but because the roots of most of the words are unfamiliar to English speakers. There are some familiar ones like mat’ for mother, brat for brother, sestra for sister; but the rest is largely unfamiliar. There are three genders, and each noun declines in six cases, singular AND plural, as do adjectives.
The verb tense system is quite different too, and each verb conjugates in first, second and third person, singular and plural.
So you do have to LEARN all those endings. There is no way around it. But once you HAVE learned them, you’re free to roam one of the most fascinating and beautiful languages in the world. I read War and Peace in Russian in my final year of university; actually there are much harder books to read, from the purely language point of view. Dostoievsky is MUCH harder than Tolstoy.
Have fun, but don’t start unless you’re prepared to put in the practice.
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Viktoriya k says
i am a native russian speaker and its still hard for me to learn how to read fast since ive been in america for so long
jready23 says
Forget how hard it is. That will in no shape or form help you get better in Russian.
All there is, is to do it. If you're not motivated, stop now.
"If I take a Russian class every semester, how long would it take for me to become fluent?"
Russian class alone will not help. You need to do it on your own time, with more materials than provided by your class. Your class will give you the bare minimum and you'll be basic/intermediate at best – not enough for Tolstoy. Tackle all sorts of resources – workbooks, podcasts, textbooks, etc.
Daisy says
Congratulations on your decision to learn Russian. It certainly takes time and effort, but I am sure you can do it. The amount of time it takes depends from one person to the other. If you are completely new to learning Russian and are an English monolingual speaker, then according to FSI (Foreign Service Institute), it will take roughly 1,100 hours to reach an intermediate level in Russian.
If you take a Russian class every semester, you might be able to become relatively fluent in about 3 years. I am a Certified Russian teacher and we teach Russian online live via webcam. We have many students who are either studying Russian at college or studied it before and many of them complained that there is no real practice, that they send most of the time studying grammar rules and doing grammar drills with no chance to practice communicating in Russian. Make sure your university has a good program.
Or consider having your personal Russian tutor, a native Russian speaker fluent in English and have formal structured classes. As lessons are one-on-one you progress much faster than in college or other group setting. Every lesson you take is recorded so you can review it later as many times as you wish. See more details here: http://primelanguageservices.com/learnrussian.htm… or also try the Free Lesson.
Other ways to learn Russian absolutely free is to join my facebook page to learn more about Russian language (I constantly record videos), ask questions and get answers from fellow students or teachers like me and to win some prizes (like free Russian lessons via webcam with a Russian tutor): http://www.facebook.com/pages/Learn-Russian/17894…
Also enjoy videos on how to say various phrases in Russian on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/RussianTutorOnline If there is a particular phrase or grammar section you would like to learn, post a comment and we'll record a video on this subject.
Best of luck learning Russian!
Inselstricken says
Bluebell is absolutely right [saves me writing all the same things…!] – that said you could start now, since you haven;'t taken Russian at school – become familiar with the alphabet – more by practising writing in cursive, then by typing at the keyboard – WRITE a lot and it will soon be second nature. You could get a self study course with book and CDs, get yourself a reliable grammar book, and a dictionary, and get some work done over the summer. If you hope to become fluent in 3 years you have no time to waste – as Bluebell says, there are no nice comfortable familiar cognates as in French, Spanish etc – so vocabulary will have to be learned , you can make fewer inferences to help you through a translation.
In Scotland, you would be doing a 4-year modern languages honours degree, plus a year in Russia [or at least a term] to acquire fluency – you seem to imply a lesser level of input…? However, if you have reached A level/Int Bac level in Spanish in 3 yars, you must have an aptitude for languages, so go for it. But start now – it will be so much easier to have a handle on it by the beginning of term, when lots of other things will be competing for your attention.