Question by am: How long does it usualy take for a native English speaker to learn Russian?
My co worker claims Russian is the hardest language for a native English speaker to learn. I don’t think so. I thought it would be Chinese.
Answers and Views:
Answer by barca71barca
Your right, Chinese as well as Japanese, Korean and Arabic are considered the hardest languages to learn for an English speaker. Russian’s difficulty is overated, it is more difficult to learn than French or German, but not as hard as the Asian languages I mentioned.
2 years of consistant study would see you at basic fluency, 3 years is a safe estimation to become fluent.
The reason why these Asian languages are harder than Russian is mainly the writing system, you have to learn a few thousand characters to be able to read and wright. The tones present in Chinese and Korean cause problems for most learners.
Add your own answer in the comments!
Wendy Siu says
Korean doesn't have tones.
bagalagalaga says
It's not terribly hard – my experience so far after learning some in high school (very rare for a US high school to offer it) and continuing in college, is that the Russian instructors realize it is difficult and are incredibly patient and friendly about it, and go at a slower pace than Spanish, French, or German teachers who cram you full of vocab every day. If you're just worried about the cyrillic alphabet, that is no problem within a week or two you will be able to use it easilly. Exceptions in grammer are pretty frequent, but within a year or two you should be able to tell very basic things about yourself, your interests, and needs, etc.
I know nothing about learning Chinese, so can't compare it.
юэчжэ цяшю says
russian is hard language and i know it because i learnt it many years. try ro learn it's grammar and basics and you'll know how hard it is. i don't know about chinese due to i have not learn it. there is hard sounds in russian, hard branche of verbs and endings, also different structure then in english.
aeggroup: чё ты говоришь, русский сложный, я его изучаю уже много лет и никак не могу до конца его изучить, на другие языкы(немецкий, французский, азербайджанский) я потратил гораздо меньше времени на изучение их.
Alina P says
This is your opinion and your co worker's. But reality is they both take awfully long to learn.I am Russian and me and my class are learning Chinese! Chinese is very hard to write not speak.Russian is very hard to speak not write!
aeggroup says
I'm russian, live in USA and know both languages. I don't think it's a hardest one to learn, but to pronounce words correctly you will have some hard time. Language is not hard, but the structure of sentences totally different . The biggest problem for you will be times ( past, future ). It built by the ending of the words, totally different form english. Good luck anyway.