Russian is impossible to learn!

[yuila]

Originally posted by FadingAway
Ya nalichie velikiy zatrudnenie uchenie Russkiy.

I have no clue what I'm doing. Russian is SOOOO difficult to learn. Bought a book today, it's for "beginners" (that's me) so I figured I'd give it a whirl. I gotta tell ya, being that it's a phonetic language makes it so damn difficult. And the hard and soft signs! AHHH!!! And the handwriting makes the Ts look like Ms. WHY?!?!? LOL!! Can an Americans speech pass as authentic in Russian if they're fluent? Does anyone have any tips. I'm pretty good in French, Latin (of course you don't speak it) but this is my first encounter with the Cyrillic alphabet. The two 3 looking letters screw me up too. One's an E sound like "let" and the other is Z. My head hurts with so much to learn

EDIT: I tried writing it in Russian, but it printed all wierd... How can you use the cyrillic alphabet in this forum?

on google search type : cyrillic alphabet and it comes up with pronounceation

[Khartoun2004]

Freddie and Mad Debz: You guys really think German is hard? I've only been taking it for a year, but I don't think it's that hard to learn. It's a lot easier than say Spanish. But then again both my grandmother's spoke German, so it must be in my blood or something.

Ok getting back on topic. I would love to learn Russian. In 7th grade my History teacher had us try to spell our names using the cyrillic alphabet when we were studing Russia. Of course it was so long ago I can't remember any of it.

Does anyone know if Russian sentences structures are the same as in English or are they totally different?

Laura

[FadingAway]

They're very similar, but there are a few grammatical differences. There is no definate or indefinate article, i.e. it could be "the house" or "a house" depending on context. The particle "is" doesn't exist, as in "He is/She is/It is". I'm still learning but it's VERY fun!

[lenajuliafan]

Russian isnt so hard .if u learn hard..

[russkayatatu]

I missed this thread before - kind of interesting I'd say that Russian takes a lot of work but it's definitely doable; sentence structures are a little different but still Indo-European, so there shouldn't be anything too radical, especially if you already know a few languages. Word order is freer, lack of articles, like you mentioned...the six cases will probably be a big problem if you've never come across highly inflected languages before (like Latin, or German to some extent).

I think verbal aspect is probably hardest. It's one of those things you just have to get a feel for, I think; you learn the rules, but seeing how they work in all situations is something else. In general Russian IS hard for English-speakers, but it's fun

FadingAway, actually I have trouble with books for beginners too - with a textbook and a language in a different alphabet, by myself, no audio, I don't think I'd get very far very fast. So I wouldn't be too discouraged

Jan, FYI, I disagree: I'm American and I can pass as Russian, and even more amazingly I could before I ever went to Russia and had only been studying one year (yeah, Harvard kids, well; my school's motto is practically "Harvard sucks!" - the second part: "and Princeton doesn't matter," ha ha, inter-school bickering that's mostly good-natured ) - although it's true that no one else I know can speak Russian well, and definitely always with an American accent. The current consensus seems to be that I sound like a Russian who's lived for some years in the West, but if I REALLY concentrate and don't have to speak very much I can sound even more Russian...LoL...I can hear it. Although some days are easier days than others to get those soft sounds and the intonations right So it's possible. I'm with Echoed: work on it and you'll get it to a T

[LenochkaO]

Originally posted by Echoed
But I do believe I'd be curious to learn Russian. Besides, I think I'd have a kick having Russians looking at me twice as I reply to them in their native language. (I'm Oriental. :P)

~Echo.

It's a great feeling, Echoed - I get it whenever I speak Japanese to someone who doesn't know me

In Niigata, there are a lot of Russians, so I'm more likely to get asked whether I'm Russian than whether I'm American, which is quite unusual for Japan.

[MrZebra]

Cool to see this thread revived. In the first post, the thing about handwriting form making T's look like M's, that would certainly explained why when I printed my cover for Martin's Music Mix 12, Taty looked like Tamy since I put artist names in italics. So I just put TATy in Uppercase to avoid confusion.

The more I listen to t.A.T.u. and the more I look up words to find out their meaning, the more Russian I learn, I can't carry a conversation yet, but that would sure be cool. I always wanted to learn a 3rd language so why not Russian?

As far as I could tell from what I can see on some websites, what makes Russian a difficult language is basically the same reasons as french. So knowing french, I'm already used to that, just different word endings to remember.

And as far as reading Cyrillc, that's the aspect of learning Russian that I picked up the fastest. I can't read cyrillic as fast as french or english yet but I'm getting there.

Considering the kind of music t.A.T.u. are (Teen-Pop Meida-Induced and all the bad things people can say of them) it's amazing how educational it can be!

And about speaking without looking like it's your native language, any decent people should recognize the effort of someone learning new languages, so if you go to Russia and speak Russians, even if you're not perfect, they should still like it that you tried.