Recently, a couple classmates and I were bemoaning our obviously insane idea to study Russian, and one of my friends came up with this opinion:
I won't deny it, I laughed for a good long time after hearing that, but the next day I got to thinking... is it really true? Keep in mind I've studied my share of languages, whether on my own or through schooling,
but Russian does seem to be a relatively hard nut to crack. Why? Here are a few reasons:
The alphabet of the Russian language is a bizarre mix of the Roman and Greek alphabets, with a couple completely made-up (at the time) Cyrillic figures as well. I had a bit of an advantage here, since I've been using a slightly modified version of the Greek alphabet to write my diary for the last 15 years, but it still gets a little confusing.
Another difficulty of Russian is pronunciation. To sidetrack for a moment, there is a theory that says that the colder the average temperature of the lands where a language is spoken, the more consonants it has. Consider Hawaiian, with an alphabet of only twelve letters- five vowels and seven consonants- versus, say, Eastern Canadian Inuit languages, which have 15 consonants and only three vowels. I'm not saying it's a foolproof theory, but it's one to which I certainly subscribe!
That being said, Russian follows this theory, for the most part, with 23 consonants and ten vowels (though to be fair, five of the vowels are just the other five plus a "y" sound, so "ah" and "yah" are two different letters). Despite an apparent plethora of vowels, however, the Russians seem intent on stringing together as many consonants as possible- perhaps in order to avoid opening the mouth too much and feeling your tongue freeze... literally.
So it's a language that's difficult to read, and difficult to pronounce. Add to those the fact that Russian uses case marking instead of word order (that is, you have to change the ending of each word to show that it's the subject, object, indirect object, etc, of the sentence), and has not only masculine and feminine, but also a neuter case for noun and adjectival agreement (and yes, each case also has different endings for masculine, feminine and neuter)... and you will perhaps understand why all Russian students despair for their sanity on a regular basis.
So the next time you meet someone who is learning Russian, ask them which they are- a masochist or a stubborn fighter- and I will bet you they will laugh and agree.
Cheers!
Note: Russian alphabet photo is courtesy of www.rususa.com. Thank you!
I won't deny it, I laughed for a good long time after hearing that, but the next day I got to thinking... is it really true? Keep in mind I've studied my share of languages, whether on my own or through schooling,
but Russian does seem to be a relatively hard nut to crack. Why? Here are a few reasons:
 |
| Confused yet? |
The alphabet of the Russian language is a bizarre mix of the Roman and Greek alphabets, with a couple completely made-up (at the time) Cyrillic figures as well. I had a bit of an advantage here, since I've been using a slightly modified version of the Greek alphabet to write my diary for the last 15 years, but it still gets a little confusing.
 |
| Dance class has become Russian class... |
Another difficulty of Russian is pronunciation. To sidetrack for a moment, there is a theory that says that the colder the average temperature of the lands where a language is spoken, the more consonants it has. Consider Hawaiian, with an alphabet of only twelve letters- five vowels and seven consonants- versus, say, Eastern Canadian Inuit languages, which have 15 consonants and only three vowels. I'm not saying it's a foolproof theory, but it's one to which I certainly subscribe!
That being said, Russian follows this theory, for the most part, with 23 consonants and ten vowels (though to be fair, five of the vowels are just the other five plus a "y" sound, so "ah" and "yah" are two different letters). Despite an apparent plethora of vowels, however, the Russians seem intent on stringing together as many consonants as possible- perhaps in order to avoid opening the mouth too much and feeling your tongue freeze... literally.
So it's a language that's difficult to read, and difficult to pronounce. Add to those the fact that Russian uses case marking instead of word order (that is, you have to change the ending of each word to show that it's the subject, object, indirect object, etc, of the sentence), and has not only masculine and feminine, but also a neuter case for noun and adjectival agreement (and yes, each case also has different endings for masculine, feminine and neuter)... and you will perhaps understand why all Russian students despair for their sanity on a regular basis.
So the next time you meet someone who is learning Russian, ask them which they are- a masochist or a stubborn fighter- and I will bet you they will laugh and agree.
Cheers!
Note: Russian alphabet photo is courtesy of www.rususa.com. Thank you!
No comments:
Post a Comment