I want to learn Russian, am I nuts or just stupid

[JohnKleeb]

Really I want to even though its ultra hard.

[MrScorpio]

1. Learn Czech instead

You know why

[lenidog]

2. The Czech Republic is a lot cooler to hang in but Russians

a lot more fun to swear in. ;-)

[JohnKleeb]

3. Of course I know

but they don't offer Czech at the community college, and from what I know about Slavic languages, if you learn Russian, the others will be like clockwork to you, at least thats what happened with my two Eastern European Great Grandfathers on my mom's side.

[Mairead]

30. "the others will be like clockwork to you"

That's not always true, John. The south-Slavic languages (Srpski, Hrvatski, Bosanski, Blgarski) are closer to the east-Slavic ones (Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian) than the west-Slavic ones (Czech/Slovak, Polish).

I had a heck of a time with Polish because my Russian kept interfering. It's embarrassing to be speaking Polish and suddenly realise that the uncomprehending look on your listener's face is because you switched languages somewhere along the way.

[Bossy Monkey]

4. Why? If it's for a career path, Chinese would be the more obvious choice

though if Russian's ultrahard, Chinese is a couple steps past impossible.

[JohnKleeb]

9. No its not for a career

[lenidog]

10. Followed by Arabic

hey no vowel in the language just some dots positioned here and there.

[name not needed]

5. I want to too

That way I can understand what my friends are saying.

[JohnKleeb]

11. You have white ethnic friends?

I am jealous! Sigh I often feel like I am the closest thing to a white ethnic my school has, I know I am not, but I am sayin.

[miss_kitty]

6. Ask JimmyJazz. She savvies that lingo

:)

[JohnKleeb]

12. Yeah thats right JJ knows Russian

I find it to be such a cool language, it's very pretty too.

[slackmaster]

7. I think it's a good idea

Three Russians invaded my cubicle at work yesterday. They're gonna surround us!

:scared:

[lenidog]

8. No you are not nuts or stupid

this coming from a guy who minored in Russian as an undergrad. Once you jump over the hurtle of the different alphabet its not that much harder than any other language. But I lucked out to, when I started my first couple of semesters there was only about ten people, by the time I finished up it was me and the Prof. It makes it a hell of a lot easier to learn one on one.

[bigwillq]

13. I say go for it!

Good luck with it.:hi:

[Huckebein the Raven]

14. Neither

If you really want to learn the language, go for it.

[JohnKleeb]

15. Just speaking from bad experience with languages

Honestly.

[lenidog]

17. Hey I thought I was awful at language

The only one I could pick up was German and that was after four years of HS and couple of years of being submerged in it while being stationed in Germany. So I thought I would try Russian and it turned out to be a lot easier than I ever thought.

[latteromden]

16. Actually, you're just pretty damn cool.

I love Russian. I speak more Ukrainian, myself, but I don't see a whole lot of people that WANT to learn Russian.

It's not as hard as Arabic, in my experience. Go for it.

[Darkseid69]

18. You're nuts

I took four semesters of Russian and college got a C in every class even tho I'm I straight A student otherwise. It's a bitch. Learn spanish so you can understand what our latino friends are calling us behind our backs

[JohnKleeb]

21. I already tried Spanish

[Darkseid69]

22. Well who else

would insult us behind our backs in a foreign language... besides everybody?

[JohnKleeb]

23. Thats not why I want to learn it

[Ariana Celeste]

19. I think they have a beautiful language

I went to school with a few Russian immigrants in Jr. High, and used to love listening to them talk to eachother.

[Left Is Write]

20. Neither.

My husband speaks Russian. Russian Studies was his college major. He doesn't use Russian for his career, but he's not sorry he learned it.

[Mairead]

24. John, it's not hard, but Chinese (which *is* hard) would be a more useful

choice, as another poster said. Depending on what you want to do with the language, of course.

The scariest part for most people is the alphabet. Since a lot of the letters, when written, look like English letters while having completely different meanings (for example, what looks like a P is an R, what looks like a C is an S, and what lookes like a Y is a U), this can be confusing. You'll know you're in business when you have to really look hard before you can figure out what language you're writing in!

The language is very regular both in grammar and spelling, which is a help. The big difference between Russian and English is that English has lost almost all the case endings that its ancestors (Frisian, Anglish, and Saxon) had and that just about every other language except Chinese still uses. Like Chinese, English uses word order and helper words instead.

Here's your first lesson:

Every Russian noun is either 'masculine', 'feminine', or 'neuter'. There's no rhyme or reason to it, but the good thing is that in 99.9% of the cases it's easy to tell the gender just by looking. Table (stol) is masculine. You can tell because it ends in a consonant. Bird (ptitsa) is feminine: it ends in a. Lake (ozero) is neuter; it ends in o.

Nearly all masculine nouns end in a consonant.
Nearly all feminine nouns end in -a or -ya (a letter that looks like a backward R)
Nearly all neuter nouns end in -o or -e

Nouns have 'case' (case is what makes us say 'I want', not 'me want', and 'tell me' not 'tell I'. It's also why we have both 'who' and 'whom'. In English, 'I' is nominative case, 'me' is all the other cases). Russian nouns have 7 cases: Nominative (the subject: 'I'), Accusative (the direct object: 'me'), Genitive (the owner: 'of mine'), Dative (the indirect object: 'to me'), the Instrumental (the tool or the companion: 'with an ax', 'with me') and the Locative (the place or in an indirect way, the subject: 'in the garden', 'about me')

So if the table talks, it's Nom. 'stol govorit'
If I ask you to sit onto the table (maybe to stop it talking), it's Acc.: 'na stol' (masculine Nom. and Acc. look the same).
If the table wants to talk about its paint, it'll use the Gen. 'kraska stola' (the paint of the table) (masc. Gen. ends in -a usually)
If you try to play catch by tossing a ball to the table, it's Dat.: 'stolu' (masc. Dat. ends in -u usually)
If you go for a walk with the table, it's Instr. 'so stolom' (-om) (the so, more often just s, means 'together with')
If I find you sitting on top of the table already, it's Loc. 'na stole' (-e)

Neuter cases look a lot like the masculine ones, except for Nom. of course.

Feminine ones are different
Nom. ptitsa, Acc. ptitsu, Gen. ptitsy, Dat. ptitse, Inst. s ptitsej, Loc. o ptitse (o means about; it would be unkind to be sitting on the bird)

Adjectives have to 'agree' with the nouns, which means you have to put the right gender ending on the adjective.

So a red table would be krasnyj stol (KRASSni STOL), while a red bird would be krasnaya ptitsa (KRASS-na-ya p'TEE-tsa) and a red lake, from algae probably, is krasnoe ozero (KRASS-no-yeh O-zehro).

Each uses the same root krasn- but then you apply the appropriate gender ending -yj, -aya, or -oe (ee, ayah, oyeh).

Since adjectives have to agree with nouns, if the noun is in some case other than nom., the adj. must be too. So to go back to our red table, we'd have

krasnyj stol Nom.
krasnyj stol Acc.
krasnogo stola Gen. (masc. gen. adj. -ogo/-ego)
krasnomu stolu Dat (-omu, -emu)
s krasnym stolom (-ym, -im)
o krasnom stole (-om, -em)

Sound do-able?

[knitter4democracy]

25. I've found it difficult but endlessly fascinating.

Go for it! Of course, to sound native, you'll have to live there for something like 40 years according to my prof. ;)

[HEyHEY]

26. Commie

[JohnKleeb]

27. Thats liberal democrat with socialist leanings

[Darth_Kitten]

28. You must love challenges

if it's what you really want, go for it! :)

[JohnKleeb]

29. I kinda do yeah but I am mostly cautious

[Darth_Kitten]

33. maybe think it over a little more

then once you are 100 percent sure, dive in. I'm sure you could do it! :D

:hi:

[GreenPartyVoter]

31. Learn Irish Gaelic. I studied on my own for a while... I think it would

have been better to have found a study group as it is a very tricky language and I gave up about 1/3 of the way through the book.

Let me know if you decide to go with Irish, and I will give you the names of the study books I found most helpful. :)

[JohnKleeb]

32. They're not gonna offer that at community college

I would love to learn Irish-Gaelic too though, I saw books for it but I didnt have enough money, so I ended up buying The Jungle instead.

[GreenPartyVoter]

35. Too bad they don't offer it. :^( You'll just have to go on exchange

in a couple of years. :D

[JohnKleeb]

37. maybe, I do identify strongly with both my Irish and Eastern European

ancestry, I dont feel the same way about my German bood though.

[RetroLounge]

34. Both perhaps?

:hi:

RL

[JohnKleeb]

36. indeed, yes indeed

[RetroLounge]

38. Is it true they are making Kleeb pull toys

to sell in the lounge?

RL

[JohnKleeb]

40. No thats false

[RetroLounge]

43. Well, so much for Xmas shopping in the Lounge

RL

[imenja]

39. I took, Russian classes in college

a year and a half of them. I remember three words now. Whichever language you decide to learn, make sure you have a way to use it. If not, it's easily forgotten, unless of course you're some kind of genius.

[JohnKleeb]

42. Well you got a point so maybe I wont take it

Thats true though, I took Spanish before dropping out because it got frustrating, another reason why I shouldnt touch it.

[imenja]

45. Russian is so much harder than Spanish

but learning a language is an important thing to do. You might think about which you're likely to have the opportunity to use. If I were in school today, I'd take Arabic.

[HereSince1628]

41. Russian is not too bad if you know some geeky Greek word roots

I didn't try learning Russian until I started doing research there when I was in my 40's.

Once I learned the new characters in the alphabet it was easier than I thought.

Of course my conversations and reading are generally around issues associated with zoology. If not they are about eating, drinking, and transportation which greatly simplified things.

But I did well enough after 3 months concentrated effort to travel alone by train (18 hours)from the St. Petersburg airport to the not quite at the arctic circle village of Chupa.

[Sufi Marmot]

44. After you get past the alphabet it's not so bad...

I think the most difficult thing for English speakers is to get used to the fact that some letters in the English alphabet have entirely different sounds in Russian. For instance:

"English" Letter in Cyrillic - Sound in Russian

B - "v"
C - "s"
H - "n"
P - "r"
X - "kh"
Y - "oo"

Did I forget any? Oh, and the backwards "R" isn't an "r" sound, it's a vowel (Ya).

So the Russian word PECTOPAH translates as "restoran". You can probably guess what it means. It takes a while to retrain your brain to read those letters with their proper Russian sound, but once you do that the grammer isn't awful. Not nearly as complex as Latin, for instance...

-SM