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How Difficult is Russian Grammar? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Русский |  | |
| brian91 Senior Member Ireland Joined 5225 days ago 335 posts - 437 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 15 01 July 2010 at 6:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have been researching this site, and, of course, other ones, but am still confused as to just how difficult Russian
grammar is. I have a good foundation in German, having studied it for six years at school, and was wondering how its grammar compares to Russian grammar. Is the declension system really that bad? So basically I just want to know how difficult the grammar is, and how it compares and contrasts to Eglish and German. спасибо! Brian 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Derian Triglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5089 days ago 227 posts - 464 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Czech, French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 15 01 July 2010 at 9:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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First and foremost, Russian belongs to a different language family than the languages that you already know. The Slavic grammar will be quite exotic for you (just as the Slavic vocabulary).
Russian grammar is more complex than the German grammar in quite a similar way than German grammar is more complex than the English one. The concepts you've been introduced to by German, like e.g. gender and the case system will be further elaborated upon, so to say. The 4 German cases will become 6, and this time in a more complex morphology. And now not only nouns will inflect for gender, but also verbs and adjectives. (The good thing is - there are no articles /as in German/, and the gender of a word is easily determined by its ending - just as in the Latin languages.) Edited by Derian on 01 July 2010 at 9:41pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| brian91 Senior Member Ireland Joined 5225 days ago 335 posts - 437 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 3 of 15 02 July 2010 at 11:37am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't want to over simplify, but on a scale of one to ten, how much harder is Russian grammar compared to
German grammar? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5245 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 4 of 15 02 July 2010 at 12:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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If English is 0, it being your native language, I would put German somewhere around a 4
and Russian at a 7. Of course it's all very subjective and different people find different things difficult, but in general Russian has more grammar than German and there's quite a lot of things to be aware of as you're speaking. Things that will make you happy about Russian grammar: There are no articles ("a" and "the"). There are 3 genders but the gender of most nouns is determined by their endings. There are only three tenses - past, present, and future. The alphabet is easy to learn and all words are pronounced as they are spelled. Things that will make Russian grammar a pain for you: There is a thing called aspect, which is kind of similar to perfect and imperfect tenses, but much more subtle and difficult to grasp. Adjectives and nouns are declined in 6 cases, although there is some overlap, so you will spend a lot of time memorizing endings. Verbs of motion are a royal pain. Stress is unpredictable and movable. Wherever you think a word should be stressed, that's probably where it's not stressed! However, Russian is a very beautiful language, with arguably the greatest literary canon of all languages, and is spoken by the people of an extraordinary country. And if you are a language fan in the first place, you will probably find the grammar an interesting challenge rather than an impossible task. 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| brian91 Senior Member Ireland Joined 5225 days ago 335 posts - 437 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 5 of 15 02 July 2010 at 12:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks, TixhiiDon.
Can anyone recommend a good book explaining Russian grammar that I can get on amazon? The best I have found so far is the Oxford Russian grammar and verbs dictionary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| josht Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6227 days ago 635 posts - 857 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Spanish, Russian, Dutch | Message 6 of 15 02 July 2010 at 1:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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It depends on how in depth you want to go. The most thorough is Terence Wade's Comprehensive Russian Grammar, but it is indeed comprehensive; I would say most beginners would drown in it. Schaum's Outline of Russian Grammar is decent as well, but I would use it as a supplement, not your primary focus.
While it's not a grammar text specifically, Nicholas Brown's New Penguin Russian Course covers grammar quite well, while also giving you a good base vocabulary. It also starts out with teaching you the Cyrillic alphabet and pronunciation (but I think you'll want to have audio for that particular task). I would recommend you get it, a decent dictionary, and perhaps a supplementary grammar. As for dictionaries, on the smaller scale is the Oxford Russian Minidictionary; on the larger, Kenneth Katzner's English-Russian, Russian-English Dictionary. Both are quite good, but I tend to prefer Katzner's for more examples given in the definitions. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5337 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 7 of 15 02 July 2010 at 1:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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@brian91
Wade's "Comprehensive Russian Grammar" is indeed very comprehensive and certainly not suitable for wading through in the beginning. I'd highly recommend going through the grammar sections and notes of the Princeton Russian Course instead. It's free to download online, breaks a difficult subject into lots of easier intuitive steps, and is written in a fun, engaging and light style.
Hmm, only 7/10...interesting. I've personally found Russian pretty tough when it comes to grammar, and can't think of another language I've looked into that was harder in this respect...at least so far. Of course this all depends upon your native language and knowledge of other languages, I guess. Perhaps another Slavic language like Polish could have more complex grammar overall, but unfortunately I can't say as I haven't studied it in any great detail. Which languages do English-speaking people generally consider more difficult than Russian in terms of grammar? Edited by Teango on 02 July 2010 at 1:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5115 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 8 of 15 16 July 2010 at 6:32pm | IP Logged | ||
Now that statement is what we in Norway would call "A truth with great modifications". That I still struggle like a lioness with the alphabet may be attributed to my dyslexia, but I would think I am not the only one who struggle because: - o is pronounced a when unstressed - a is sometimes pronounced like an i when unstressed - the g is somtimes pronounced like a v - certain letters change when they are to be found at the end of a word or before certain other letters - and to confuse you the letter b - which is not a letter b but a letter to let you know that the previous letter will have its sound modified, is incerted both when the sound is modified, and when the sound does not seem to be modified. Russian is like a lover that drives you crazy, but that you still cannot stay away from. (and I am not even counting that P=R, that H=N, tht B=V or that Y=OO, since that would be part of the alphabet). Now I agree with the rest of your statements, and I admire the beauty of the Russian language, but I pray to differ when people say it is read the way it is written. I find it immensely difficult to read. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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