Thread: Russians and English?

Olya, that is incredible. (that you never speak in English)

If I pass through your area for some reason or another I'd like to SPEAK with you.
Perhaps then I'll be ready to open my mouth and say something in Russia!

I've been through the challenge of learning English, and I'm not pretty much at a level where English people aren't really sure if I'm English or not.

But it took a lot of time and effort to get to that point. Plus I had the benefit of starting very early. Ten, I think. I watched TV in English with subtitles, and listened to a lot of English music. Later I travelled in countries were English was spoken. STILL, despite all these advantages English was hard for me.

The trouble if you are from a small country, like I am, you have no choice regarding English if you want a professional career. It's a requirement for university and most good jobs.

The situation with your English skills is pretty fascinating.

But isn’t Swedish a lot like English? I was trying to watch a movie once; I couldn’t get much of what was said but there were Swedish subtitles which I ignored at first but eventually noticed some similarity between English and Swedish words and trying to decipher them helped me very much in understanding the movie. I thought then could it be that Swedish was to English as Ukrainian was to Russian. I can’t speak Ukrainian but I can get at least the gist of what’s being said when I hear it spoken.

Originally Posted by alexB

But isn’t Swedish a lot like English?
I thought then could it be that Swedish was to English as Ukrainian was to Russian.

I tried once to learn Norwegian (which is almost the same language as Swedish), and I'd say that it's something middle between German and English; but closer to German for me.

I thought then could it be that Swedish was to English as Ukrainian was to Russian. I can’t speak Ukrainian but I can get at least the gist of what’s being said when I hear it spoken.

Not quite as close. Both Swedish and English belong to the Germanic side of the Indo-European language family tree, while Ukrainian and Russian are from the Slavic side. As such, Swedish and English are more closely related to each other than to Russian. But the difference between Ukrainian and Russian is relatively slight, as far as I know, maybe like the difference of Swedish and Norwegian. My native language is German, and I know English, too, but a Swedish book is not easily accessible to me. (I occasionally thumb through some of them when I'm at Ikea... )

English separated from the other Germanic languages around 1500 years ago, when the Germanic tribes of the Jutes, Angles and Saxons left the continent for the British Isles. There, they adopted a small number of indigenous Celtic and some Latin words (the Romans and their legions had just up and left the Isles because of pressing problems in the Mediterranean). At that time English had inflection and cases much like German still has, and Russian, too, of course.

Around the year 800 invaders from Denmark conquered a sizeable portion of the Northeast of England; they, of course, spoke a form of Danish, another Germanic language. When hostilities ceased, people on either side found themselves in need of communicating with the other, and they found that they had many words in common, but quite different grammatical structures. So they dropped what they could from the grammar, which is one of the main reasons why English has no inflectional system to speak of today.

In 1088 the Normans came - yet another originally Germanic tribe, but one which had settled in the North-West area of France (Normandy) and had adopted French as their language (French in turn being what happens to Latin if yet another Germanic tribe invades, in this case the Franks). They took their language to England with them, and the languages fused to what is English today. For example, the Normans were the new nobility, whereas the Anglosaxons were the peasantry; that's why the cow is a cow and the pig is a pig (or swine or hog), all Germanic words, while the animal is alive and tended by the Anglosaxon peasant, but the cow becomes beef (French boeuf) and the pig becomes pork (French porc) as soon as the noble Norman eats it.

Robin

(Please excuse all the typos in my previous post!)

I started the thread because I was interested to hear what Russian speaking people think of learning English.

Learning Russian for me is much harder than it was to learn English and the other languages I studied (French, Spanish). I was thinking that this surely goes both ways! (=if it's hard for me, than it must be hard for you). German is the closest non-Scandinavian language to Swedish. Learning English was no doubt MUCH easier for me than for any Russian speaking person, for lots of reasons.

The "new" difficulties with Russian were:
--The Cyrillic alphabet make all words look foreign, even when they are not. The alphabet slows me down..
--Some words are both long AND completely different from any Germanic or Latin based words I know...
--Unless I concentrate, I forget to pronounce words with the "soft sign" right.
--It's easy to ignore the difference between Ш and Щ or Ы and И.
--Grammar!!
--The different word order and the structure of sentences.

I was thinking that you must have the same problems -- just the other direction.

Pronounciation of Russian is not very difficult - it has no sounds that I can't prounounce.. The trouble is that Russian is more "precise" about how words should be pronounced. Some combinations of consonants are hard too.

Bitpickers post explains about the Scandinavian / Nordic languages. To summarize:

Swedish, Norwegian, Danish = Russian, Ukrainian, Belarussian.
(Maybe they are even closer - I don't know much about Ukrainian etc
But I can EASILY understand what is said in Norwegian. Danish is also easy. Reading a newspaper is no problem.)

Icelandic is the language that the Vikings spoke.
It is to modern Scandianvian perhaps like "Church Slavonic" maybe? Recognisable, but hard to understand.

Finnish and Estonian = cool but crazy languages! Similar to eachother but almost impossible for anybody to learn.
Finnish people can usually speak Swedish though, because they have to learn it in school.

Many of the Russian teachers in Sweden are actually Estonians. That was the case with the Russian teacher that I had. I read that there is terrible shortage of Russian teachers in Sweden, because the native Swedes who know it well use it to work in business. (My teacher did not enjoy teaching and was really quite strange. Almost half the class quit (like me) in the first year and choose French, Spanish or German instead).

Estonian and Finnish aren't Germanic, they are not even Indo-European. They belong to the Finno-Ugric family of language, along with Hungarian.

Languages from this family may have twenty cases and more - though with much more regularity than our Indo-European case systems tend to have.

Robin

Читая тему, вспомнила отрывок из фильма. ))
«Я шагаю по Москве» на Ютубе.
1:50
— Ты ему про деньги скажи.
— Скажи ему про деньги.
— Я не могу. Я понимать понимаю, а говорить не могу.
2:53
— Спроси, он китаец?
— Простите… вы китаец?
— No, Japan. Японец.
— Он японец.

1:00—3:10
— Слушай, ребята, языками владеете?
— Какой (вам) нужен?
— Да я и сам не знаю. Вот — два часа катаю, спрашиваю куда, а он только руками показывает: направо-налево.
— Здрасьте.
— На шесть рублей накатали. И вот сюда приехали.
— Понятно.
— Я ему — плати и вылезай, а он по-русски ни бе ни ме.
— Sprechen Sie Deutsch?
— No, only English.
— Инглиш?
— Yes, I want to go to the Moscow Centre Picture Gallery. Would you please translate it kindly to the driver?
— Ага.
— О чем он говорит?
— Он в восторге от нашей замечательной столицы.
— Да нет, ему, кажется, в Третьяковку надо, да?
— В Третьяковку? В галерею?
— Yes, yes, a gallery.
— А-а. Вы здесь не проедете. Понимаете, здесь строится Новый Арбат, New Arbat, понимаете? И будет здесь…
— Ты ему про деньги скажи.
— Скажи ему про деньги.
— Я не могу. Я понимать понимаю, а говорить не могу.
— Слушай, ребята, поехали вместе, а? Я вас потом, куда надо, бесплатно довезу.
— Are we on the way to the Gallery? Are we going to the Gallery?
— Да.
— Двубортный брать?
— Ну, я не знаю, я б на твоем месте вообще не брал.
— Почему?
— Потому что у тебя ж есть костюм, а из армии вернешься — другая мода все равно будет.
— Так у меня-то серый, а полагается черный.
— В армию забирают?
— Ага.
— А зачем же тебе костюм?
— Он женится.
— Вот дурак. Гуляй пока молод. Во флот?
— Пехота.
— We have ridden here, haven’t we?
— Он здесь уже был.
— Мир-дружба.
— Спроси, он китаец?
— Простите… вы китаец?
— No, Japan. Японец.
— Он японец.

Originally Posted by Zaya

Я понимать понимаю, а говорить не могу.

Originally Posted by Оля

As for me, I even don't know how I speak English because I never tried!

Originally Posted by sperk

to me the most difficult thing about English is spelling, mainly because the way a word sounds and the way it is spelled vary widely.

My experience in learning and using English meets the quite opposite issues.
The spelling is not a problem at all. As far as the main learning activity goes through books and printed matter. I know how to write a word correctly, but many times I became failed in pronunciation. But the pronunciation issue does not affect my talking to non-Russians strongly. They understand me. The main problem for me in face to face talking is hearing and comprehension of what my non-Russian partner said. Today I'm used to watch American movies with original (not dubbed) English audio stream and I force myself to switch OFF subtitles otherwise my mind stops hearing and goes in a more easy way of reading the subtitles.

CoffeCup; you are doing all the right things - just stick with it... (=continue doing the same things)
I saw an older post by you and I think your English has improved over the last six months since you made that post.

I forgot if I had already answered this question. So, I'll say it again.
We had pretty strong English at school. At the very beginning we learnt the IPA symbols used for English and used to write transcriptions at the lessons. The pronunciation was difficult of couse. The spelling was terrible: words did not stick into my mind and learning words was very difficult.
Grammar wasn't so difficult, except for articles. Several years had passed untill I started understand what they are needed for. The difference between the Past Simple and Present Perfect, and some other tenses could be a little bit tricky. Not to mention prepositions. Conversion was not so easy either.
In general, English is as difficult to us as Russian is to you.
I think officially English is not mandatory yet but it is taught everywhere since the second grade.

Originally Posted by Basil77

It depends on a particular school. During my shool time after five years of English lessons in ordinary shool (2x45min lessons a week) I was able to say only three phrases: "My name is Yuriy.","This is a table." and "Who is on duty today?"

I think in this case, Brazil and Russia are pretty much the same. In most schools, they don't focus strongly on English. We have the same 2x50min lessons per week (in general), but it's not that important, I guess, so I can relate to Basil's situation. And if they do focus on English, it's only the written part of it, so you learn to read and write, but no focus at all is given on listening and/or speaking.
That's why the language schools in Brazil are so strong. You can see an English (and sometimes English+Spanish) language school in every single neighborhood.
Even though Portuguese is closer to English than Russian is, not many people here speak English, even in an intermediate level. Among my 5 closer childhood friends, I'm the only one who has a good level of English. My best friends has only studied it at school, therefore all he can say is "My name is ....", "I'm from Brazil" and "Where is the bathroom?" =P On the other hand, among my college friends, pretty much all of them speak English in a decent level.