Quote Originally Posted by Hanna View Post
Personally I think it's unfair that the language of one particular country (countries) should be the "world language" and everyone else should have to make the effort to learn that language... And the dominance of one language also means that its' culture, values and politics of the English speaking countries get spread.
I agree on the cultural point, but when you think about it, it's difficult to make up a language with an easier grammar than the English grammar. I don't have a clue about Esperanto, but I think the English language is adequately straightforward. At least for me, English is five times easier than Russian.

When I had just started studying Russian (roughly two years ago), the grammar looked really mind-boggling. Practically every general rule has an exception, and there are also exceptions to the exceptions. Very few people might be able to get around to all these grammatical twists and turns. Imagine what it would be like if Russian was the world language. Frankly, I would prefer to stick to my chessboard.

But to my surprise, I'm finally starting to feel more familiar with the language. After two years of struggling with the case system, it now looks so comforting that I can almost forget about word order! It's even an advantage over English.

Another feature that makes Russian more easily "speakable" is that there's a whole lot of filler words, suffixes, etc. How would you make the difference between "Вот, вас-то я действительно живой не думал видеть" and "Вот, вас я действительно живой не думал видеть" in English? It's not even a difference. It's a slight deviation. I suppose the only way to make it felt in English is tone of voice.

For me, HUGE trouble is the Russian verb system. It has it's merits, but it's heart-breakingly complicated. I guess once I get the verbs down, I'll be good to go.

Generally in my opinion, it's a good thing that the Russian grammar is so complex. Makes the entire language more expressive. But as people call it in quantum physics, there's a giant potential barrier at the beginning. One needs tremendous motivation to get passed it, and then, hopefully, comes the downslope.