Sharing experiences and helping each other (spin off from another thread)

[Hanna]

Unfortunately I have to interrupt this discussion and give an urgent English lesson to Ito-ogo. And submit a Russian exercise myself.

I don't have this too

(should be: either) I can't explain why, unfortunately.

But I will try to give an example and translate it to Russian for practice. (correct me if I am wrong!)

I have no red hat. (У меня нет красного шляпы.)
I don't have a blue hat either. (У меня нет красного шляпы тоже.)

I have a a blue hat! (У меня синяя шляпа!)
I have a blue hat too! (У меня синяя шляпа тоже!)

Aha, I think I realise why you made a mistake with this.

I swear, this is harder to say in Russian than in English because of the complication with genitive etc. That is SOO complicated.

[bitpicker]

Actually the too / either rule is very simple: you use "too" in positive sentences and "either" in negative ones.

[Hanna]

Swedish has the same system as English for this, and so does German I think, right? I remember school exercises about it, but it is not exactly complicated.So this one is trickier for Russians, I guess.

I don't think I make any grammatical mistakes in English anymore (??.... hmm.... ) but if I am tired I sometimes lose track of when to put an -s at the end of a verb.

I was in Germany last week actually, for work, and I was discouraged when I noticed that I still understand more German (which I never studied) than Russian.
I refuse to give up with Russian though, but Lord knows it's hard work. I really respect people who have managed to reach fluency.

[bitpicker]

Swedish has the same system as English for this, and so does German I think, right? I remember school exercises about it, but it is not exactly complicated.So this one is trickier for Russians, I guess.

No, in German it's simply "ich auch", "ich auch nicht".

I don't think I make any grammatical mistakes in English anymore (??.... hmm.... ) but if I am tired I sometimes lose track of when to put an -s at the end of a verb.

Not to rain on your parade, but you do. But that's only to be expected. I do, too. Heck, even the native speakers do.

I was in Germany last week actually, for work, and I was discouraged when I noticed that I still understand more German (which I never studied) than Russian.
I refuse to give up with Russian though, but Lord knows it's hard work. I really respect people who have managed to reach fluency.

Last week, a colleague of mine put through a phone call to me from a woman the language of whom she could not identify. It turned out to be Russian and the moment I found out I forgot all I know. I have been teaching myself Russian for almost two years, but my speaking practice still counts in minutes. I am embarrassed by what I said then and how I mangled it, but we did at least get to the point where I realized she wanted our fax number and I could give it to her in a way she obviously understood because we finally received that fax.

I am not giving up either, I am trying to get better.

[Hanna]

Yeah, I agree; native English speakers are actually often worse at English grammar than non-native speakers. It's pretty shocking, really. I have no doubt that you speak better English than a fair number of native English speakers.

I live in England as you know. (temporarily!)

When I first moved here, I kept apologising about my English at work. But then my boss said: Stop that for goodness sake, your English is better than mine! Others said similar things.

And the insane thing is that he might well have been right. Some of the emails he wrote had bad punctuation, spelling mistakes etc. Same thing with people in my team; many of them make several mistakes in just one email. When all this became clear to me, I totally stopped caring about improving my English.

The other thing for people to be aware of: English people are practically disappointed if someone comes from continental Europe and doesn't have a noticable accent! It took quite a while until I realised this. Earlier I had thought that I had to get rid of all traces of accent, and I worked quite hard on it, very nearly succeeding. But there is no real benefit to it in England. The only benefit that I can see is not always having to answer the question "where do you come from?".

A friend of mine (Swedish) has worked in Germany for quite a long time. She told me that the situation there is not the same as in England. It's not OK to make grammatical or spelling mistakes at her level (She is a mid level manager in IT, same as me). People often correct her. Same thing in Sweden and probably in Russia, I suspect. I have no idea why the UK is different in this respect, but it is. Nobody cares if people make language mistakes, particularly if they are foreigners.

But being "rude" according to English standards is a different story..! That is completely unforgivable... And according to the English almost all other nationalities in Europe are "rude"..... In particular the French (in general) and the Germans because they are too straight-to-the-point...
And unfortunately school books in English doesn't tell people how to be "polite" according to English standards. I could rant on about this for a very long time!!!
LOL

[rockzmom]

Yeah, I agree; native English speakers are actually often worse at English grammar than non-native speakers. It's pretty shocking, really. I have no doubt that you speak better English than a fair number of native English speakers.

it's because it is hardly ever taught as a subject any longer! They mainly care if you can read. Grammar and spelling are no longer taught. It is read, read, read.

The other thing for people to be aware of: English people are practically disappointed if someone comes from continental Europe and doesn't have a noticable accent! It took quite a while until I realised this. Earlier I had thought that I had to get rid of all traces of my accent, and I worked quite hard on it, very nearly succeeding (would have used succeeded). But there is no real benefit to it in England. The only benefit that I can see is not always having to answer the question "where do you come from?".


And unfortunately school books in English doesn't don't tell people how to be "polite" according to English standards. I could rant on about this for a very long time!!!
LOL

[it-ogo]

[I]Unfortunately I have to interrupt this discussion and give an urgent English lesson to Ito-ogo.

Oh, no, Jo, no! I liked English so much for its simplicity but you gradually make of it second Russian.

(correct me if I am wrong!)

I have no red hat. (У меня нет красной шляпы. - feminine)
I don't have a blue hat either. (У меня тоже нет красной шляпы.)

I have a a blue hat! (У меня синяя шляпа!)
I have a blue hat too! (У меня тоже синяя шляпа!)

[Hanna]

Oh, no, Jo, no! I liked English so much for its simplicity but you gradually make of it second Russian.

Thanks for the corrections!
This is crazy though! I have studied Russian now, for almost 1.5 years, and I cannot even seem to say sentence like "I do not have a red hat" correctly!!!

Honestly, I am not sure if I have taken water over my head with this "project"!!

But the more I learn about Russia and the CIS countries, culture etc... the more I want to learn Russian.

Initially it was just a hobby project for business/tourism reasons... and because it annoyed me that I had failed it in school....

However, now I feel rather passionate about this!! I *really* want to learn to speak Russian!
Stopping now would be pathetic. The skills that I have now, I could probably use for tourism but I couldn't have any sort of serious conversation, and it would be useless for business.

If languages were games, Russian would be chess and English would be.... three-in-a-row

That said; I agree with you, it-ogo that English has some challenges. Unexpected speech patterns and expressions are the worst. I think.

The way to get over it is to start reading almost only in English..
Basically immerse yourself in English. Anything you'd normally read/watch/listen to in Russian, do it in English instead.

I think that's how some people who speak perfect English without living in an English speaking country have done it. Like bitpicker and translationsnmru

[Misha Tal]

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.