Thread: Why are so many Russians who want to have foreign pen pals and few non-Russian speake

Why are so many Russians who want to have foreign pen pals and few non-Russian speakers who want to have Russian pen pals.

Ask Captain Obvious.

and mostly they would like to have an English-speaking pen pal. Think about that.

Originally Posted by Marcus

Why are so many Russians who want to have foreign pen pals and few non-Russian speakers who want to have Russian pen pals.

I can't answer why but for myself a native American English speaker, I get lots of pen pals to choose from!

Scott

Because English-speaking people (especially Americans and Brits) are generally very lazy when it comes to learning other languages.

Originally Posted by Demonic_Duck

Because English-speaking people (especially Americans and Brits) are generally very lazy when it comes to learning other languages.

I'm not sure whether that's entirely fair. I'd say that if the demand to speak Russian was as high as the demand to speak English, this wouldn't be the case. I think the real problem is that there's a higher demand for the English language than there is for the Russian language.

Yes, that's the underlying cause of it, but it still makes us lazy

Originally Posted by Demonic_Duck

Yes, that's the underlying cause of it, but it still makes us lazy

Haha.. I think that makes people lazy.

FAT and lazy! Don't forget the FAT!!!

Actually I have a couple that keep me busy.

Yes, but the forum is about Russian not English. I'm actually tired of learning English. I did it for many years but I'm not still perfect at this language. I want to study some other languages.

English has become universal. Russian is difficult. Those who learn Russian seem to be romantics to me.

If you think Russian is difficult, you should try Korean.

Originally Posted by Ramil

If you think Russian is difficult, you should try Korean.

If you think Korean is difficult, you should try Russian. (c) some Korean guy

Is Korean particularly difficult? Is it more difficult than Mandarin Chinese or Japanese?

Also let's be fair, Russian isn't the most difficult language in the world, even for native English speakers.

Originally Posted by Eric C.

If you think Korean is difficult, you should try Russian. (c) some Korean guy

Once, our polyglot Yazeed told me that Mandarin Chinese isn't that bad compared with Korean.
Here's a thread, by the way: Про сложность русского языка
He told me that Korean was the most difficult language he tried to learn.

Press 1 for English...

No-one Speaks Americanized English in the USA now! Politically Incorrect!

Stores can't even get that right! The illegal immigrants we have here are from Brazil, they espeake Portuguese not Spanish.

Just out of curiosity, are there phone calls that say "Press 1 for Russian"?
I would normally ask a friend but my ICQ is goofed...

I think it's the demand thing myself. Serious students usually have a particular motivation e.g. living and working in Russia, job-related needs. Hobby language learners IMHO are more likely to opt for something easier to learn (they want to spend some free time learning a language, not sacrifice their whole life for it!) and something they can use on the usual holiday destinations. I don't know a lot of folk who go to Russia for their holidays.

I would love to have a hundred Russian language exchange contacts, but right now I don't even have time for one.

I'm an average 20 year old from the UK, and I'm learning Russian because I like it.

To be fair, I haven't found it too difficult, just the same as when I learnt German at school. I'd progress a lot faster than I am if I had a tutor or went to classes, so far I've learnt all I know from studying it myself on my lunch breaks or talking to penpals in the evening.

The rules about grammar and such are fine once you know them, and I get a bit tongue-twisted with some sentences if I say them too fast, but otherwise I think it's a great language!

I found that most people at my school didn't do well with languages because they were embarassed to try and do the correct accent when saying the words. Trying to speak German/Russian with a London accent on just makes it far harder than it really is. It was frustrating to see - in my GCSE German oral exam I got an A purely because I stuck my best accent on and tried my best to be understood. Even though lots of what I said was probably grammatically incorrect, I went for it so was alright.

It's definitely true about the lazy thing. For the most part, we're just lazy here in the UK about languages. Few people try because they know they can roll up in France or Germany, or any country for that matter and just speak loudly and point at maps and be understood.

It's a shame.

English is the international language. There is severe pressure on people living around the world to learn the English language. Native English speakers have a choice of which language they want to learn, if they want to learn one at all. There is a lot of Anti-Russian propaganda around that pushes people away from the Russian language. The Russian language is also very hard to learn and many English speakers think that it sounds ugly.

I, of course, am not one of these people. It is unfortunate that people do not see the beauty of the Russian language, country and culture.

I think there are a lot of factors to English being used so commonly..
First, you can blame the US for extreme expansion/franchisment/Californication over the last 30-80 years (depending on who you ask). A lot of the Westernized culture in a given place got there on the back of a technology, product or service which the given place was deemed at some point in time to "need." Less so, it seems, does a dollop of Western culture get to a place because it was actually wanted there. It seems it most often arrives by the same routes that are taken by things entering the US that read "Made In China."
Second, and secondary to the first point, there is a higher business demand for English - but that is only because of the first point and related to the third:
Third, while English is not easy to learn and master, it is easy to breach as a student, and to begin learning. IMHO as a native speaker - English can handle a lot of wear-and-tear. It can be abused, misused, and still carry across its original intent and meaning. I think it's very popular because of its great pidgin-ization potential. While it's not glamorous, it's often done that foreign businessmen (in the case of my line of work many of these are East Indian) will learn only a handful of English words, no conjugations and no connective words; and though as I say it's not the most aesthetically pleasing conversation, nonetheless they will use this as a working knowledge of the language and do business in the US - and make money! - with little more linguistic savois-faire than that. I imagine if I went to Russia with my (as yet) sloppy spoken Russian, I'd be a particularly noticeable anomaly - but with English-speaking business extending through different foreign channels, it's quite the norm.

That being said, I think in the long run it's bound to change.. Good questions arise from examination of this issue: does the most common trade-language chosen end up being the one from the richest country? (I hope not, only because I am a poor speaker of Chinese.)