It's the whole "imenitel
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It's the whole "imenitel
So they're called pronouns, ahh what nifty little things. That's why I missed them, thanks :)
No. Pronouns are "I, you, he, she, it, me, they..."Quote:
Originally Posted by Ehecatl
You are talking aboue Grammatical cases, or just "cases" for short.
[quote=Ehecatl]It's the whole "imenitel
I don't think so. On the contrary, if I recall correctly, Russian is almost offensive there, given the political/historical relationship with Russia. I think it's Estonia (it could have been Latvia -- it was on of the Baltic states and I'm pretty sure it was Lithuania) where they basically told everyone after independence that in one year, all exams would be given exclusively in Estonian -- if you were a native-Russian speaker, good luck in learning the new language! And I think one of the citizenships requirments for some people is that you have to know Estonian. This is something that Russia and the Baltics continually butt heads over -- I think the Russians have actually taken them to the European Human Rights courts before.Quote:
Originally Posted by Remyisme
As far as I know, Estonia, is an ex soviet republic, so people r supposed to speak Russian ther, besides I met someone on the net from Estonia and she knew Russian and Estonian, and i asked her if it is true that they speak Russian in Estonia, and she said "Yea, пол-населения!"
Every Estonian I dealt with knew Russian on native speaker's level. Funny to say, some of them didn't know Estonian enough to communicate in it ;)
Sorry, lost my connection for a while.
It's pretty much true what Бармалей said. Although the generation that lived under the Soviet regime knows Russian well and puts emphasis on the new generation to learn it, almost all of the youth is very reluctant to obtain the language. For example: in the whole school I go to (about 700 students), there are only a few pupils that can actually carry out a meaningful conversation in Russian at even a usual topic (lessons, homework, news etc), the same applies to another school I attended for years. I have had to take the class for five years now and yet I can hardly say my name.
The majority of Estonian adolescence is biased towards Russians: people of the same age are often considered to come from poor families, often use alchohol, tobacco, illegal substances and partake in other criminal activities (of course, a lot of the Estonian youth are like that, but of course, that is overlooked here).
I'm not saying that there is any metaphorical witchhunt, not that. It's just that the two ethnicities don't mix and by the looks of it, they won't in the future.
Well based on what Vincent and Ehecatl said, it seems like maybe this is a generational thing -- which would make sense. Those people who grew up under the Soviet regime would have wanted to learn Russian (even if they may not have liked the language/culture/regime/whatever) for advancement and better living (the same goes for the US -- if you speak English, you'll probably have much more in the way of career advancement, social connections, etc. than if you only spoke, say Korean or Swahili). Once the country became independent though, there wasn't a reliance on the Soviet system (ie the Russian language) -- to say nothing of ethnic/cultural/political/historical differences. So I would guess that most of the kids in the school system after the early 90s would focus on Estonian, and a second language -- probably English? -- and thereby skip Russian in general.
I have met a few Estonians who are 20 whilst in London (they only came over last year), and none of them knew Russian. They knew a bit, but not much. One said something like they offered it at school but when your parents are telling you "Russian is bad" all the time, few decided to do it.
People born in 1985 will have been about 5-6 at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and after that I understand the authorities probably swiftly de-russified stuff.
I also knew this Lithuanian girl who said she spoke fluent Russian, but got into an arguement with her becuase she was convinced "during the day" was "В днём". :P
I think it's really a shame if it is so. I think that Russian should stay in Estonia as an optional thing, like in Latvia where there is a choice and there r schools with Russian language.
You've not read properly. It is an option, but not many people take it.
No, I didn't express myself correctly: most students study Russian. We have to study Estonian and English, Russian and German are optional. The optional thing isn't really working in many places as we have to choose them early, second or third grade.
But at that time the teachers are quite old and prefer Russian so the kids' opinion is tilted towards Russian, later that opinion changes and of course then the difficulty of Russian, opposition towards it by older students (which affects younger ones) and the low quality teachers means that the language becomes very much disliked, the few that stick to German can't study it because there is a such a little number and therefore it isn't economical to hire a teacher for a class of five. Thus, we're pretty much stuck: can't switch languages and nobody wants to learn it, although we have to.
About German, I don't know many who are studying it. For example, in my class only 3 students out of 21 are studying German, in the last school I went to on the four parallels (about 100 pupils) nobody studied German, there was even only one teacher (for middle school level), part-time, because there weren't many to teach.
The funny thing is that about 26% of the population in Estonia is Russian.
So in other words, these students will be fluent in Estonian and English and probably speak some second-rate Russian, which they'll hate?Quote:
Originally Posted by Ehecatl
hi, i've just been at another forum asked another Estonian about this and this is what he said:
[quote name='zayborg' date='Jul 4 2006, 19:19' post='65228']
Ой блин да я русский в корень весь, я по эстонски вообще не говорю или совсем в крайним случае если попадется эстонец который не говорит по РУССКИ :innocent: :crackingup: :crackingup:
Говорят по русски и еще как, есть город Нарва на границе с Россией там кажется больше половны населения руссие.
У меня есть с кем говорить и говорю даже с родственниками эстонцами только по РУССКИ а они по эстонски и никоких проблемм я не вижу в плане языка.
По работе эстонцы втречаются и ничего говорим, понимаем друг друга, только политики у нас :censoree: а простые люди все хорошие :)
[/quote]
he also added later that this is correct about the young generation, they do prefer german in school instead of Russian.