Thread: Confusion about Russian

Originally Posted by iCake

The messiest post I've ever seen, man.

Let me give you one tip. You have to stop looking at Russian through your English glasses. That's the crucial thing to understand for any language learner. You're not gonna speak a foreign language properly, fluently, authentically if you didn't stop treating it like your native language. In fact it would be best to temporarily forget your native language when dealing with another one. Easier said than done you might say and would be right, but it's just something you have to do if you want to speak a foreign language decently.

You could now be wondering why I just told you some obvious things, which you think you know already. But no one who stopped looking at a foreign language through their native one would ever ask questions like these:



What makes you think that we even have anything like "ain't" in Russian? Because English has? Doesn't seem like a solid reason to me.

Anyway, what you asked in your post is just a matter of "questions and negations", also here about tag questions

One more time, stop treating Russian like your native language, this approach will lead you to nothing but confusion and distortion. Think about how you brain processes your native language:

a word - understanding.

Now if you keep up learning Russian as you do:

a Russian word - translating it into English - English word - understanding

So what do you want me to do, exactly? Stop processing as if it's your native language? How am I not gonna be able to do that? I need to learn somehow otherwise I can't learn at all. What exactly do you mean by don't learn it as if it's your native language?

It helps to treat it as a native language for me anyway, because I am better able to understand it that way.

Originally Posted by Patchman123

So what do you want me to do, exactly? Stop processing as if it's your native language? How am I not gonna be able to do that? I need to learn somehow otherwise I can't learn at all. What exactly do you mean by don't learn it as if it's your native language?

It helps to treat it as a native language for me anyway, because I am better able to understand it that way.

s

Yes, iCake, I think you've been too severe. On an early stage of learning, you just can't help comparing the rules or features of your native language with those of the language one you're learning. Only when you've had enough expirience you'll be able not only to undedrstand those rules better, but also to live or think on them.

Patchman123, I think you should understand iCake's words as this. Try to see the rules that the Russian language is based on. You mustn't draw your general attention to to the rules of your native language.