Hi, Plotin. Nice to meet you.
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Originally Posted by Plotin
Does this mean that one can also find SOV variations, and are there other ways to make sentences?
Well, let us take a simple SVO sentence with logical stress on the last word: “Петя любит Машу. Petya loves Masha” and see what happens:
SOV: Петя Машу любит. We say that Petya's love to Masha exists (the focus is people).
OSV: Машу Петя любит. We say that it is Masha, who Petya loves.
OVS: Машу любит Петя. We say that among others Petya loves Masha.
VOS: Любит Машу Петя. We say that it is Petya who loves Masha.
VSO: Любит Петя Машу. We say that Petya's love to Masha exists (the focus is love).
This is, indeed, not the exact or correct explanation, it just a try to inerpret of simple structures without contextual meanings and intonational patterns.
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If every word is inflected perfectly, can one make sense of a sentence even when the words are arbitrarily put together?
If it is only inflected perfectly. Random sentence structure, however, makes understanding dim in usual life.
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I read somewhere that a Russian can say the same thing in almost thousands of ways. If that’s true, it must be pretty difficult to understand what they are saying if one doesn’t master their inflection system?
Actually, the sense hides in lexical meanings, not in grammar meanings. I think you’ll be able to understand the gist of the speech when you are mastered Russian enough. But, I think, reading without knowing the role of this or that inflection won’t take you far.
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Are there “if-so” sentences like in English?
What exactly do you mean?
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I heard that Russian is very logical. Does this mean that all the inflection patterns are consistent? Or are there many exceptions when it comes to grammatical rules?
Russian is logical and illogical to the same degree.
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I’m Norwegian, and we operate with gender inflection and still have remnants of the case system. With this background, will it be difficult to learn Russian good enough to have a basic conversation and read a newspaper? Will it take a long time if I study Russian two hours a day and live in Russia? I’m highly motivated!
It depends on differrent factors... Judging by your introduction, I can say that you are able to crack the grammar fast. :) There's another Norwegian user here, kalinka_vinnie, that you can talk to and share experience.
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Is Russian more complicated than Latin? I ask because a memorization expert told me that he learned 150 Latin words in one evening, something I will not be able to do, but still it will be nice to know if Russian is more difficult to learn.
It is better to consult with the user Лука, who recently registered here. You can find his introduction topic in general discussions.
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Since there are six cases in Russian, I guess that one needs to know six different variations of each word, so that memorization of only ten words actually makes it necessary to remember 60 variations. Is that correct and is it difficult to remember all this or does one easily recognize inflection patterns?
Memorization of word variations is fruitless, nor it works in the consciousness of native speakers this way. Understanding the patterns is the clue, then practice of them follows, and some time after you will find that it is natural. :) I must say that it takes much time because of the big number of inflections to almost all parts of speech.
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Thanks for your help!
You’re welcome.