Thread: Frustrated with Russian cases...

I just see Russian grammar as too overloaded. Like those mega fries you can get in American pizza parlors. Sure, fries have lots of fat in them, but hey, let's throw on three different cheeses and some bacon with Ranch dressing on the side just so you understand how much fat is in them.

Maybe I like English grammar more because I was raised with it, and I do see it's flaws, but in my mind, it's way more flexible than Russian. We have no gender (so we don't have to worry about that when forming sentences... well except for she and he, and if it's something that doesn't have a biological gender... tah-dah, it's it.), virtually no cases (sure, we have some, but only like, 2), if you are using numbers in a sentence, anything over one is ended in either "s" or "ies", and that brings me to our plurals, which are just that, unless you are a scholar and you like using Latin words like "bacterium" (which most of the general public doesn't). The only con I can think of are our pesky verb tenses (yea, we went overboard on those, hehe).

Sure, Russian can change it's word order willy-nilly, but that's the only thing I can think of.

But what am I complaining about? I chose this as the language I wanted to study, and I'm far too deep to want to stop now. Yea, cases are just an everyday thing and I'm going to have to get over it, but it just seems like the English part of my brain is on overload and I want everything to act like it is in English (which is impossible, but I still wish)!

Originally Posted by Nichole.

Maybe I like English grammar more because I was raised with it, and I do see it's flaws, but in my mind, it's way more flexible than Russian. We have no gender (so we don't have to worry about that when forming sentences...

Native speakers do not worry about that, they use it automatically.

Yep, English has exceptionally simple basics that makes it very good international language. So you can skip learning other languages if you do not enjoy. Learning languages is like a good investment to the future pleasure. The harder you work now the more you will enjoy later. The situation is the same as with high/classical/elite art/literature/music.

Originally Posted by it-ogo

2) Adventurous one. Come to the corresponding country, communicate much, and try to survive without using any language but local. Here you can avoid most formal rules etc. and get even better result than for the first method. If survived.

I can't do that because I only just turned 15, so I guess I'll just have to hang out in Northeast Philly for a bit. That place is soooo Russian.

Originally Posted by it-ogo

Native speakers do not worry about that, they use it automatically.

Yea, but what about L2 speakers?

Originally Posted by Nichole.

Yea, but what about L2 speakers?

That is very individual. Some people after some efforts get used to it and starts to speak automatically. Some, including even professional Russian teachers etc., get good theory but have problems of fluent speaking forever. No guarantee.

Originally Posted by Nichole.

I can't do that because I only just turned 15, so I guess I'll just have to hang out in Northeast Philly for a bit. That place is soooo Russian.



Yea, but what about L2 speakers?

Is there Russian stores, restaurants etc. in Northeast Philadelphia? If so, what is there? I'm live about 60 miles from Philadelphia.

Scott

Originally Posted by fortheether

Is there Russian stores, restaurants etc. in Northeast Philadelphia? If so, what is there? I'm live about 60 miles from Philadelphia.

Scott

They have restaurants, Russian music and book stores, a supermarket, many of the store signs are also written in Russian.

In fact, my bus used to drive through there on the way to my elementary school, so the first Russian words I ever learned when I was 9: аптека, столовая, and книги from the signs on the storefronts we passed.

Originally Posted by Nichole.

They have restaurants, Russian music and book stores, a supermarket, many of the store signs are also written in Russian.

In fact, my bus used to drive through there on the way to my elementary school, so the first Russian words I ever learned when I was 9: аптека, столовая, and книги from the signs on the storefronts we passed.

This is the section of the town:

Bustleton, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I definitely going to check out the book stores and eat at a restaurant there - Anything else you recommend doing there?

Thank you,

Scott

Originally Posted by Nichole.

I just see Russian grammar as too overloaded.

You notice all the things Russian has but English doesn't have, and that makes it seem overloaded. I'm sure the same is true vice versa: looking at English with Russian eyes, one could ask why there are so bloody many different tenses, what articles are for and why the writing is so damn different from the spoken word.

Looking at both languages from my viewpoint as a native speaker of German I could ask why English needs a progressive aspect to its verbs and what's so hot about perfective verbs in Russian. I could say that the English lack of cases is just as insane as having six. Four is the truth.

But all that is moot. Different languages have different mechanisms, and the hard parts of each language lie in the mechanisms which are unlike the ones of your native language. English happens to be on one end of the scale of Indo-European languages, the end which has dropped most of the inflecting grammatival features (along with Persian, I'm told). On the other end you have heavily inflected languages like Russian, but even those have come quite far, as the process of losing grammatical inflection is going on in all languages of the family. If you wanted to learn Sanskrit, the oldest written Indo-European language, you'd have to deal with up to 792 distinct verb forms per verb. The worst verb in English has eight (be).

You should try to accept each grammatical feature as a given and try to deal with them one at a time. I think that the most complicated and weird features of a language are what makes the language intriguing.

Originally Posted by Nichole.

Maybe I like English grammar more because I was raised with it, and I do see it's flaws,

Those precious moments....