Quote Originally Posted by Nichole. View Post
About cases: As much as cases seem like the most *enter 20 curse words of your choice here* thing in the history of languages (next to English spelling, and how we haven't had a modern spelling reform yet because we're too lazy), I have to learn them. Cases are needed for me to be understood, but that doesn't mean I don't think they're complete BS... because I hate them.
I really think you're overreacting to be honest, yes they are difficult and annoying, but no they are not entirely useless and there is generally some logic to how they're used (although sometimes the logic seems unfathomable). Because word order in Russian is flexible, cases are needed to show how the words relate to one another. A Russian speaker learning English might as well complain, "the specific word order in English is useless, why do I have to learn it?" but they'd be missing the point. Of course it's not useless, it's just another way of showing the relationship between words. As for English spelling, yes it is definitely annoying, but again it's not entirely useless, as it can help to show the etymology of words.

And I still think you're underestimating how difficult perfective/imperfective verbs can be sometimes, but you seem intelligent so perhaps you've just grasped the concept better than me. I think the main things I find difficult about it are firstly that imperfective verbs don't always correspond perfectly (no pun intended) with their perfect forms, and vice-versa. You sometimes get an imperfective verb with two perfective forms with subtly different meanings, or an imperfective which has no perfective form, or a perfective with no imperfective, etc. And there's also the seeming complete randomness about how to actually make a perfective form out of an imperfective (do I add a prefix or take away a syllable? Should I prefix it with по- or с- or some other prefix? Or, in the case of «покупать», should I in fact remove the по- in order to make it into the perfective «купить»?) And, before you've even started to think about what the appropriate prefix should be, there are also some situations where you don't know if the action has been completed, etc.