Is studying Russian the right choice? (serious replies plz)

hello,

I'm an 18 year old belgian guy/kid
and I'm considering studying Russian, I don't know if it's any different abroad, but in Belgium studying Russian is a rather weird choice.
so all the people having doubts whether it is the right thing to do have given me second thoughts about studying Russian.

so if someone could answer a few questions for me to make me feel certain in my choice?:

- I think history class has given me an incorrect image about russia, it's said to be weak & subdue to communism, russian are supposed to be poor, and rude: I'm quite certain some people would like to refute these statements?

- is there a need of interpreters English/Dutch/French <-> Russian

- can someone estimate the percentage of russians who are able to speak a foreign language ( such as dutch/french/english ) ?

- could a Dutch speaking person stay in Russia for lets say.. 1 year and be able to speak russian as if it were french? ( if u're Dutch and you spend a year in France you should be able to understand & communicate with the french )

- let's hypothesize Russia falls apart & the Russians move to europe, would they be able to learn the european languages without being tutored or would they still be speaking russian and will I consequently still have a job?




these might look like dumb questions but it's what's on my mind and I'd like them to be cleared before I make my final decision.
feel free to add me to your MSN ( rechtersok@hotmail.com )

thank you.

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Originally Posted by JonasL

I think history class has given me an incorrect image about russia, it's said to be weak & subdue to communism, russian are supposed to be poor, and rude:

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I think any history class gives very simplified information about any country and nation. Culture and history are very complex and difficult areas to be judged by so simple statements like “rude”, “poor” and so on. If you are interested in Russia try to find as many books about its history as you can. Russian sources, if translated, can be especially useful.
Russia wasn't weak under communism; it was strong country with powerful weaponry and autoritative international policy. Our “democratic” propaganda tells us that Soviet people were poor due to communism, but many who lived in the USSR tell that they had quite normal life (though maybe not very rich). Nowadays Russia constantly becomes poor and weak country because it is managed by morons. It still lives mainly because of oil trade and remainders of Soviet industry. Russians are the most polite people in the world but it seems that such hopeless situation makes them evil. This is my view on Russia, take it as you want.

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is there a need of interpreters English/Dutch/French <-> Russian

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Knowledge of English is quite useful thing in Russia especially if you work in an international company or translation agency. Sometimes French and German are required. As far as I know Dutch is not so popular.

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can someone estimate the percentage of russians who are able to speak a foreign language ( such as dutch/french/english

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According to izvestia.ru only 1.3% of Russians speak foreign language.

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could a Dutch speaking person stay in Russia for lets say.. 1 year and be able to speak russian as if it were french? ( if u're Dutch and you spend a year in France you should be able to understand & communicate with the french

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If you mean that Dutch is somehow similar to Russian (like it is a bit similar to French) then it is wrong. It is two different language groups. If you will communicate with Russians very actively then perhaps you will more or less speak and understand Russian. I think it more depends on a person than on your native language.

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let's hypothesize Russia falls apart & the Russians move to europe, would they be able to learn the european languages without being tutored or would they still be speaking russian and will I consequently still have a job?

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There are some Russian communities in Belgium. I don't know much about them but I suspect that they speak Russian between each other (as they do it on their internet forums). If Russians move to Europe abundantly then I almost sure that they will create their own Russian-speaking communities. Of course they will have to learn (more or less) Dutch, French and so on to speak with Europeans but they probably anyway will speak Russian with each other.

Wait for other answers. I'm not the only truth.

JonasL, honestly speaking, I don't think you will get rich by knowing Russian. Although... nobody can tell...

thanks for the replies so far, I must say I'm rather impressed by the intelligence on this forum, but then again I guess you're all older than me,

I'll be around to read some more replies
thanks in advance

By the way, Russia is in Europe.

English and Russian has lots of cognates (mostly modern day words like "computer" and "telephone")...Dutch is related to English which Russian has English cognates...plus Russian is a European language so it wont be as hard as learning Korean/Chinese.

I will have the oppertunity to learn Russian in college. I am still undecided of what to do in life...military or not...and which field (technical/non-tech). But if I go to the college I hope, I can at least minor in Russian, that will give me the oppertunity to have a nice career in which i can work internationally.

I suggest you dable in Russian for a bit, if you soak it right up then I guess you can choose a job translating stuff, you can always minor in Russian and major in something else...that will give you a broader range of options.

Jonas, I would suggest you not learn Russian(or any language, for that matter) for any reason other than a genuine interest in the language. If you're just learning it for job opportunities, you may not get that far before you realize you're not all that interested in it. But if you actually want to know more about Russia and the Russian language, then go ahead. No harm in learning a foreign language.

mhh, all negative replies

I don't want to go to like.. law school, there's 300 people in 1 class, you really need to excel if you want to achieve something in ur life,
in Russian class there's like 10 people, so when you graduate you'll be more or less unique.

I read someplace ( Encarta 2005 ) that the Netherlands is one of Russia's most important business associates, so that's positive + I know french / German / english, so there should be plenty of job opportunities ?

I can see you're all very motivated people and you learn languages because you love them, I love langauges aswell such as french & english, I'm the best in my class in those 2 and I've got a real feeling for languages, example: I don't use the english tenses I just feel what I'm supposed to use, same for french, I don't even know the rules, I just ... talk.. as if it were my mother tongue.

I don't know whether Russian will be that easy either, since you have dativ,akkusativ,genitiv,nominativ and 2 others
plus the cyrillic alphabet

but I don't really see another option since I'm rather shit at maths :(

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Originally Posted by JonasL

so when you graduate you'll be more or less unique.
(

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I' m afraid you will be not so unique as you think. There are a large number of Russians who emigrated to Western countries in the last decade. I know that there is also a significant community in Belgium and the Netherlands.
These people will always be in advantage because their native language is Russian and as they lived for example in the Netherlands for 10 years they will have a level of fluency in the local language which will be hard for you to achieve by studying Russain in college.
One other point from my experience concerning jobs and knowledge of languages: It is implicitely assumed that you speak English. It is nice to know other languages as well but with the exception of a few very rare cases nobody is going to pay for that.
I met quite a number of colleagues which spoke all kinds of languages (mostly because the came from countries where thes languages where spoken). I don't know of one single case where this additional skills had a noticeable positive influence onto their carreers. If they were successfull in their jobs the reasons were there achievements in there area of expertise not because they spoke Arabic or Indonesian (or Russian).

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Originally Posted by JonasL

mhh, all negative replies

I don't want to go to like.. law school, there's 300 people in 1 class, you really need to excel if you want to achieve something in ur life,
in Russian class there's like 10 people, so when you graduate you'll be more or less unique.

I read someplace ( Encarta 2005 ) that the Netherlands is one of Russia's most important business associates, so that's positive + I know french / German / english, so there should be plenty of job opportunities ?

I can see you're all very motivated people and you learn languages because you love them, I love langauges aswell such as french & english, I'm the best in my class in those 2 and I've got a real feeling for languages, example: I don't use the english tenses I just feel what I'm supposed to use, same for french, I don't even know the rules, I just ... talk.. as if it were my mother tongue.

I don't know whether Russian will be that easy either, since you have dativ,akkusativ,genitiv,nominativ and 2 others
plus the cyrillic alphabet

but I don't really see another option since I'm rather @@@@ at maths :(

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One good byproduct of learning russian is that it will put the grammar of your other languages in perspective and youll probably understand the rules more in english and french. I wouldnt learn Russian for job opportunities. Hasn't helped me so far hehe. However if you are an entrepreneur, there are tons of opportunites if you have money to invest in small ventures, however risky that may be.

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Originally Posted by Старик

I' m afraid you will be not so unique as you think. There are a large number of Russians who emigrated to Western countries in the last decade. I know that there is also a significant community in Belgium and the Netherlands.

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indeed but no diploma = no job right? my parents are both lawyers and they tell me they need russian interpreters all the time ( in court ), now, my parents have this friend who emigrated from Russia, he's better than most interpreters but he still doesn't get to do the interpreting.
they have to bring an interpreter over from Brussels, which is about 100km away from where I live ( Hasselt )
just because he has a diploma.

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- can someone estimate the percentage of russians who are able to speak a foreign language ( such as dutch/french/english ) ?

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Please note the order in which he mentions them: Dutch, French, English.

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let's hypothesize Russia falls apart & the Russians move to europe

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If Russia "falls apart", people will simply stay in those "parts", they won't move anywhere. Anyway, how do you imagine this, Russia falling apart?

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, would they be able to learn the european languages without being tutored

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It's common knowledge that all Russians take to speaking foreign languages like a duck to water. Our powerful brains allow us to speak any language on Earth without having to study it first. I know it's not the same for you lot, though. Well, hard cheese.

I don't think it is a weird choice of languages to study.

I live in the US, and people think I'm pretty strange for wanting to study Russian, but it's in my heritage, so I don't see a problem. Technically, I should be studying Spanish, as that is the largest growing language in the area, or even German (alot of Germans where I live), but it's just not in my interest.

No "should"s or "shouldn't"s, man. The best language learning comes when you actually care about the language you're trying to learn. And although с. Хреново has a large Spanish-speaking population, there has never been a single situation where I actually wished I knew Spanish. But even if there was, I probably still wouldn't learn it.

Learning languages for a weird reason is anything but weird on this forum..

SideNote. Having some spare time I've recently started learning French for no obvious reason and when I was thinking which language to learn - Spanish, French or German somehow Spanish seemed least appealing to me . So , is it something about Spanish or is it just me?

Well, as for me, it's because 8349083094830 people already learn Spanish and it's kind of boring for me. If I was the type of person who learned languages that seemed more immediately useful, though(as opposed to languages I liked), I'd probably have learned it by now.

I just don't like the sound of Spanish. French and Italian are fine, but for some reason Spanich doesn't catch me.


Plus, Russian comes in handy when you least expect it. We had a Russian exchange student that spoke not one word of English when she came here, and I actually felt guilty I had not learned Russian when I first said I was going to. I could have helped her so much. Grr.

I think I'm gonna go for Chinese anyway, both countries(Russia,China) share my intrest and since Chinese is "the future" as everybody says, I guess i'll pick that then, It won't be easy but I think I can handle it.

Do you plan on actually going to China?

of course Pravit I have a belgian friend who recently moved to China
and he told me he liked it there, so why not?
I planned to go to Russia aswell after my studies so things haven't changed just because China is a bit further away

He likes it there? That's a new one. Or does he keep some blog where he complains about everything that isn't the same as in his home country? :D Anyhow, good luck if you actually do go to China.

вообще имхо от русского сплошной fun и никакой пользы :roll: причем fun такого толка, что не дай бог никакому почтенному европейцу

автору ветки это читать не обязательно

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Originally Posted by Aleph

Learning languages for a weird reason is anything but weird on this forum..

SideNote. Having some spare time I've recently started learning French for no obvious reason and when I was thinking which language to learn - Spanish, French or German somehow Spanish seemed least appealing to me . So , is it something about Spanish or is it just me?

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In the United States where I live a lot of people get turned off on Spanish because they resent the large Mexican population. It's actually pretty useful for me to know. I adore taking it (currently in highschool) and it inspired me to try to learn Russian. It's a good foreign language to get started on because I hear it's fairly simple compared to a lot of other languages, that and it's phonetic.

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Originally Posted by Pravit

He likes it there? That's a new one. Or does he keep some blog where he complains about everything that isn't the same as in his home country? :D Anyhow, good luck if you actually do go to China.

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China was a complete disaster for me for the two days i was there

That's the spirit!

well he didn't like it when he just got there, but he does like it now

The weird thing is that all the expats I know of generally adore Thailand but talk about having a terrible time in China. There are even several more-or-less famous singers in Thailand that were originally from Europe.

Know why I started studying Russian?

I had just finished my junior year in high school and my best ham radio buddy, a year older than me, told me he was going to take Russian his first year in college, and why didn't I take Russian too, so then we would be able to talk to each other in Russian over the air. having completed 3 years of Spanish with straight A's and already signed up for my 4th year, naive me said "Why not?" instead of "Say what??!!"

So there I was a senior, in 4th year Spanish and 1st year Russian. Fortunately had a good teacher, a recently immigrated ленинградец, who would bring his accordion to class and teach us songs. Right away my Spanish teacher mentioned smth about how my accent was getting worse. It was all those unstressed o's I think.

Next topic.

Found these interesting bits in my mail and on the web today:

Categories of Difficulty of Second Language for Americans
(i.e., Native Language = English)

Russian is a category 3 language (requiring more than 700 hours of classroom instruction to attain advanced level proficiency), whereas French and Spanish are category 1 and German category 2 languages. Students of French, German and Spanish often have substantial learning experiences before coming to college; with the elimination of many Russian programs on the high school level in the US, the same cannot be said of college-level students of Russian.

https://depts.washington.edu/llc/main/p ... tands.html

1 = Category 1 languages (e.g., Spanish, French, Swedish)
2 = Category 2 languages (e.g., Gerrman)
3 = Category 3 languages (e.g., Russian)
4 = Category 4 languages (e.g., Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Arabic)
L = Latin (and other classical languages)

Swedish, anyone?

A Ceiling Effect in Traditional Classroom Foreign Language Instruction: Data from Russian. Benjamin Rifkin, MLJ 3/2005, vol. 89, pp.3-18.

ABSTRACT
This article compares previous language gain studies in foreign languages with new data on language gain in the instructed second language acquisition of Russian. The acquisition of listening, reading, speaking, and writing proficiency shows a significant correlation not only with hours of classroom instruction in immersion and nonimmersion settings, but also with grammatical competence. The data suggest that there is a ceiling effect in traditional classroom foreign language instruction.

Im going to try to take summer courses in Russian at a different university than the one ill be going to (Russian isnt offered at my college).


anyway, i did read an article a while ago about how one elementry school in Alaska is teaching russian to 1st graders.

I also get Russian at my study. I study european studies. Here they think russian is an important language to learn. Last year a few eastern-european countries have joined the eu, so russia is getting closer and closer, especially when it comes to economic relations. I think it's definitely not useless to study russian! Just look at how big this country is!

My advice: don't listen to the people who don't know anything about Russia and go study what you would like to do!! :wink:

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Originally Posted by Aleph

Learning languages for a weird reason is anything but weird on this forum..

SideNote. Having some spare time I've recently started learning French for no obvious reason and when I was thinking which language to learn - Spanish, French or German somehow Spanish seemed least appealing to me . So , is it something about Spanish or is it just me?

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Yea, same with me. I have no desire to ever learn Spanish. It just doesn't appeal to me. I take French and German at school; I don't take them for a career advancment just because I am interested in the literature and the culture. I think in order to learn a language you have to be truly interested in their culture and history. If that's not the case then you will, in my opinion, a difficult time mastering somthing in which you are not facinated.


Actually, Sylvie, I think there is a greater chance of me turning into a bird than Russia wanting to join the EU.

I like your attitude, Nikolai!

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Originally Posted by Pravit

No "should"s or "shouldn't"s, man. The best language learning comes when you actually care about the language you're trying to learn. And although с. Хреново has a large Spanish-speaking population, there has never been a single situation where I actually wished I knew Spanish. But even if there was, I probably still wouldn't learn it.

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I'm glad someone said it. I live in central Florida and Spanish would be a very useful language to know due to the influence of puerto rican, dominican, and cuban cultures. However, I have been drawn to the Russian language and culture for quite some time and recently have begun to learn it. I have some background in Latin so it doesn't appear to be too difficult, but that is probably because I have a genuine interest in learning it. Think of a new language as a new relationship - money will not buy love. Learn the language because you want to know how to speak it and not for any other reason.

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Originally Posted by GKnight

Think of a new language as a new relationship - money will not buy love. Learn the language because you want to know how to speak it and not for any other reason.

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Exactly. I'm finding Russian "easy" to learn because I'm very much motivated, and encouraged by the fact that I'm able to get most of the difficult sounds down correct from the beginning, and there's a lot of lightbulbs going off in my mind.

I'm the kind of person who needs to read material several times before I truly understand it, and that is in fact benefiting me much so as it does help in memorizing aspects of the language, for instance, the present tense of the verbs, congugations I and II. If you throw an nominative pronoun at me, I can now sort of roll off the matching ending of the verb. And the verb if that is thrown at me as well (at least those that I know at this point).

Sometimes I even dream of going back to school to get a second degree, this time in Russian . . .

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Originally Posted by JonasL

I don't know whether Russian will be that easy either, since you have dativ,akkusativ,genitiv,nominativ and 2 others
plus the cyrillic alphabet

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If you've already learned English and French to a good standard, then I don't think that Russian will be much more difficult. The Cyrillic alphabet is quite easy to learn and is very consistent - a lot more consistent than English or French.

As for the cases, they decline quite regularly (most of the time) and it's pretty easy to understand when to use which one. Verbs aren't too much hassle, and adjectives are easy, so I think you should be fine.

I think that the Russian language appears more scary to people who haven't learnt it than it really is. Once you get into it, you shouldn't have any problems at all ...

... and if you do, of course, you can always come to us for help! :D :D :D

I think French actually has very consistent spelling(much more so than English). People just get turned off by the accents acutes and graves and apostrophes.

The important thing, IMO, if you already know one foreign language, try to get out of comparing Russian to a language you already know. Everyone loves doing it, because they can feel themselves at least an "expert" in the one language they know and compare to it(well, since it's this way in French...), but trust me, it's best to just treat Russian as a seperate language, despite any similarities you may see at first.