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About LinkBacksJapanese. It has postpositions.Originally Posted by V
Japanese. It has postpositions.
Big difference
Сюда нужно смотреть. И слушать, что я говорю.
Ahhh, but those postpositions are in the form of particles, which are an intrinsic part of the Japanese language and contain much more scope than just their postpositional use, as well as being a lignuistic oddity not found in any other language (so far as I have been lead to believe anyway).
Hi I am new and I feel like jumping into this conversation. I speak Spanish pretty well and I watch the Spanish HBO sometimes and I found I can understand the movies pretty well when they are dubbed into Spanish. It must be something about the dubbing process that makes it easier to understand. A movie in orignal Spanish is harder though and I have to pay attention much more intensely. So my suggestion would be to find movies originally in Russian dubbed into English. Start there and then go to movies originally made in English.
The more difficult something is to learn the more I want to learn it. I guess that makes me a masochist.
Espesially those films that you know by heartИван Васильевич, Свадьба в малиновке, все фильмы с Шуриком + у каждого есть еще и свои.
the subject verb agreement in English is almost non existent , esp in the simple past tense, for all the other tenses all you have ot learn is the s ending for the third person singular in the simpel present and how to "congugate" do have and to be in all the tenses cuz these are used to form analitical verb forms like perfec, progressive and perfect progressive and that's abt it, the only language that is probably even easier than english to learn would be esperanto but it's a planned language and it has no exceptions, even though its verbs do conjugate and words agree with each other much more than in english so you can toss them around in a sentence the way you likeHow is it easier to learn english. I grew up here i america and i hate english. You have to worry about perfect phasing, subject-verb agreement, prepositions. Of course, once you've gotten rid of all that stuff it's just words. We can't leave out words like in Spanish. The onlything close to leaving a word out is the understood you. (Fror people who don't know what i'm talking about with "the understood you" it's like this. In the sentance "Go shut the door" the subject is not the door but "you". It is simpley understood that the sentance is directed to you.)(not to mention English is just a much easier language to learn than most others)
English is rough for a few reasons:
Veyr strict word order
Many irregular verb forms
Spelling is completely inconsistent
Single negatives only
However, the grammar is much simpler than most languages. Conjugation of verbs is almost nonexistent. Learn 3rd-sing. and present part. and past part. and you're done!!! Then all you need are the complementary verbs, and you can conjugate anything!
Second, besides pronouns and plurals, there is absolutely no noun conjugation or gender!!! Russian has six or more cases and 4 declensions, Spanish has two (or 3) genders.
"The thing wrote a thing to the other thing with the thing on the thing's thing." Try that in Russian without a month of intense study!
Third: with the exception of "to", most of our prepositions are straightforward, and do not change in meaning from phrases to phrase. It's easy to make strict rules for preposition use in English.
I've heard that Swedish is fairly easy to learn, kind of like English with consistent spelling. Can anyone confirm?
I heard the opposite abt Swedish, that it's more like German and German is almost like Russian, as for the reasons why english may not be that easy for some people that you outlined, I'd say there are certain limitations on the word order but you can't say it's strickt like you can say I've never seen that man over there before, or you can say never before have I see that man over there, or you can say that man over there, I've never seen him before, so there is a certain degree of freedome to how you arrange words in sentences in english.
The number of irregular verbs is not that great, plus some of them are kind of dying out, like in the UK you might still hear someone say she leant against a tree, or I learnt a lot of new words but I take it the standard US would be she leaned against a tree and I learned a lot of new wrods.
spelling , true it's a nightmare
signle negatives only? well some people seem not to know abt it thats probably why they say things like it ain't not good and she ain't never coming back and hit the road Jack and dontcha come back no more
and the pros are obvious.
Your example sentence does not make sense to me as an English speaker. Can you rewrite with real nouns instead of "thing" so I can get the gist of what you are saying.
I think English is a very difficult language because we have so many words and many more nuances in our language that does not exist in other languages. You really have to learn almost each word one at a time and our words can be nouns and verbs without any changes in spelling.
What time is it?
I am going to run the 50 yard dash will you time me?
Also English speakers are more tolerant of bad English than speakers of other languages which make it seem that English is not as difficult.
I am in the baby stages of Russian but even with the declensions and ending changes I think it is easier than English.
The more difficult something is to learn the more I want to learn it. I guess that makes me a masochist.
I think that English is an easy language to become comprehensible in, and a very, very difficult language to master. You don't have to know all of English's ridiculous spellings and verb forms in order to be understood, which is good, because when the past tense of "feel" is "felt" but the past tense of "reel" is "reeled"...well...it comes down to memorization, and it's hard to memorize every single verb you'll be using. Luckily, if you said "I feeled sick yesterday" every English speaker would understand you. You'd be wrong, but understood. And understanding is what really counts, right?
it's probably because you're in the baby stages of Russian that you think english has more nuances than other languages, plus to a native speaker their own language will always seem to be more difficult to learn than any other after they get asked a few questions abt their language by foreigners who are studying it, natives are proficient at making the right choices in concrete contexts but they're almost always at a loss when it comes to generalizations abt their own langauge so it seems to them that there are only nuances and exceptions in their language, like elsewhere in this forum I wrote that russian only consists of exceptions and I was being honest whenever I was typing that because this is the way russian looks to me from the inside and to me english seems easier to learn than russian cause I learned to speak russian over a period of several years by endless repetition and imitation and listening to it being spoken and it took me more than two years before I was able to put together my first decent sentence in Russian, a sentence other people could understand that is, and it only took me a few minute's worth of reading an english grammar book before I was able to say my name is Igor which is a good english sentence. i have at one point had to face this problem where I had to learn one word at a time because of the crazy spelling, I'd come across a new word reading a text and I would guess its meaning from the context but I had to look it up in a dictionary anyway cuz I had no clue as to how to say it the right way. This nightmare went on for a few weeks until I found a really good book that had a very good course on how to read english, the course took up something like 100 pages or a bit more but aftet completing it I was able to get the pronoinciation right in 70-75% of cases, in English, just like in Russian the key to correct pronounciation is the stress, if you know where to stress the word you'll get it right and just like in Russian there's no rule abt where to put the stress but unlike russian english the majority of words tend to be short, one - two syllables. The thing abt one and the same word acting as different parts of speech in different context (the techincal term for this is conversion) is actually no problem in fact it even makes things easier sometimes, at least it certainly does make for more meaning getting fit in shorter sentences which is one of the coolest things abt english. Tolerance of bad language is present in Russian also come to Moscow and check out the Cherkisovskyi market, there's a lot of tolerance of poor Russian in that place cause most of the vendors are non native speakers. I think the biggest diffculty with any language is not the language itself but how people speak it, lots of people who are very proficient at reading texts, or listening to news bulletins or e-mail communication cease to understand anything when it comes to following simple short dialog exchanges like in the kitchen or in movies, let alone police or fire brigade radio exchanges.Your example sentence does not make sense to me as an English speaker. Can you rewrite with real nouns instead of "thing" so I can get the gist of what you are saying.
I think English is a very difficult language because we have so many words and many more nuances in our language that does not exist in other languages. You really have to learn almost each word one at a time and our words can be nouns and verbs without any changes in spelling.
What time is it?
I am going to run the 50 yard dash will you time me?
Also English speakers are more tolerant of bad English than speakers of other languages which make it seem that English is not as difficult.
I am in the baby stages of Russian but even with the declensions and ending changes I think it is easier than English.
No, it isn't possible to learn a language by watching TV. This is a popular misconception, but alas science has evidence to the contrary. Hang on, wait a minute, but how do babies learn? The answer is simple - babies pick up their mother tongue because adults interact with them. Do you Brits acquire an American accent from watching American films on your TV? Nope. Why? Well, do you talk to your telly? Those who do: I'd like to see a transcript of your recent meaningful conversation.(tellies which take voice commands don't count, so don't post conversations such as 'Hallmark' - 'Yessir!'
What watching TV can do is improve your listening comprehension skills. That Russian guy in Canada, I bet he wasn't just sitting on his backside watching TV all day, I bet he was out and putting what he had heard to practice.
I have been watching satellite TV in English for the last 5 or so years and yes, it has helped me a lot, but if I hadn't gone to English language classes and done a lot of formal grammar and vocabulary work I wouldn't be able to enjoy English language programming to the full now.
So here's my advice to anyone thinking about subscribing to Russian channels or getting video tapes: by all means do so, but don't think that that alone will be enough - you'll still have to work on your grammar, vocabulary, speaking, etc.
Show yourself - destroy our fears - release your mask
Your example sentence does not make sense to me as an English speaker. Can you rewrite with real nouns instead of "thing" so I can get the gist of what you are saying.
I think English is a very difficult language because we have so many words and many more nuances in our language that does not exist in other languages. You really have to learn almost each word one at a time and our words can be nouns and verbs without any changes in spelling.
What time is it?
I am going to run the 50 yard dash will you time me?
Also English speakers are more tolerant of bad English than speakers of other languages which make it seem that English is not as difficult.
I am in the baby stages of Russian but even with the declensions and ending changes I think it is easier than English.
"The girl wrote a letter to the boy with the pencil on the teacher's desk." In Russian, you would have to use all six declensions, plus you would have at least 2 genders!!
I think English is a very difficult language because we have so many words and many more nuances in our language that does not exist in other languages.
This is true!! English has, for most nouns and adjectives, two different words for every one word in other languages. This is due to our double roots: Germanic and Romance. It's also due to our unhesitancy to borrow additional words when necessary, unlike French.
I agree, this makes English harder to MASTER, because the vocabulary is double. But it does not make it harder to speak English. It also gives English writers an advantage: our language is more descriptive, and carries more nuances within written words. Other languages may reflect these nuances with stress.
"words can be nouns and verbs without any changes in spelling"
Exactly!! It's simpler that way. The only hard part ( mentioned before) is that you have to locate the word in the sentence. And our location rules are strict, so it's easy.
Whaaaaaa'? English has more nuances than Russian? Dream on! I can assure you that as you're making progress in Russian you will be finding more and more nuances. In fact, I don't think it's possible to compare the two languages at all. IMHO only a balanced bilingual with a PhD in linguistics is qualified enough to make such sweeping generalisations. And how many balanced bilinguals are there on this forum? Zilch. (Note: the word balanced here is the key. The thing is that the vast majority of people who consider themselves bilingual aren't balanced bilinguals - one language always dominates. In fact, balanced bilinguals can exist only in test tubes. The social environment around us will always insure that one language becomes dominant.)
A bit off topic:
They say that it's easier to master languages which are closely related to your own. Well, I tried to learn Polish once. I thought my native Russian would help. It didn't. It even made things harder. While I could understand short simple dialogs in Polish because it basically sounds like broken Russian with a strange accent (any Poles here, no offence, I know you extract the urine out of Russian too), when I got to do advanced stuff I realised that my Russian was constantly getting under my feet. I was constantly making wrong assumptions about words and grammar and producing words and grammar patterns that didn't exist. If I hadn't known any Russian I would've learnt those things the "honest" way and wouldn't've had any problems.
Show yourself - destroy our fears - release your mask
I never said English has more nuances than Russian, or any other language. We just have more WORDS, which allows for more WRITTEN nuances with respect to the meaning of an individual word.
Per Denning and Leben, this is the rough count of base words in some common languages:
English: 460,000
German: 200,000
French: 150,000
Russian: 130,000
Note that this doesn't include endings, such as the Russian declensions. To confirm this, note that the major unabridged dictionaries in English have well over 400,000 entries. Are there Russian dictionaries with that many entries??
English is also very efficient. Look at the "Rosetta Stone" of directions on any internationally marketed product. Count the words in English vs. any other language. We have less. Why?
Because we freely allow creation of new words as necessary. Note that the English word count well-exceeds that of French & German combined. That's because we make up words every day. Software, hardware, hatchback, antilock, autoimmune, normalcy, inbox, email, snailmail, catch-22, scrunchy, binky, microwave, downsize, outsource, mallrat, nerd, laserjet, buckyball, microbrew, rent-a-cop, port-a-john, jumpstart, minivan. Many other languages require two words, and won't merge them to make a new meaning.
Plus, we allow adjectives at will. A "baby-changing station" in English is "a station for changing diapers of babies" in many other languages. "Antilock brakes" become "brakes with a system to prevent locking".
English is horrible to spell, and restrictive in sentence form, to the point of stifling certain logical constructions. However, it makes up for this in efficiency of words, and a much-larger vocabulary than most languages out there.
And many others will. In Finnish you can make an entire sentence (subject + verb + direct object) out of one word. In Esperanto I could basically just keep adding prefixes and suffixes to a root until I had a very, very, very specific (and very, very, very long) verb (or noun or adjective or adverb or whatever).Many other languages require two words, and won't merge them to make a new meaning.
And do I even want to know what the hell a binky is?
I never said you did. And more words you don't have because it doesn't matter how many words there are in dictionaries, what counts is how many words an educated native speaker knows. Now, to suggest that a native speaker of English can operate more words than a native speaker of Russian or German or French or Dutch etc, would be simply preposterous. Average educated native speakers of all languages know something in the order of 20,000 words.I never said English has more nuances than Russian, or any other language. We just have more WORDS, which allows for more WRITTEN nuances with respect to the meaning of an individual word.
Well, from what I remember my old Ozhegov Russian monolingual dictionary had something like 600,000 of base words and there are lots of words that we use every day that you couldn't find in it....Per Denning and Leben, this is the rough count of base words in some common languages:
English: 460,000
German: 200,000
French: 150,000
Russian: 130,000
Note that this doesn't include endings, such as the Russian declensions. To confirm this, note that the major unabridged dictionaries in English have well over 400,000 entries. Are there Russian dictionaries with that many entries??
The thing is that English has a long-standing tradition of including mainstream dialect and slang words into dictionaries which we hardly ever do. You lot a better at compiling dictionaries, I agree, and this makes you jump to conclusions about other languages.
Not always... But generally yes. But still in most cases that's because of poor quality Russian translation. I have always been able to edit the Russian translation to make it noticeably shorter than the English originalEnglish is also very efficient. Look at the "Rosetta Stone" of directions on any internationally marketed product. Count the words in English vs. any other language. We have less. Why?
So do we - we're inventing new words all the time. Not to mention the power of diminutive and whatcha call'em what do the opposite suffixes in Russian. (I bet of all other Indo-European languages only Afrikaans can rival Russian in this respect and only due to the fact that they can add such suffixes to verbs and other parts of speech, not only nouns and adjectives). Now, can English boast such a powerful mechanism? Alas, English can't even compete with Dutch and Plattdeutsch in this respect.Because we freely allow creation of new words as necessary. Note that the English word count well-exceeds that of French & German combined. That's because we make up words every day. Software, hardware, hatchback, antilock, autoimmune, normalcy, inbox, email, snailmail, catch-22, scrunchy, binky, microwave, downsize, outsource, mallrat, nerd, laserjet, buckyball, microbrew, rent-a-cop, port-a-john, jumpstart, minivan. Many other languages require two words, and won't merge them to make a new meaning.
I bet in languages like German and Danish a "baby-changing station" will actually be one word. As for "antilock brakes" I need to check this with my neighbour - I believe the last time we spoke he used a short monosyllabic word for them.....Plus, we allow adjectives at will. A "baby-changing station" in English is "a station for changing diapers of babies" in many other languages. "Antilock brakes" become "brakes with a system to prevent locking".
I'm afraind this is wishful thinking. There isn't a word in English for which there is no Russian equivalent or shortcut and vice versa. All European languages have equal power of expression.English is horrible to spell, and restrictive in sentence form, to the point of stifling certain logical constructions. However, it makes up for this in efficiency of words, and a much-larger vocabulary than most languages out there.
A bit of an off-topic: this may come as a shock to you, but there are dialects in Russian where they use articles (sic!). You won't read about this in any textbook I bet. Most native speakers, however, don't know about this either. These articles are a bit like in Scandinavian languages - they are added to words instead of preceeding them.
Show yourself - destroy our fears - release your mask
What are the articles used?
Only learning Russian now, so I can't say for them,
BUT, with respect to Spanish vs. English, English has way more words, hands down. In many cases, two English words translate directly to only one Spanish word. The average English speaker uses more different words than the average Spanish speaker because MORE WORDS ARE AVAILABLE.
This doesn't mean that Spanish speakers are any less expressive, it just means that they convey the same meaning using fewer words, or by using combinations of words to express what in English is done with a single word.
For example, there is no word in Spanish for "toes". Weird, huh? But it's true. They convey exactly the same meaning with the phrase "dedos del pie", which literally means "fingers of the foot". Same goes for toenail, it is "fingernail of the foot".
Plus, we steal words from Spanish and give them secondary meanings in English. In Spanish, "mesa" is table, or a table-like geologic structure. In English, "mesa" only means the geologic structure, and "mesa-like" means shaped like a mesa, as opposed to "table-like", meaning shaped like a literal table. Poof! Spanish has one word, we have two.
So in Spanish, "a toe-like structure" would be a "una estructura como un dedo del pie".
They make do with less words, by generating phrases to accomodate. English, OTOH, just steals new words: schadenfreude, RSVP, je ne sais quois, smorgasboard, shlep, vamoose, mesa, fjord, duvet, fleur-de-lis, maize.
someone mentioned dialects of russian that use articles. which?
also, if you'll notice, almost all langauges that have had some contact with each other will "steal" words from one another. i noticed in a lot of languages they felt the need to say some form of "hello" when using a telephone even if they wouldn't use it in ordinary greetings. plus all the new technology words are usually "stolen" from english. "fad" words from english are often used as well, other miscellaneous words you will see pop up...in german and japanese especially you will see a lot of 'loan-words' from english.
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