Thread: Easier to learn: French or Russian?

Allo!

J'habite a Montreal, et je suis pas mal bilingue entre anglais et francais. (je m'excuse pour les accents!) Je commence a apprendre la russe. Lequel est la plus facile a apprendre?

I live in Montreal, and I'm pretty much bilingual (English & French). I'm just starting to learn Russian. I'm just wondering which is easier to learn?

A prochaine chicane!

Мило

P.S. For Admin person... how come French accents get encoded? i.e. "Allo" should have a 'hat' on the "o", but it comes out like "Allô".

salut..

I have voted for French with the obvious proviso that I mean for native English speakers. The same would, fairly obviously, apply to speakers of the other members of the Romance group of languages (Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Romanian .. +?).
I'd be interested to see what speakers of German think?

I'm going to go with French, although I may be biased since I speak French okay and I'm a rank beginner at Russian... but French has a lot more words that sound like English, so it's easier to guess at

Originally Posted by Saavedra

but French has a lot more words that sound like English, so it's easier to guess at

It is the other way around, actually.

I disagree totally with bad manners. English is more than half Latin and French by origin, meaning many of the words are similar to English words (although not usually the most commonly used words e.g. "cheval" means horse in French and "cavalry" means the horses in the army in English). However, Russian similar words are often modern words such as telephone, airport and businessman etc.

Originally Posted by Oddo

I disagree totally with bad manners. English is more than half Latin and French by origin, meaning many of the words are similar to English words (although not usually the most commonly used words e.g. "cheval" means horse in French and "cavalry" means the horses in the army in English). However, Russian similar words are often modern words such as telephone, airport and businessman etc.

You're actually agreeing with me. "The other way around" meant it was English words that sounded like French (not French like English), because they were taken from French and Latin.

Ah - are you a native english speaker, because french words still sound like english words even if it is the english words that are derived from the french!

Originally Posted by Oddo

Ah - are you a native english speaker, because french words still sound like english words even if it is the english words that are derived from the french!

Yup. "Engagement", in French, sounds distinctively English.

I'd be interested to see what speakers of German think?

I am one

I recommend russian to everyone who tells me that French is soooo terribly hard to learn, to realize what 'hard' really means! Especially, on french.about.com they complain about the terrible french agreement system ... and french has only 2 genders and no cases!

Of course, french has a conjugation which can drive you made. Compare:
[i]je crois que le fran

Hej, hallo! Ich spreche nur ein bisschen Deutsch, aber nat

[quote]Wenn ich Fehler mache, bitte erz

GAHHHH!!! I knew the "sich freuen" thing! One of those temporary lapses of idiocy, my apologies. Perhaps we should continue this conversation in the German forums...

I would agree that French is the more difficult language. Though, before i started formal french instruction, my father taught it to me in the way that i would expect other familys with a strong connection to their origins would... Since i did not grow up in a russian family, but have recently gained some russian-speaking family and have always had native speakers for friends... I do have a bit of an advantage when i am learning the new language. Being that i started to learn languages so young (as my family is also italian), they come easier to me. I'd go so far as to say that japanese is easier than russian, as well, and that is not exactly an "easy" language either. I think what makes a language easy or hard depends on your native tongue, and how often you hear the other language. I don't know if i have just made any sort of intelligent contribution to this conversation, or if i just felt like typing, but either way... I'm in a good mood.

sorry, that last post was me... can't figure out this thing... if it doesn't show up, my name is SpeakRussiantome

sorry, that last post was me... can't figure out this thing... if it doesn't show up, my name is SpeakRussiantome

Try logging in

Oui, je pense qu'il depend. Je parle espagnole aussi *je suis mexicaine* est le francais et assez facile pour moi...plus facile que le russe. Et si on parle anglais aussi, le francais est tout comme meme plus facil non?! Je trouve que le russe est possiblement le langue le plus dificile du monde a mon avis! Mais je l'aime!

Je pense que francais est le plus facile. En fait, j'estime que l'allemand et (Russian, je ne sais pas le mot ) sont un peu similaire, a cause de tout les (cases,) etcetera.

vous etes d'accord?

le premiere mot est cas, je pense.

aussi, c'est russe.

Felicitations, moi!

I believe French is so much easier to learn than Russian. I love languages but have only studied a little. I just finished my 4th year of French, my first year of Spanish and I started learning Russian last summer. Perhaps I believe French is the easiest because it is the language I am presently most familiar with (save English).

What makes Russian so difficult for me is trying to speak without an American accent and trying to understand cases and all the other grammer things I am just starting to learn about. The conjugation of verbs doesn't bother me but...conjugating other things....woo! Way above my head right now....

Being a french native speaker, my opinion does not really matters. Nevertheless I feel Russian is more difficult overall.

Mainly due to

cases and all the irregularities.
imperfecive/perfective
moving stress