# Forum Learning Russian Language Getting Started with Russian  English.... worst language.... ever!

## Loki

Well, perhaps not a constructive post this but...  
Read in a post regarding the ш щ controversy and sombody posted that it must be terrible to have English as your native langauge.  Thinging about it i think its great.  It means youve learnt one of the hardest languages in the world already when young (when the langauge center of your brain is still active) and it means when older there are only easier languages to learn (well, apart from latin which i understand to be an evil language, but hey, is not like people use latin much).  Always makes me laugh the scene in Money Pythons Life of Brian where John Cleese plays the Roman centurion and is correcting Brian's Latin where he has been writing Romans go home. 
Back towards my topic though and there are obviously advantages to learning say spanish as native tongue because then its easy to learn italian, or if you already have german then easy to learn dutch, russian then ukranian etc.... well, at least in my understanding.

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## Pravit

English is really not a hard language. The spelling is absurd, but besides that and some strange idiomatic constructions as well as "verb + preposition" things like "take on, take out, take off" and so on, it's really not that difficult compared to other languages. Sorry I don't have a lot of time for a traditional detailed response, but I'm rather tired right now.

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## Dogboy182

Yea, that's true pravit. 
All when i was growing up everyone always told me that english is the hardest language to learn and man english is so hard and confusing... when in reality, it's not that bad. 
I think i'd rather be russian learning english than english learning russian. 
Besides, if someone in a non speaking english country wants to learn english, they start learning in like 1st grade... so they are just as fluent as any 15 year old ameriacn / britain by the time they are 15 (If you don't believe me talk to V !) 
All the german foriegn exchange students said if someone wants, they can get good at english in about a year...  
And also, like pravit said, the only thing that might be a bit stupid is the spelling, but, look at french, its spelling is pretty out of whack too, but it's probly not much harder  (or easier) than english. 
I think the only people english (Or any europians language would be hard for) is people from asain language decent. I couldn't imaging being chinsese, reading symbols, and having only one verb tense, and then all of a suddon have all these crazy letters making words and crazy crazy crap. And vise versa... i think asian languages (or perhaps arabic) are the hardest for people of europian language decent to learn.

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## JJ

Pravit, you forget about awfull English tense system.    

> All the german foriegn exchange students said if someone wants, they can get good at english in about a year...

 BTW, English is a language of the German language group. Don't you think that russans will be worse if they will try to study any slavic language?  ::  It is not so hard, just try to read any ukrainian, serbian, polish, bulgarian etc texts or sites, i guarantee you can understand up to 70% of them.

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## Pravit

JJ, that may be true, but let's compare the conjugation of "to go" in English and Russian(we'll just use идти for it instead of one of the many other Russian verbs of motion   ::  ) 
to go
-------
I go
You go
He/she/it goes
You go
We go
They go 
идти
------
Я иду
Ты идёшь
Он/она/оно идёт
Вы идёте
Мы идём
Они идут 
Although Russian verb endings can be learned quickly enough, you've got to agree Russian has more irregular verbs than English does, where the rule is (almost) always "Same as infinitve for everything except 3rd person." Not to mention having to bother with perfective/imperfective, I'd say that English really isn't that bad at all, is it? Of course, you get into "he went" and "he has gone" and that may very well be one of the more difficult features of the language. But seriously, you can get away with saying the "went" form(what is it called, past simple or something?) almost all the time without being wrong. It will only cause a slight change in meaning but won't cause you to be flat-out incorrect like in Russian. 
"Have you been to foreign countries?"
"I've been to Russia" 
"I was in Russia" 
Although the first is more correct, you could get away with the second one without being wrong. If a native speaker of English said the second one in response to the question it wouldn't sound strange at all(although they might perceive it as being more "wrong" if it came from someone who isn't). I must admit the use of "to" with "have been" is a little strange, but Russian has a lot of quirks with cases and prepositions you use with verbs as well. 
"Did you go to the store yet?"
"I did."
"I went."
"I went already."
Again, the first is more correct, because using "do" is sort of like asking for "yes/no." The second could be said without being wrong. It's just that it sounds neutral(as does "I was" in the first example). The third makes the second feel a little more natural, because the response needed here is something that really answers the "yes/no" of the question. 
Overall, I've noticed with English that most of the time you can string something together or guess and most of the time you'll be right. Whereas in Russian, you'll *always* be wrong if you guess!

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## Dogboy182

> BTW, English is a language of the German language group. Don't you think that russans will be worse if they will try to study any slavic language?  It is not so hard, just try to read any ukrainian, serbian, polish, bulgarian etc texts or sites, i guarantee you can understand up to 70% of them.

 Russian and ukrainian ando ther slavic langauges are like 500 times closer to each other than german and english are. So, not much of an argument there.   

> "Did you go to the store yet?"
> "I did."
> "I went."
> "I went already."
> Again, the first is more correct, because using "do" is sort of like asking for "yes/no."

 Hmm. I would 99% of the time answer, "I already went".

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## vino

> "Did you go to the store yet?" 
> "I did." 
> "I went." 
> "I went already."

 
I actually would answer "I did."  I would use "I already went" if the question was "WHEN are you going to the store?"

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## JJ

First of all, I never said that Russian is a perfect language. Secondly, guys, English is not so perfect and easy, as you think, too.    

> you've got to agree Russian has more irregular verbs than English does, where the rule is (almost) always "Same as infinitve for everything except 3rd person."

 Actually, I never saw "The Irregular Russian Verbs Table" in the dictionaries, but I saw the English and the German ones.  ::  About your example - "иду, идёшь, идёт, идём, идёте"/go,go,goes - can you get what they're talking about if you've missed a pronoun in English?  ::    

> Of course, you get into "he went" and "he has gone" and that may very well be one of the more difficult features of the language.

 The most difficult feature, I would say, and also using the articles, the differences in grammar and pronouncation too - I mean American/British/Australian etc English.  ::      

> Although the first is more correct, you could get away with the second one without being wrong....but Russian has a lot of quirks with cases and prepositions you use with verbs as well.

 Well, I think it is not quite correct example. As a native speaker I get Armenian, Azerbaijanian, Georgian and especially Chinise local market-place sellers quite well and you even cannot imagine how they can distort the Russian language.  ::  But IMO grammatically correct speaking is hard reachable in both languages. Even you make mistakes in Russian sometime.  

> Overall, I've noticed with English that most of the time you can string something together or guess and most of the time you'll be right. Whereas in Russian, you'll *always* be wrong if you guess!

 What a coincidence in our opinions! I've noticed the same with Russian!  ::     

> ...slavic langauges are like 500 times closer to each other than german and english are..

 Yeah, sure. Ich habe - I have, Ich bin - I am, water - wasser, come here - komm her ... and so on. They are realy diffrent languges.

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## a true arab

As an arab, I think English is easer than Russain in terms of pronunciation, and grammar structure. On the other hand, Russian has more powerful descriptive tools and a solid and more precise grammatical structure in terms of verb conjugation and the grammatical role each word plays(declension, by the way Arabic has the most perfect declension ever). Regarding, my own experience, I have learned English when I was 11 years old own my own I used books, listened to BBC, watched TV because I have an interest in languages and other cultures. as a result, I scored High marks in English courses and I passed the Michigan Test easily. The russian is my new love and actually I have tried to learn it before and I bought a book that dissappointed me because of its preface where the author mentioned the declension obstacle but when I found this forum it gave me a new hope. I do respect english and Russian and I think in learning languages you should have some motives such as strong desire, struggle, and of course love. You should love the language in order to immesre your self in it. On last thing, English and Russian are easy to learn languages( millions of English and russian non- native speakers all over the world do not have Genius Minds,) and they worth doing so. Just begin andd think of the knowledge you will acquire by mastering these languages and the cultures you will be exposed to. By the way, Arabic is a language that when learned will inspire your imagination because it has mathematical grammar and the most beautiful calligraphy, the best phonetic system and thousands of descriptive and distinct words.  ::   ( Its my mother tongue !do not blame me)

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## Dogboy182

OK JJ. Since you're the german master obviously you know if a german were to come to america and have no idea of the english language, and try to stop someone on the street and ask for something. He'd get nowhere, unless he found someone who speaks german. 
Let's look at this example. 
*German* Wo ist die schule ? bitte ?
*American* huh ?
*German* Kennen sie wo die schule ist ?
*American* Yea, ok... Bye. 
Even in your examples, ich habe, ich bin.... they sound NOTHING Like the english "I have" "I am", and there is no way you would just understand them with no knowledge of german. 
And, if a Russian were to have no knowledge of ukrainian, he could get by just fine in ukrain. 
English. I love you
German. Ich liebe dich
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Russian Я люблю тебя
Ukrainian Я люблю тебе 
Hmm which one is closer ? _I just don't know_.

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## TexasMark

I am with Dogboy on this one.  Linguistically speaking English has deviated quite significantly from German.  Yes, it is in the germanic group that there is a huge influence of French and Latin in the language, and the grammar and lexicon is significantly different.   Sure, it is easy to pick examples of English that are similar to German, but you could do the same with Russian -- just because a Russian might conceivably be able find somewhere to eat in England if he went around holding out his hands saying "ресторан?" does not mean that English and Russian are mutually intellible . . . 
Having said that random examples don't work, I am now going to contradict myself . . . 
Here's some random German.  First line of the main news story today in Die Zeit: 
"Trotz der Zugest

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## TexasMark

> On last thing, English and Russian are easy to learn languages( millions of English and russian non- native speakers all over the world do not have Genius Minds,) and they worth doing so. Just begin andd think of the knowledge you will acquire by mastering these languages and the cultures you will be exposed to. By the way, Arabic is a language that when learned will inspire your imagination because it has mathematical grammar and the most beautiful calligraphy, the best phonetic system and thousands of descriptive and distinct words.   ( Its my mother tongue !do not blame me)

 No question Arabic has high credentials given the rich tradition of philosophers, historians, mathematicians, etc. that have written in the language.  But, there again, so do a bunch of languages -- Greek, Latin, English, German . . .   
Notice how all of these are languages associated with very powerful empires.  That's not a coincidence.  Those societies did not get ahead because of their languages (rather it is the other way around) . .  anyway, I am getting off topic. 
My point is this.  Linguistics folks pretty much agree that ALL languages are equally "good" and "sophisticated".  You can describe anything in any language with an equal level of sophisitication.  Granted some languages may have more words in a particular area, which might make things easier (assuming the speakers know them), but that does not make them "better."  The only exceptions to this are some pidgins and creoles, but a bunch of them have now grown up into full blown languages. 
Also, of course, EVERY language is equally easy for a native speaker to learn to speak (notice I said speak).  "Difficulty" in learning language only means difference between the langauge currently spoken and the target language.  This can't be the first time someone has pointed that out on this forum.

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## BETEP

> Actually, I never saw "The Irregular Russian Verbs Table" in the dictionaries, but I saw the English and the German ones.

 Now you have seen! It's as complicated as it's impossible to put together all exceptions.  ::

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## Pravit

Comparing it to Russian was the wrong way to go about doing it, I agree. I'm not intending to say "This language is better than that one." But my point is that English is really not such a terrible and difficult language for non-native speakers to learn. The point of the "go/go/goes" example is that there is (usually) much more margin for error in English than in other languages(and I used Russian as an example). Of course, it depends on the native language of the one learning it too. 
PS Dogboy - I believe it's "кохаю тебе", isn't it? Although I think most Russians are familiar with that too, anyway. Perhaps both are used?

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## Dogboy182

Pravit ~ 
Lol, i dunno. There is just his ukrainian guy who i have known for like years (And now i work with him at godfathers pizza ! wierd !) And he was writing a note to his girlfriend in ukrianin, and he ended it with Я люблю тебе. And i was like "тебе??" and he "Ukrainian". So i said. Oh, ok. 
Im positive you have 100% more knowledge than me of ukrainian, i was just using that as an example. (And... i didn't mess up any of the german??)

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## Линдзи

Hee. 
IMHO, English is easier to become functionally conversational in than many other languages, but it's extremely difficult to perfect, because of all the irregular ridiculousness and the tense system, which is just stupid.  I mean, have you ever looked at _501 English Verbs_?  They can't even put the verbs into tables.  They're just lists without any rhyme or reason.

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## JJ

> Hmm which one is closer ? _I just don't know_.

 We discuss about nothing. I am agree with you that Slavic languages are closer to each other than German ones. But I want to say that it doesen't matter how many times German languages less close to each other than Slavic, they ARE close anyway and the easiness of studing English for German students is not a characteristic of English global easiness as a language.   

> "Trotz der Zugest&auml;ndnisse der Bundesregierung sind am Montagabend etwa doppelt so viele Menschen gegen die Arbeitsmarktreformen auf die Stra&szlig;e gegangen wie in der Woche zuvor."  
> Don't know about you, but I don't have a clue what that says . . .

 I never studied German but don't you see the rooots "Bundes"(I guess it's kinda "federal"), "doppelt" (kinda "double"), so, menschen - men, Arbeitsmarktreformen - it's clear - "work market reforms", Stra&szlig;e- street,  in.

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## JJ

> PS Dogboy - I believe it's "кохаю тебе", isn't it? Although I think most Russians are familiar with that too, anyway. Perhaps both are used?

 Yes, both verbs are used. For example the ukrainian folklore song:
Распрягайтэ хлопцы коней
И лягайтэ почивать.
А я пыйду в сад зэлэный
Красну девицу *кохать*.

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## Dogboy182

> Don't know about you, but I don't have a clue what that says . . .

 I never studied German but don't you see the rooots "Bundes"(I guess it's kinda "federal"), "doppelt" (kinda "double"), so, menschen - men, Arbeitsmarktreformen - it's clear - "work market reforms", Stra&szlig;e- street,  in.[/quote] 
JJ, is someone was speaking this in german to you, you would not have understood any of it, let alone have enough time to think about the root of each word. 
besides, u decoded... what 5 words ? Do u know the meaning of the sentence ? no... u just know a few words from it... no context. Blah.

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## JJ

> besides, u decoded... what 5 words ? Do u know the meaning of the sentence ? no... u just know a few words from it... no context. Blah.

 Actually I've decoded 7 words of 20 (it's  about 35% of the text) although I never studied German.

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## TexasMark

[/quote]
I never studied German but don't you see the rooots "Bundes"(I guess it's kinda "federal"), "doppelt" (kinda "double"), so, menschen - men, Arbeitsmarktreformen - it's clear - "work market reforms", Stra&szlig;e- street,  in.[/quote] 
Okay, actually I was being a little disingenous when I said I did not have a clue what it said.    There are several things in the sentence that I can understand, but I was trying to represent the view of the "man on the street".    
I'm not sure the average person would draw those conclusions --in fact, the conclusions come precisely from the fact that you and I (and probably a bunch of the educated folks here) DO know some German words by osmosis and extrapolation from English uses.  Look at your examples: 
Bundes -- I could have figured out from the old name of Germany (but how many people know that). 
Doppelt -- probably could be gotten from "doppleganger" (but how many people know that). 
Arbeit -- the "Arbeit" part is not obvious (although related surely to Labor), but a natural source for lots of educated people would be that notorious Nazi phase "Arbeit Macht Mann Frei" (but is that really common knowledge). 
Not trying to be a snob here (that was the opposite of my original intent), but my point is we may not be the most representative group when it comes to ability to draw conclusions about ability to decipher languages.

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## Старик

JJ: I can tell you that a German who has never learned English is absolutely unable to unterstand English (the same is true of course for the other direction).
The fact that many words have the same origin does't help very much. You cannot not grasp the sense of whole sentences. The chance to understand some single words my be higher for written texts as dogboy alread mentioned. But nevertheless: An English or German person will not be able to unterstand a text in the other language if he doesn't have any training.
BTW: English has more words of french than of German origin. But the most basic words are nearly all German which makes it near to impossible to build a complete English sentence without using "German" words.
I don't believe that you think that somebody who speaks and understands Englisch can unterstand French?!

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## Dogboy182

OK JJ, smarty pants. Decode this. I bet you never will. 
"Lange haben wir rumgezirkelt, um in ehren unter den hammer zu kommen." 
The vocabulary is 1st year basic. Sure, u could know everyword, but to udnerstand it you probly have to be a fluent speaker of german. Something your little mathematical equations can't help you with.

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## Dogboy182

And, i'd also like to expand on what texas mark said... Unless you have studied german (which most people havn't)  or an ancient language (which most people havn't) which enables you to easily decode roots of words.. YOU CANT JUST UNDERSTAND GERMAN. you _can_ however, understand ukrainian. 
Omg for example last night, i know this doesn't prove anything... But a ukrainian friend (2 of them actualyl) came by last night and talked ALL in ukrainian. I understood like 96.547 % of it. Everything he told me from drinking on the sidewalk and the cops came and he said "these bottles arn't mine" and the cops candcuffed him, took his cigarrettes, and then let him go. Plus, he wanted me to watch Бумер, i told him i have it and i have already seen it 5 times. Then he said "Man i speak ukrainian all day, it's wierd to hear a russian accent!" 
I no this doesn't prove anything ... but im saying that, and for the last time. 
A russian who has know knowledge of ukrainian (or most others slavic langauge) _can_ just go on understanding, without formal much effort.  
English V German, or flemmish, or netherlands(langueg name? ? dutch?) on the other hand. Hah, good luck! Even look at swedish. the basics are close to germanic languages, but one from scotland cant just go to sweden and buy a car. It's not possible like it is with slavic language. 
That's it, im done !

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## TexasMark

Of course, some gemanic languages ARE really similar . .  Dutch is similar to German and Dutch and Flemmish are the same language (okay, maybe technically different dialects of the same langauge, but the point is that the different names are more political than linguistic).  Bit like Hindi and Urdu (but even more similar than those). 
Here's my question.  Are Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, mutually intelligible to the same degree Danish, Norwegian and Sweedish are? Or are they more like, say, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian (i.e., further apart, but to a varying extent, somewhat guessable)?  
 -- Mark

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## Dogboy182

> Here's my question. Are Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, mutually intelligible to the same degree Danish, Norwegian and Sweedish are?

 Yes, and probly more so.

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## TexasMark

Cool.  Good motivation to learn Russian to know that one might get some basic knowledge of other languages chucked in as freebies.

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## JJ

> OK JJ, smarty pants. Decode this. I bet you never will.

 Dogboy, you've lost the matter we started talking about. See:   

> English is really not a hard language.

  

> Yea, that's true pravit.
> ....
> I think i'd rather be russian learning english than english learning russian.
> .....
> All the german foriegn exchange students said if someone wants, they can get good at english in about a year...

 I said and I say it again - the easiness of studing English for German (or for german and imho for romanian language group) students is not a characteristic of English global easiness as a language. I've proved it by the first TexasMark's sentence, he said: 

> Here's some random German.  First line of the main news story today in Die Zeit:....

 Now you offer me to translate  

> *I bet you never will.*

  But it will prove nothing, cause i said I never studied German. From this point our discussion has no sence. Let's stop it, ok? Let's talk about something more interesting.
BTW, about easiness of languages... Do you know that during the WWII in the USSR there were 1.5 - 6 months courses of interpreters from german into russian. Maybe german is easier?   ::   Actually, they studied German *every day for 10 hours*...

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## TexasMark

This thread is probably already dead.  I think we can conclude (1) that some languages are easier than others depending on your first language and target language and (2) no generalizations can be made just because something is in the same language group. 
As my final word on the subject, to prove my point in (2) above, rather than give a German quote, how about this one, from another Germanic language: 
"F

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## chaika

Dogboy, since you asked
Wissen Sie wo die Schule ist? 
German has two words for Eng. "know", kennen you use with people.

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## limelight

I've followed all the answers and posts since now, and here is my opinion. 
I've studied languages at the University, and graduated in French - german as second language. 
As an italian native speaker, I think that every language is neither easy nor difficult to learn. I think it depends mostly on the commitment and will to learn it, whatever language it is. 
By the way, you were talking about similarities between languages of the same ancient origin (german and english, slavic languages, etc.) I have an anecdote about Italian and Spanish. 
In Italy, most of the people think spanish is a very easy language because "sounds like" italian. Young students at the University, back when I attended, chose spanish as second or first language in their studies because they were convinced it was "easier" ! I've always thought this is a superficial way to study and a very light motive. 
I started to study Spanish too, and I quit afterwards, but I assure you, this language has a lot of grammatical rules as Italian, or French , etc.. The fact of being a language originating from Latin as Italian and French are, doesn't have to be a reason to think it easier to learn than others. 
So, if German is similar to English, or Ukrainian to Russian, they all have to be considered as equal and studied with the same seriousness. 
Now, trying to learn Russian, I've found out a new world to discover, and I'm really interested in the russian culture.   ::  
Anyway, I just wanted to give you a point of view from a non-slavic non-german native speaker...  
Ciao 
 :P

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## Dogboy182

[quote=TexasMark]This thread is probably already dead.  I think we can conclude (1) that some languages are easier than others depending on your first language and target language and (2) no generalizations can be made just because something is in the same language group. 
As my final word on the subject, to prove my point in (2) above, rather than give a German quote, how about this one, from another Germanic language: 
"F

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## boisebret

I've loved everything that everyone has written... however: 
FRENCH seems to be the hardest language to pronounce...even worse than English!  German is phonetic, and both Spanish and Russian seem to be, also. 
When it comes to declension steps/styles, etc.....I give the award to Russian. 
I just think that words spelled BEAUX, and pronounced bose...and YEUX, pronounced yuh...make a language harder than it should be! 
JUST MY OPINION!!!

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## TexasMark

Dogboy: 
Have a look at this for starters: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English 
The most famous text in Old English (aka Anglo-Saxon) is probably Beowulf.  There is a recent bilingual translation by Seamus Heany that you can probably find at any Barnes and Noble or Borders (probably in poetry or classics).  It's a good read, but the Old English part is only barely recognizable as English.  (Don't read it aloud in public unless you want someone to think you are one of those Lord of the Rings nerds.)   
Middle English (few hundred years later) is a lot easier (although still a challenge).  The obvious example there is Chaucer's Cantebury Tales (make sure you aren't reading the modernized version that probably give kids in school). 
Fun story -- a friend of mine was interviewing for a job (she's a lawyer) and she had on her resume that she had studied Anglo Saxon at Oxford.  The lawyer interviewing her totally floored her by speaking to her in Anglo Saxon (this was at a NYC firm).  I've heard of people testing out claimed language skills, but that was something she was not expecting.

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## joysof

> I just think that words spelled BEAUX, and pronounced bose...and YEUX, pronounced yuh...make a language harder than it should be!

 N.B, language fans: 'Beaux' is _not_ pronounced 'bose' unless followed by a vowel.  
In which case, 'boze' is, in fact, a far neater approximation.

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## Dogboy182

So, how is it that 1000 years ago ? english was ... well, not so easy to understand for us "modern" english speakers. But, about 500 years ago or so, its not that bad (like around shakespears time and stuff). What happend in that period ?

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## TexasMark

> So, how is it that 1000 years ago ? english was ... well, not so easy to understand for us "modern" english speakers. But, about 500 years ago or so, its not that bad (like around shakespears time and stuff). What happend in that period ?

 Short version -- the Norman conquest.  That caused a bunch of Romance elements to enter the language and the funky inflections mostly went away.  After the sixteenth century, the language sort of settled down a bit (after the Great Vowel Shift) and England became more centralized and powerful which seemed to have the effect of stabalizing the language.

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## solaris

At the risk of raking over old ground (apologies, I'm new to the forum), if someone said 'Kennen Sie....' in Scotland or the very north of England, then there's a good chance they'd be understood. 'Ken' is a Scottish word for 'to know', and still very much in use today among the natives....

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## solaris

At the risk of raking over old ground (apologies, I'm new to the forum), if someone said 'Kennen Sie....' in Scotland or the very north of England, then there's a good chance they'd be understood. 'Ken' is an old Scottish word for 'to know', and still very much in use today among the natives....

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## TexasMark

> At the risk of raking over old ground (apologies, I'm new to the forum), if someone said 'Kennen Sie....' in Scotland or the very north of England, then there's a good chance they'd be understood. 'Ken' is an old Scottish word for 'to know', and still very much in use today among the natives....

 Sure.  Here's another -- my grandmother spoke in Bristol dialect.  Here's how she would say "he is in the pub" -- "he'd a bist down th'pub".  Obvious German connection there too . . .

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## BJ Hendy

at my school we have two monopoly games... french and german... we've been playing them recently in italian (go figure) and i can understand about 70-80% of the stuff written on the cards... anyway gtg to school... c yas

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## selters

[quote=TexasMark]I
"Trotz der Zugest

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## Pravit

I take it Scandinavian languages have the thing where you're supposed to mention the expression of time first, or were you just translating directly?

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## selters

I did the mistake of translating it word by word at first, then rearranging the words. Turned out a little messy...

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## traveler

messed up

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## traveler

the thing is americans have slang its sort of like a dialect. but the thing i dont get is why european and asian languages care so much about formalities and who uses them. i mean for "how are you doing" u have informal male, informal female, formal male, formal female. what is up with that? why dooes it matter that much?

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## Евгения Белякова

If you are speaking to a female or male and informally ask them how are they doing, the question is the same. But if you are talking to a female you know well, you don't use the formal endings.

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## Pravit

> the thing is americans have slang its sort of like a dialect. but the thing i dont get is why european and asian languages care so much about formalities and who uses them. i mean for "how are you doing" u have informal male, informal female, formal male, formal female. what is up with that? why dooes it matter that much?

 I believe that at one time English also had a formal form, which gradually went of use. However, what you're talking about goes beyong pronouns. Although you may use "you" with both of them, I'm sure you speak to adults you don't know differently than to your close friends.   

> If you are speaking to a female or male and informally ask them how are they doing, the question is the same. But if you are talking to a female you know well, you don't use the formal endings.

 Eh? I don't think I've quite deciphered your message, Evgenia. If you are talking to a male you know well, you don't use the formal endings either.

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## Евгения Белякова

I know, Pravit. But he said this:
i mean for "how are you doing" u have informal male, informal female, formal male, formal female.
For "how are you doing" there is formal and informal, it does not change for gender. This is what I meant to say. Sorry.   ::   But for past tense there is formal, male, and female. There is no formal female and formal male.

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## Propp

As for languages...
I think English is pretty easy when it comes to studying it from the very beginning. To start speak bad English is much easier than to start to speak bad Russian. I mean it makes no dificullty to explain "I go, you go, he goes" or "I have, you have, he has" etc. But when you try to explain "Я иду, ты идёшь, он идёт" or "вижу, видишь" or "У меня есть", you inevitably stumbles over all those endings, root alternations and impersonal constructions, so if the student is not familiar with language terms, it almost impossible to say "WHY", it shoud be only remembered then.
On the other hand, to get the real fluency in English is almost as hard as to get fluency in any other language.

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## waxwing

I agree 100% with Propp. Starting Russian is much harder than starting English. 
The final stages of learning good English involve: 
-developing the ability to use the full range of tenses accurately. Most students can do this eventually. 
-developing some kind of unconscious internal rule set (with thousands of exceptions) telling you when to use articles and which to use. Non-natives never completely master this except in very special circumstances. 
-developing a feel for and mastery of phrasal verbs; perhaps the hardest thing of all. 
Of course one must also get to grips with idioms, connotation, collocation, register and perhaps some forms of slang, but that's true in any language. 
On the subject of history, well, I'm no historian, but I would have thought that the development of the printing press must have had a big effect on the stabilization of the language. The internet may be having a similar effect on a global scale today   ::

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## Propp

> On the subject of history, well, I'm no historian, but I would have thought that the development of the printing press must have had a big effect on the stabilization of the language. The internet may be having a similar effect on a global scale today

 Ага. Only English will be left in its "basic" international form.  ::   ::   ::

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## waxwing

Yes, it's not an unreasonable prediction. But then again, we must not forget Mandarin Chinese, not just yet anyway  ::

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## brett

My vote goes to English being the hardest language to learn, period. 
...IF being taught to you by a guy from Glasgow.

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## Nixer

I think English is the most irregular language in the world. Especially due to its phonetics, pronouciation and spelling. English grammar though is not so difficult, I think. 
Only French, I guess, has more difficult phonetics. If you open Russian or German or Latin dictionary you see no transcriptions or so. If you open English dictionary - you do. 
So, I believe, learning Russian, German or Latin is easier than English.
When I heared native Italian speech I was able easily separate and understand words, but when I hear native English speech, I dont. 
By the way, I think English much more far from other German languages than they are from the each other. So, I guess, It will be another "Anlo-Saxon" language family in the nearest future. 
Besides, there are many German words in Russian, for example, солдат, патруль, пароль, патрон, вагон, вокзал, шторм, штиль, штык, штаб, эрзац, матрас, штамп, ранг, горн, флаг, штат и т.д.

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## Pravit

French doesn't have more difficult phonetics. You might get put off by all the q's and apostrophes, but the spelling system is entirely regular. And, Nixer, you are a native Russian speaker, so of course you will think Russian is easier to learn.

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## Nixer

ОК, May be French is easier, I could agree.

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## Николай

Please Delete and/or Ignore.

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## Николай

> As an arab, I think English is easer than Russain in terms of pronunciation, and grammar structure. On the other hand, Russian has more powerful descriptive tools and a solid and more precise grammatical structure in terms of verb conjugation and the grammatical role each word plays(declension, by the way Arabic has the most perfect declension ever). Regarding, my own experience, I have learned English when I was 11 years old own my own I used books, listened to BBC, watched TV because I have an interest in languages and other cultures. as a result, I scored High marks in English courses and I passed the Michigan Test easily. The russian is my new love and actually I have tried to learn it before and I bought a book that dissappointed me because of its preface where the author mentioned the declension obstacle but when I found this forum it gave me a new hope. I do respect english and Russian and I think in learning languages you should have some motives such as strong desire, struggle, and of course love. You should love the language in order to immesre your self in it. On last thing, English and Russian are easy to learn languages( millions of English and russian non- native speakers all over the world do not have Genius Minds,) and they worth doing so. Just begin andd think of the knowledge you will acquire by mastering these languages and the cultures you will be exposed to. By the way, Arabic is a language that when learned will inspire your imagination because it has mathematical grammar and the most beautiful calligraphy, the best phonetic system and thousands of descriptive and distinct words.   ( Its my mother tongue !do not blame me)

 Do you by any chance attend Cranbrook? Just curious. 
Now on the topic. I agree, English is extremely simple to the other languages I am learning, the very conjugations stay the same except in third person singular, while in French, German or Russian thats not the case. That's the only true difficulty I have encountered.  
[quote=Dogboy182][quote=TexasMark]This thread is probably already dead.  I think we can conclude (1) that some languages are easier than others depending on your first language and target language and (2) no generalizations can be made just because something is in the same language group. 
As my final word on the subject, to prove my point in (2) above, rather than give a German quote, how about this one, from another Germanic language: 
"F

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## Pravit

Yeah, and which language has six cases with tons of exceptions and rules that have to be learned for each preposition? And *two* forms of the same verb to learn?

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## phillip

i am an american, english is my mother tounge of course, i would have to say the trick to learning to speak everyday english is informality, unless we americans are doing business we pretty much don't use any formalities. we are lazy speakers, that's why we have slang, we're lazy people when it comes to language, or at least most of us are. There aren't very many gendered words besides him, his, her, she, stuff like that, we usually don't differenciate between male and female with most of our words. English is a pretty straight forward lang., all the words go in order example: i don't speak french(easy,all words follow eachother) now in french: je ne parle pas francais( more difficult than english because the 'ne' and the 'pas' change parle/speak into a negative. And a lot of laguages are like that, i think english is quite simple, the laziest people in the world speak it...

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## JonasL

actually, in normal french you'd say : "je ne sais pas parler fran

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## Pravit

> English is a pretty straight forward lang., all the words go in order

 They go in order *to you*, because you are a native speaker of English. What if, however, my native language is one where the object comes first, then the verb, then the subject? To me, it would seem that English word order was completely out of whack. 
Try to explain to a foreign learner the difference between:
If you had had some money, we could go to the movies.
If you would have had some money, we could go to the movies. 
If you had some money, we could go to the movies.
If you were to have some money, we could go to the movies.

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## Dogboy182

That's just Possibilty, and lost opportunity. Nothing too hard about that. 
If i were to move to russia, i could join spetsnaz!

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## Darobat

Kinda drifting off topic, but to me, Arabic has the hardest spelling system.  There aren't any vowels marked when text is written, only in dictionaries and kid books.  For example, "Salam" which means hello, is written as "Slm".  All consonants have a vowel added after them, but it isn't marked.  Sa, la, ma.  The a on the end of the m isn't pronunced, but it isn't marked either.  You just need to know that it isn't there.  Personally, if I was ever to learn arabic, that would be hell to try and memorize the vowels in every word but never writing/reading them.

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## Pravit

Not necessarily. Imagine two guys sitting around. "If you had some money, we could go to the movies." No lost opportunity there. If they get the money, they can go.

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## waxwing

> Try to explain to a foreign learner the difference between:
> If you had had some money, we could go to the movies.
> If you would have had some money, we could go to the movies.

 The latter is just blatantly incorrect to my mind. 
Conditionals are an area where semi-literate people often trip up  :: 
Sadly I've heard constructions like that in speech fairly often. 
And the former would usually be "If you had had some money, we could have gone to the movies", although I suppose it's acceptable as a mixed conditional. 
"If you were to have some money, we could go to the movies."
That's very weird ... I've never looked into the "were to" construction. I mean obviously it's pretty rare in usage nowadays. In this case it looks very unnatural, I think it's because "were to" should be followed by an action (i.e. not a stative verb)   ::

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## Pravit

Cougar asked me the "were to" one, the other one is just me trying to come up with something awkward but possible  ::

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## Jca

> i am an american, english is my mother tounge of course, i would have to say the trick to learning to speak everyday english is informality, unless we americans are doing business we pretty much don't use any formalities. we are lazy speakers, that's why we have slang, we're lazy people when it comes to language, or at least most of us are.

 Why is it that I always read the same question and the same answers. How can you say English it's the trickiest language, or the easiest one? or is that lazyness is the cause for slang in English?  
Everyone thinks that his/her own language is the trickiest, the most difficult , the one with more slang... What happens is that as an English speaker, you know a lot more than non native speakers about its nuances, its slang, its tricky features. But you don't know so deeply other languages, and then you think others are more simple. Or maybe, as you know yours since childhood, you think others are more difficult. 
But all in all, more or less all languages have the same complexity, otherwise there would be cultures in which children would acquire their spoken languages before others, or after others. And that's not the case. Writing is another question.  
Maybe, instead of comparing English to German, Russian, Arabic, Japanese and Spanish (5 out of 5000 languages, 0.001 > 0.1% of all languages, that's nothing), we could compare English to some 500 languages (10%) and then take some conclusions, don't you think? 
Have you heard about Ergativity in Basque or Caucasian languages? Have you heard about click languages, such as Xhosa, to talk about difficult pronounciations? And what about those consonant clusters of Georgian?
Or the 9 (are they really 9?) tones of Cantonese? 
One last thing, if lazyness causes slang, then all language speakers are lazy. Do you think Spanish, for example,  has no slang? And yet, we have dozens of verbal forms.

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## Pravit

Excellent post, Jca.

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## Старик

Jca, I wholeheartedly agree with you. 
You can find books in nearly every language (if it is written at all) where the author "proves" that his language is the most versatile, enables its users to express subtleties which can't be expressed in any other language, and is therfore the highest developed one in the world.
This is regularily done by taking phrases or even single words which don't have an exact equivalent in any other language (which the author believes to know).
Umberto Eco wrote about this subject (I think it was in "Foucault's Pendulum") listing nearly each of the European languages which somebody hat declared sometime as superior to any other known language.

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## new1

To be honest i dont really have a "native language" ounless you count just being from a perticuler country.Spoke dutch first 11 or so years of my life,litle bit of bangla/bengali with pasing relatives and my dad and my mom (forcfully)taught me some english. 
Yadering aside, I for one found english to be a fairly hard language to learn.True it's easy to get an emergency message acros but all the little tid-bits can be rather confusing(or maybe it's just me).on german though, I can speak dutch(though VERY rusty at the moment) and learned german seperatly.Sounds similer and you can get the gist of whats being said but it's got it's diffuculties from this perspective(again could be just me lol). 
BTW, learned some hindi recently and all(to my knowledge) indian/sub-continet region languages have 3 forms of addressing.One for sub-ordinates/close friends, one for normal occasions and one formaly(though generly the formal is used with strangers allways, but thats just amnners and opinion). 
I can only speak for bengali(litrey, cant read or get the numbers down well yet). but you can see the evolution quite clearly.In bangladesh it's somewhat like amarican english and british english.Has some arabic and now quite a few english words and the grammer system is much simpler.Technically we all speak incorectly but it's the norm now outide of formal documents.

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## Jca

Cпасибо Pravit, старик. 
Kстати, старик Умберто Эко написал об этом в "La b

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## Старик

[quote=Jca]Kстати, старик Умберто Эко написал об этом в "La b

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## TATY

> But when I started Hungarian, I had to learn the vocabulary from scratch, the grammar from scratch... because there's no other language more or less similar to that.

 Finnish and Estonian. Although they are aren't that similar are they.  
English speaking countries do have a higher proportion of dyslexics, but that's just due to the horrible spelling. 
And as for tenses, the same exist in Romance languages like French and Spanish.

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## JonasL

talking about starting from scratch; i'm going to University to learn Chinese, all them wicked signs etc  ::

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## Tate

How do you get pictures under your name?

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## DDT

> How do you get pictures under your name?

 Go to the top of the page and click on profile then scroll down to the bottom of your profile where it says show gallery and just click on it and choose one. Or you can click browse and upload one of your own. 
Not bad for a leather massager, eh what!

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## partly russian

I know this is from an old post but:   

> Why is it that I always read the same question and the same answers. How can you say English it's the trickiest language, or the easiest one? or is that lazyness is the cause for slang in English?  
> Everyone thinks that his/her own language is the trickiest, the most difficult , the one with more slang... What happens is that as an English speaker, you know a lot more than non native speakers about its nuances, its slang, its tricky features. But you don't know so deeply other languages, and then you think others are more simple. Or maybe, as you know yours since childhood, you think others are more difficult. 
> But all in all, more or less all languages have the same complexity, otherwise there would be cultures in which children would acquire their spoken languages before others, or after others. And that's not the case. Writing is another question.

 Well, I read, write, and speak in both Russian and English-My mother is totally rusian, and my dad is totally english, but I think that even though english is a totally screwed up and whacked language, it is a tiny bit easier that the russian language.  Both are my native tounge, 50%-50% each. Split.  Even check out my name. Partly Russian. Hows that for a comparison?
                                           ||
Sry that this is off topic--------V
Oh, and by the way, if anyone has like a cool pic for under my name of like sumthin stupid like an evil penguin or a killer squirrel for an avatar, it would be greatly appreciated.  Ive been looking for one ever since i saw this site.(not when i signed up but like about four months ago)  ::   ::   ::   ::  
THX AGAIn

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## Jca

> Well, I read, write, and speak in both Russian and English-My mother is totally rusian, and my dad is totally english, but I think that even though english is a totally screwed up and whacked language, it is a tiny bit easier that the russian language. Both are my native tounge, 50%-50% each. Split. Even check out my name. Partly Russian. Hows that for a comparison?

 I had to learn both Russian and Engsh ?cos my mother tongue is none of them. While I find Russian harder as regards to morphology for  all the endings I have to remember, and for the perfective-non perfective verbal forms and uses, ... for example, listening and understanding what I heard is more difficult in English. 
But of course, English is easier to me as there are  more  common words between Spanish and English than between Spanish and Russian. Maybe we should ask a Vietnamese what is more difficult (not a Vietcong guy educated in Moscow, of course, nor a traitor US friend).

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