# Forum Other Languages Romance languages  Why is Spanish and Catalan easier than Russian?

## Liquinn

Why is Spanish and Catalan easier than Russian?

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## Alex80

I do not know spanish or catalan. So I can compare with english only.
There is huge amount of grammatic cases, prefixes and suffixes and "mutating" roots of words in russian. Huge role of memorizing. Go/went or has/have in english is nothing more than nothing in comparison.
As a side-effect you can swap order of words in phrase almost freely, just do not forget to adjust prefixes/suffixes.

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## Liquinn

How do I bring my Russian to my Spanish level? How long would I need? 
Спасибо.  ::

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## Alex80

> How do I bring my Russian to my Spanish level? How long would I need? 
> Спасибо.

 Training and training.  ::  I do not know how long it can take. Honestly.

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## Liquinn

Is Russian or Catalan more useful?  ::  :P

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## xXHoax

Spanish and Catalan are easier than Russian because, from a English standpoint, very little changes. Besides a few quirks (like talking about body parts in spanish), they're very simple. No endings. You can tell the infinitive from conjugated verbs (and conjugate from there with ease). Pronunciation is easier in spanish since it's much more vowel sounds, and more syllables, the rolled r's are not a big deal in Spanish. Word order in Spanish is different, but straight forward, just takes practice, whereas with russian, I've found many sentences that I knew every word well, but had no idea what they were saying, based on word order and phrasing. English and Spanish phrasing are fairly similar, Spanish uses a more european style (But nowhere NEAR as much as Russian), but that's only a problem because English is one of the few language that _doesnt_ use that style. Russian meaning changes based on the case relating words together, Spanish uses straight forward (need to be memorized still) preposition stacking. 
Improving skill in Russian takes massive amounts of diligence and vigilance. Russian, being in a different alphabet than English, makes it very difficult to notice things you would normally notice immediately (word roots and relations, seeing a word multiple times), it also makes walls of Russian text look MUCH scarier than if they were in the Latin alphabet. I've heard people take 9 years to get well versed in Russian. I got to a poor "conversational"(single words responses, needing things to be repeated) level in about a year, and if I had been focused and hard working, I could be fluent right now, but I dont put in the work to read short stories and talk frequently with natives. Depends how much you want it. Look up Tim Doner. He learned 20 languages (learned well in about 5 years), it takes a lot of free time, and  
Use of a language is... Determinable, yet not something that should be too important. Russia is awesome. Spanish is spoken in like half the world. Spanish is _often_ used as a common language ground for business deals. Russian will give you good understanding of most of eastern europe. Hell, I can read basic Bulgarian. Depends on what you're using it for.

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## Liquinn

You have a point. Spanish and Catalan is more similar... but after learning Russian would that make Catalan easier? Thanks for the reply.  ::  
It'd be amazing to say: "My Russian's better than your English" to a Spanish speaker, though. I have C2 in Spanish - how long would it take to get C2 in Russian? I bet not many English natives have Spanish and Russian at C2.  ::  
When does one become happy with language learning? =] 
But then you don't have to read and write a language to speak it. Hmm. 
What's better? Learning Spanish and Catalan or Russian? How long would it take to learn Catalan and Russian? I guess with a language you never really stop.

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## xXHoax

In my opinion, I don't see why you'd spend time learning Catalan. It's not a common language at all, and isn't mutually intelligible with spanish. It would be doing the work of learning a completely new language, without making any distance from Spanish. By that I mean, say you learn spanish, you learn a very distinct part of the world's languages, then you could:
1. Learn Catalan, and not make any step into another style/branch of language, yet put in a lot of language learning work. +like a small country or something
2. Learn something like Russian, and have a completely different branch of language, a different worldview. +like all of eastern europe
 If learning many languages, it's good to diversify, I feel, since you will then get an insight into completely different cultures, and linguistic beauty. But I suppose if you aren't fascinated by the individual beauty of the world's different languages, then that doesn't matter much. Just think, Russian is hard, it's different, but it's even still, the same writing system as English and Spanish. Different orthography (naturally), different sound system (by far, but that's common in even similar languages, look at Swedish and Norwegian- mutually intelligible, yet sound very different), but it's still a letter based system. If you learned Chinese, you'd be learning a VERY different... Everything.
Diversify your portfolio. Neither Spanish nor Catalan will help with Russian, learning another language before Russian (you've done already) is good, since Russian is on a bit of another level in terms of grammatical structures and whatnot. I couldn't imagine going into Russian without already knowing about conjugation and parts of speech, since those are just the beginning with Russian. 
 Geographically, I cant imagine there's anywhere where you couldn't just speak spanish to someone, and had to speak Catalan. C2 in Russian takes multiple years. At least 5, depending on if you spend 2 dedicated hours a day, or 30 nonchalant minutes a day.  Text en catal Heres a page in Catalan. I can read a sentence here and there with year 2 Spanish, but it seems like it's orthographically very different to spanish. I cant think of how Russian would help at all for Catalan.

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## Liquinn

> In my opinion, I don't see why you'd spend time learning Catalan. It's not a common language at all, and isn't mutually intelligible with spanish. It would be doing the work of learning a completely new language, without making any distance from Spanish. By that I mean, say you learn spanish, you learn a very distinct part of the world's languages, then you could:
> 1. Learn Catalan, and not make any step into another style/branch of language, yet put in a lot of language learning work. +like a small country or something
> 2. Learn something like Russian, and have a completely different branch of language, a different worldview. +like all of eastern europe
>  If learning many languages, it's good to diversify, I feel, since you will then get an insight into completely different cultures, and linguistic beauty. But I suppose if you aren't fascinated by the individual beauty of the world's different languages, then that doesn't matter much. Just think, Russian is hard, it's different, but it's even still, the same writing system as English and Spanish. Different orthography (naturally), different sound system (by far, but that's common in even similar languages, look at Swedish and Norwegian- mutually intelligible, yet sound very different), but it's still a letter based system. If you learned Chinese, you'd be learning a VERY different... Everything.
> Diversify your portfolio. Neither Spanish nor Catalan will help with Russian, learning another language before Russian (you've done already) is good, since Russian is on a bit of another level in terms of grammatical structures and whatnot. I couldn't imagine going into Russian without already knowing about conjugation and parts of speech, since those are just the beginning with Russian. 
>  Geographically, I cant imagine there's anywhere where you couldn't just speak spanish to someone, and had to speak Catalan. C2 in Russian takes multiple years. At least 5, depending on if you spend 2 dedicated hours a day, or 30 nonchalant minutes a day.  Text en catal Heres a page in Catalan. I can read a sentence here and there with year 2 Spanish, but it seems like it's orthographically very different to spanish. I cant think of how Russian would help at all for Catalan.

 I always go to Barcelona on holiday. I more or less have B2 in Catalan already. I guess Russian would take longer to learn though. =[ I could attempt to learn both but that would be hard. 
Is it harder for a Russian person to learn English, Catalan or Spanish? It would be cool to learn both but how do I learn three languages at once? 
But then is it possible to get C2 in Russian without going to Russia? 
Where's native?  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common..._for_Languages 
What is C2?  ::

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## xXHoax

I've actually never seen this whole c2 system before. In terms of words, I've heard "I've been to spain with 2000 words in spanish, IT WAS NOT ENOUGH.".  How many words are there in the world's most widely spoken languages? . Im not a russian I have no idea which is harder to learn. Id suppose English since it's stupid. I have maybe 700 words of russian... maybe 1000, and thats where I can have crappy little back and forths with people, so... As Tim Doner would tell you, theres no real reason why you CANT leanr all three at once, it's up to you. There is a man who lived in Korea for 20 years, and couldnt have a decent conversation with a native. Being in the country is nice, but not at all a necessity. Google is all you need. Google, time, paper and pencil or whatever you use to keep words in your head, and practice. Whether it be chat rooms, journal writing and correcting, posting your writing in Russian to this site, or downloading a free to play game and setting the region to Russia, interaction with natives is pretty darn important. Supposedly (from that link), 20,000 words is a natives vocab... Then again, I may know the word "deign", doesn't mean I use it.

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## Liquinn

Thanks for this. (; What should I work on the most?

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## Liquinn

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_...ra_las_lenguas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common..._for_Languages

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