stereotypes about Russian language

[Emily Saunders]

I always like to point out the following bits that make Russian  
potentially easier than some other more commonly studied languages:

1)  Gender is, for the most part, simple to determine.  Just look at  
the ending of the noun.  Not so for German or the Romance languages  
where gender must, to a great extent, be memorized.
2)  Russian has just one past tense and lacks all of those lovely past  
perfects, perfects, past perfect progressives, etc.  And there are,  
essentially, only 4 endings you have to learn FOR ALL VERBS in the  
past tense - l, -la, -lo, li.  How simple is that?
3)  Spanish has the whole ser and estar problem to work out.  Russian  
has no "to be" verb in the present tense.  Very simple!
4)  German has complex word order that needs to be precise.  Russian  
-- quite flexible!

And I could go on, but you all know these points well enough or  
better.  For all of the difficulties that case endings and verbs of  
motion cause to native English speakers studying Russian, there are  
many other aspects of the language that go down nice and easy.  I  
figure that it sort of balances out.  I have heard that Chinese has  
some of the "easiest grammar" to learn (no gender, no tenses), but  
it's got a complex writing system as well as tonality to keep one  
busy.  Net xuda bez dobra?

Not a scholarly opinion, but...

Emily Saunders

P.S.  I just held my first beginning Russian class here in Olympia, WA  
through the local parks and recreation department.  It's a once a week  
class for interested individuals.  Post-class conversation touched  
upon this very topic and the general impression I got from my students  
is that they did think of Russian as difficult, but they had  
compelling personal reasons for giving it a go:  plans to go to DLI,  
lover of Akhmatova's poetry, plans to go to Concordia Language camp  
this summer, enjoys visiting Russia (possible girlfriend?), etc.  I  
think the key to language learning is the motivation a student has for  
studying a particular language.  If the motivation is strong enough,  
it won't ultimately matter how "difficult" a language is or is  
perceived to be.

On Apr 30, 2008, at 12:15 PM, alexaaa at bgnet.bgsu.edu wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> Is there really a strong stereotype among our students that
> Russian is one of the heardest languages to learn? Is it anyhow
> discussed in scholarly works? If you know any works, could you
> please redirect me to them?
>
> Thank you very much!
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Anastasia Alexandrova

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