Language "categories" (was: undergraduate >Honors in Russian)

[Sara Stefani]

This is purely anecdotal and in no way scientific, but being a native
English speaker and having studied Spanish, French, German, and
Russian, I can definitely attest to the accuracy of these categories!
In fact, I often warn my beginning Russian students that there is a
completely different psychology behind Russian than behind English,
Spanish, etc., and I often have to remind them to let go of their pre-
conceived notions of what a language should be.

I think the difficulty for English speakers lies primarily in two
things: case and verbs. There's pretty much no case system in English,
and the same is true for Spanish and French. And as for verbs: English,
Spanish, and French are based on tense, whereas Russian is based on
aspect. Aspect? What in the world is aspect? It is easy enough to
equate Spanish and French tenses with English, but very difficult to
conceptualize thinking about verbs in terms of completion, intention,
repetition, process, etc.

Best,
Sara Stefani


Quoting Benjamin Rifkin <brifkin at WISC.EDU>:

> The categorization is based on the number of hours of classroom
> instruction required by American learners of average language
> learning
> aptitude with no previous background in a related language to achieve
>
> advanced (2) or superior (3) level proficiency as defined by the
> ACTFL
> (or ILR) Proficiency Guidelines.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Ben Rifkin
>
> On Mar 1, 2005, at 2:13 PM, Paul B. Gallagher wrote:
>
> > Alina Israeli wrote:
> >
> > >> How related is "related"? Obviously both English and Russian
> are
> > >> Indo-European languages, although not in the same subgroup.
> How
> > >> does German end up in category 2 when it's more closely related
> to
> > >> English than Spanish (category 1)? (I grant that everyone seems
> to
> > >> think Spanish is easier, but why?)
> > >
> > > Common roots and sentence structure.
> >
> > Funny, I always figured those categories were influenced by supply
> and
> > demand. An institution offering a degree in Spanish has so many
> > applicants with it in their background that it doesn't have to
> bother
> > with newbies starting the language at 18, whereas one offering
> Russian
> > has to take whoever it can get. Accordingly, the level of
> proficiency
> > attained by juniors and seniors would be higher in Spanish than in
>
> > Russian.
> >
> > But looking at the list posted by Michael Brewer I can see that it
> has
> > largely to do with the degree of difficulty experienced by an
> American
> > adult learner -- which after all is what college students are.
> >
> > I wonder how the rankings would be adjusted if we were talking
> about
> > seven-year-olds...
> >
> > --
> > War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
> > --
> > Paul B. Gallagher
> > pbg translations, inc.
> > "Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
> > http://pbg-translations.com
> >
> >
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> > --
> >
> ******'
> Benjamin Rifkin
> University of Wisconsin-Madison
>
> Professor and Chair, Slavic Dept.  (Slavic)
> 1432 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Dr.
> Madison, WI 53706 USA
> (608) 262-1623; fax (608) 265-2814
> polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/slavic
>
> Director, Center for Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia
> (CREECA)
> 210 Ingraham Hall, 1155 Observatory Drive
> Madison, WI 53706 USA
> (608) 262-3379; fax (608) 890-0267
> www.wisc.edu/creeca
>
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