Hard things about Russian

Question

What are the most notorious things for which Russian is known as one of the hardest to learn?

I guess aspect and the missing article, since Germanic and Romance languages (at least those I know) don't have aspect but articles. — Em1, Jul 17 '12 at 07:07

Olga · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-17T21:30:44.227

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Alphabet. It's not Latin, people spend a week or so to only remember that P is not [p], but [r].
Aspect. It is formed irregularly, it has tons of minor meanings, and the exact interpretation depends on certain properties of the verb meaning. And it also depends on prefixes.
Inflection. You have to learn large paradigms only to be able to say a short sentence.
Rich derivation. You can form many words just by adding suffixes.
Word order. It is not free, as some people say, but it encodes the information structure of the sentence.
Phonology. Quality of vowels changes depending on the stress in the word (which is also not always fixed), voiced consonants become voiceless depending on the following consonant or on the position in the word.

Finally, Russian is not as hard to learn as Welsh or Hungarian. But not many people want to learn these languages (for some reason), and that may be another reason why they focus on Russian and say it's hard. It probably wouldn't be so hard in comparison =)

edited Jul 17 '12 at 21:30

answered Jul 17 '12 at 10:03

Olga

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could you please clarify the point about spoken vs. written? – Quassnoi Jul 17 '12 at 10:10
I've added an example. – Olga Jul 17 '12 at 10:22
are you sure it's specific to Russian? – Quassnoi Jul 17 '12 at 10:26
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Maybe not, maybe spoken French is also different from written French. But it's still one of the things why Russian may be considered hard. – Olga Jul 17 '12 at 10:31
sure, but it's in no way is specific to Russian. Actually it's just whether you pay attention to your discourse or not. There are people who actually write like in your first example (especially in IM or twits or whatever) and there are people who don't ever talk this, not to mention writing. If the language structure allows comprehending an ungrammar sentence at all, there will always be people abusing grammar. – Quassnoi Jul 17 '12 at 11:00
Is there a way to move it to chat? It's interesting, I'd like to discuss it, but it is not the topic of the question. – Olga Jul 17 '12 at 11:23
let us continue this discussion in chat – Quassnoi Jul 17 '12 at 11:30
its ok, you may discuss it in here, i dont mind – Trident D'Gao Jul 17 '12 at 14:59
As a native Russian speaker, I could not make head nor tail of the example sentence in point 7. – kotekzot Jul 17 '12 at 21:14
@kotekzot come to chat =) – Olga Jul 17 '12 at 21:28
OK, since people don't like the last point and I have to argue about it, I will remove it. There are enough other things that are hard about Russian) I'll move it to the chat untouched, so that we can all see and discuss it, if we want. – Olga Jul 17 '12 at 21:29
Personally I don't have a problem with point 7, just with the example. – kotekzot Jul 17 '12 at 23:13
Alphabet is not difficult to any Russian speaker. And I doubt it is difficult at all. – Anixx Jul 19 '12 at 12:52
Phonology is also not difficult for Russian speakers. The question asks about problems for NATIVE Russian speakers. – Anixx Jul 19 '12 at 12:55
@Anixx Why do you think so? For me, the question sounds as "why Russian is hard to learn" – Olga Jul 19 '12 at 13:37
See the second comment to the question. – Anixx Jul 19 '12 at 14:04
I don't think the question is asking about what makes the language hard for native speakers; the second comment seems more like a humorous response to the first comment than a clarification of the intent of the question. – KCd Jul 19 '12 at 14:21

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 19 '12 at 12:59

If you mean the difficulties for a native Russian speaker, they are as follows:

Comma placement rules
Whether participle не- is written together with the following word or not.
Whether н is double in suffixes (choice between нн and н).
Some people experience troubles in choice between -тся and -ться although this is not a problem for myself.

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 17 '12 at 09:55

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Inflections, especially the cases and verb conjugations. Also the number and gender.
Pronunciation of certain sounds non-existent in languages like English. That includes the vowel sound of Ы [ɨ], all palatalized consonants, and rolling the Р [r]. Also, the chains of consonants as in "*вздр*огнуть".
Stress in words. It's mostly unpredictable in Russian and you'll have to refer to your dictionary a lot.

answered Jul 17 '12 at 09:55

Speaker

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Actually I find the two most difficult...I mean that you must force yourself to pronounce properly to be ы and ль ... rolling Р is not (for me.. .ever a problem. . I'm a native English speaker but not American. .. I noticed for some reason most Americans have problems when two constants are together.they want to say them as separate words... can't think of any examples offhand but I think some people know what I'm talking about ) – ycomp Jul 18 '12 at 02:30

A-K · Answer 4 · 2012-07-17T18:52:14.080

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You can easily yandex it up yourslef, as follows:

go to yandex.ru, which is better than google for Russian searches
Search "типичные ошибки в русском языке у американцев"

Wikipedia says" According to Yandex marketing, one of its biggest advantages for Russian-language users is ability to recognize the Russian inflection in search queries

edited Jul 17 '12 at 18:52

answered Jul 17 '12 at 15:55

A-K

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who said yandex is better? – Trident D'Gao Jul 17 '12 at 16:31
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@v'-5o-1's73- it's common knowledge. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yandex#Market_share – A-K Jul 17 '12 at 18:51
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I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but having larger audience doesn't mean it's better – Trident D'Gao Jul 17 '12 at 19:12

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 18 '12 at 13:03

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7 падежей. В других языках нет такого количества падежей и даже представления о том, что они могут существовать.

And as we can see many foreigners don't even use them. They only use one case for speaking.

answered Jul 18 '12 at 13:03

Rustam

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Finnish cases rock even more. – Olga Jul 18 '12 at 13:07
In addition, example on typical using of russian language by vietnamese in Russia: "Мне пожалуйста вон тот большой ваза". Correct variant: "Мне пожалуйста вон ту большую вазу" – Rustam Jul 18 '12 at 13:24
@Rustam: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsez_language, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabasaran_language – Quassnoi Jul 18 '12 at 20:05
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Many languages have the same or greater amount of cases. – Anixx Jul 19 '12 at 12:53
падежы сложны, но в других языках бывает и поболее. – shabunc Jul 23 '12 at 05:19

Hard things about Russian

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