Best Conlang for helping with Russian learning?

Question

What might be the best or easiest constructed language to learn to help me learn Russian, and why? I have this suspicion that learning another related language can help me understand the Russian mindset better. Also, the cases are a major thing for me to get used to. What are your thoughts on this?

After a night's sleep, I think what's going to help me a lot is if I can construct a language that's a cross between my native language and Russian, or even an English-Russian pidgin that uses the English vocabulary with "latinized" Russian conjugations and declensions. That could also be a lot of fun.

Slovio? As a teacher I think the best way to learn russian is just learning Russian, without any conlangs. — Yellow Sky, Mar 05 '15 at 20:29
I think when it comes to learning Russian, all the energy you would put into learning the conlang you're going to need for Russian! — CocoPop, Mar 08 '15 at 00:18
Sorry but I think this makes no sense. I'm going to learn how to drive a car so I think I should start with learning how to drive bike? WUT? — ttaaoossuuuu, Mar 10 '15 at 08:35
I had a look at Slovio, and my first reaction was "wow!" This is the answer to my question! It has exactly all the characteristics that I was hoping to see. But my late response is because I also have mixed feelings about learning it. I am totally in love with the Russian language and I don't want to take the risk of spoiling it for myself, if that were possible. Also I could not ascertain if it was becoming another dead language or not. One of the forums I landed on seems to have died a few years back. — Johan, Mar 12 '15 at 05:40

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 15 '15 at 19:48

Better not. If you want to learn how to ride a bike - just ride a bike. The only thing that I can recommend - is Russian for children. It is easier to Russian. There are a lot of here. If you will have difficulties, russian.stackexchange.com always at your service.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 05 '15 at 19:24

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I would suggest Bulgarian. First, it is another Slavic language and it uses Cyrillic script. Second, the Old (Church) Slavonic language influenced Russian a lot, and it is very close to Bulgarian, since they both are South Slavic languages. It would be very helpful (in terms of vocabulary, morphology and spelling) to learn the similarities and differences between Russian and Bulgarian.

Now about cases. In Russian, cases do the job that prepositions in English do. Cases indicate relations between words. For example, Genitive case establishes, among some others, possessive relations, similar to the English preposition "of". Dative indicates direction of an action (not only, but mainly this): to. Accusative is for direct object (I saw her, her in English is in Accusative as well). Instrumental is basically for by/with relations. And prepositional for "about/of". This is a very simplified version of the Russian case system, but I hope it may help you to grasp the idea.

answered Mar 05 '15 at 19:24

Eugenia Vlasova

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Have you ever tried to learn Bulgarian? That is a difficult language, its affinity to Russian is limited to the alphabet and lexicon, still even the lexicon, especially the everyday lexicon, is rather different from Russian, so is the spelling, Bulgarian has lots of words not found in the majority of the Slavic languages. Bulgarian stress accent is very different from Russian, its verb aspect has few connections with Russian, it has 4 past tenses and 2 future-in-the-past tenses while Russian has just 1 past tense. And the main thing is Bulgarian has no category of case at all. – Yellow Sky Mar 05 '15 at 20:22
And Bulgarian has articles, a unique feature for a Slavic language, they are found only in Bulgarian and in Macedonian which is closely related to Bulgarian, but not in Russian and not in any other Slavic language. – Yellow Sky Mar 05 '15 at 20:40
Yellow Sky, I studied Bulgarian for two years at the University. This is exactly why I suggested this language. I agree that its grammar is different from Russian. However, I'm convinced that learning two languages that are too similar is not very helpful. The opposite is true: learning a language that is of the same family, but is significantly different is more helpful. Also, one of my students is studying Russian and Bulgarian at the same time. His progress in both languages is amazing, so I assume, it is a good practice to pair those two languages. – Eugenia Vlasova Mar 05 '15 at 20:56
Do you think the progress of one student is enough to advise others to follow him? Bulgarian like any other language is a whole world of its own, why does a person who wants to learn Russian need to dip into the Bulgarian world? Besides, Bulgarian is not a conlang. – Yellow Sky Mar 05 '15 at 21:28
@Yellow Sky I have just tried to read Bulgarian text in Wikipedia and I would say, I understood nearly everything, it is much less enigmatic than Ukrainian where there is a lot of strange words and words looking similar but having different meaning. At least in terms of vocabulary, Bulgarian looks similar to Russian, the same words, just different endings. – Anixx Mar 06 '15 at 00:29
@Anixx - Reading a text in an encyclopedia is absolutely different from reading fairy-tales, or poetry, try to read Bulgarian fairy-tales. And understanding a text in a languge related to the one you know is absolutely different from learning a language so as to be able to understand a language to it, if you acquire my drift. – Yellow Sky Mar 06 '15 at 01:09
@Anixx - Hahaha! I wonder how you would understand this Bulgarian text: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hycIs99S0JY – Yellow Sky Mar 06 '15 at 01:16
@Yellow Sky agreed, the tales are totally incomprehensible – Anixx Mar 06 '15 at 01:18
@Anixx - That's the point, a newspaper in, say, Portuguese, is really similar to a newspaper in Russian, the same words, but when it comes to the most common, everyday words, the languages are extremely different, and it's from those every-day words that the fairy-tales are made of. – Yellow Sky Mar 06 '15 at 01:25
@Yellow Sky In randomly-picked articles in Wikipedia in Bulgarian, it is difficult to find a single incomprehensible word! This is totally not like Portuguese, and I think the tales is somewhat specific style that people do not use. – Anixx Mar 06 '15 at 01:29
I don't think that those tales are "totally incomprehensible". Quite the opposite, and it is really fun to read them. In fact, reading Church Slavonic (or Bulgarian, Serbian etc.) is really helpful for those who seek for the profound knowledge of Russian language. Yet I doubt it should be recommended for those who just started to learn it. – Matt Mar 06 '15 at 06:27
...and Bulgarian isn't a conlang – CocoPop Mar 08 '15 at 00:18
рус = болг.: прямо = направо, стол = стул, арбуз = ягода и т.д. и т.п. Человеку потом будет проще родиться заново и выучить Русский, чем переучиваться с болгаского на русский. – Ivan Black Mar 15 '15 at 19:33

Best Conlang for helping with Russian learning?

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