Lilly's log - French, Russian, Spanish and Italian

[blaurebell]

Russian

I'm now 86% into the book and if I continue at my current speed I might just finish the book in 3 days! That's pretty cool, since I wasn't really planning on finishing it before the end of the month. I guess I'm really getting into the story now. I was planning to finish my first 500 pages before the next 6WC to get to a point where I can really push the hours on reading and I think I've reached that goal already. After all, I can already average at 4 hours a day and that's pretty decent already. Basically I'm all set for that next big push. Incidentally I've also just reached 200h of reading!

Another little success: Yesterday I was looking about the Russian internet for something and to my surprise I actually understood most of what I was reading there without a dictionary. Seems like my reading comprehension is starting to become functional! It's still a bit of a strain to read cyrillic and I tend to avoid trying to decipher it when I don't need to, but after a few minutes I was skipping around the websites quite fluently, reading a sentence here or there without even intending to read them. It's definitely becoming more natural now!

As you might have noticed, I'm pretty much focusing on Russian these days, because I feel like I'm reaching a breakthrough point. So, this was supposed to be my Russian year, but since my Russian progressed more slowly than I had hoped, I actually did more Spanish and French than intended and even added some Italian. Basically my health objected to pushing my limits for proper study. More than 2h of any intensive Russian activity and my health would simply tank. Not good. Cutting back was definitely necessary. Now with only ~15% new word forms per page and already 4000+ words in the pocket it's less of a strain though and I can push it again. I wonder, might Russian still become my most studied language this year? If I really manage to push through another 400h of reading in the next few months, it might just happen! Whatever happens it will probably still be closely followed by Spanish.

Russian hours: 4.66h

Italian

One episode of Star Trek TNG in Italian.

Italian hours: 0.75h

[smallwhite]

... the Russian case system is definitely much more confusing than... Vocabulary might be a little harder with Russian too...

You seem to find Russian much, much harder than everyone else on the internet and on this forum, and you're just at reading. Could it be your method? Or the books?

[aaleks]

The main problem was wrapping my head around that weird way of thinking. Latin has the same logic as German and the Romance languages. That makes it a lot easier.

I guess Russian just isn't about logic .
upd.
I just want to say that actually I've never gotten that logic myself even though I'm native Russian speaker. I remember as back in school I couldn't understand most of rules we were taught. The more I tried the more (spelling/orthographic/punctuation) mistakes I did. As a result I gave up I started more rely on my feeling then on the rules. But it's my native language of course.
p.s. Sorry for mistakes , I didn't have a time to check this post

[Xmmm]

For all we complain about Russian, I guess Greek is just as hard.

I actually wanted to take Ancient Greek at university too and enrolled in Ancient Cultures as a minor to go with my philosophy major. Basically it was all Latin and Greek culture, philosophy and literature with obligatory Latin course and optional Greek course. It's a good fit for philosophy and I was really interested, but it seemed to be taught by a bunch of people who should have aimed at becoming school teachers rather than university lecturers. Not sure whether it was all the Latin + Greek grammar messing with them, but they not only had idiotic rules just like in school, but also "punishments" for breaking them, like extra homework or nonsense like that. On top of it they set the most useless waste of time hamster wheel homework in general. Like copying things out from a book In the end I switched my minor before ever reaching the Greek course. I always hated all the silly made up rules and hamster wheel activities of school, so I simply suffered too much on that course. Writing out verb conjugations and noun declension for a language one doesn't have to produce seems like a similar hamster wheel approach

At my university, people getting a Ph.D. in the classics were expected to be able to write Ancient Greek as easily as they could write German or French or whatever other foreign language they learned. And people who signed up for Intro to Ancient Greek were assumed to be Ph.Ds in training. We certainly had to do (short) English->Greek translations on tests (which is why I got the B+, and the Greek girl got the C+. She could read and understand pretty well but couldn't produce at all, just substituted modernisms).

Which might be an old school way of doing things, but makes sense. If Ph.Ds in the classics only have to be able to read Greek, then over time information is lost and in a couple hundred years people are just bs'ing each other and sneaking peeks at old English translations when they don't understand something ...

[blaurebell]

You seem to find Russian much, much harder than everyone else on the internet and on this forum

You're kidding, right? Most people who try to learn Russian give up! The small number of Russian learners on the forum should probably already be an indication of how difficult Russian is! People dabble and unless they have some particular personal reason or interest they give up, because it's just such a beast of a language. Most Russian learners on the forum are intermediate - advanced learners who have lived in Russia for a year at least and need it for work or university. They obviously don't complain right now, because they did all their complaining already some a while back! There are always a few who dabble and maybe continue, maybe give up, but among the recent beginners Fortheo just posted a rant in the Russian Study group about how frustrating Russian is and how there seems to be no progress! This is the experience of most Russian learners. In fact, even those who stick with courses over years often get stuck or never develop any level of comprehension. There were whole generations of East Germans who studied Russian for 7 or 8 years at school without getting beyond "My name is ... I'm x years old ...". In fact, of a whole generation of East Germans learning Russian in school I only know a single person who managed to learn Russian: My dad. He actually learned it not from the classes but from Russian Sci Fi books with the exact same method I'm using now. The only difference is that the poor man had to use a paper dictionary! And boy did he go when he actually arrived in a Russian speaking country after 10+ years of classes (7 in school, several years of university classes) and realised that he didn't understand a single word of what people were saying! Apparently, Russian women all speak at lightning speed - like my mum - and Russian men seem to have a whole arsenal of shoes in their mouth - his words, not mine! 10+ years and no listening comprehension! And he actually speaks quite nicely according to my mum, although apparently he never understood verb aspect despite learning Russian for 10 years in grammar heavy courses and speaking it for more than 10 years at home. He will get it right for frequent verbs, but for infrequent ones he might make mistakes apparently. Verb aspect, that's how Russians catch spies, my Dad says!

So, no, it's certainly not my method. Any other method would also be counter-productive for reading comprehension altogether. It's basically the only method to even get to any kind of reading comprehension without a dictionary before you're old and grey and have lived in the country for a while. Well, apart from maybe learning the most frequent 10-15,000 words with Anki brute force, which would probably be your choice.

As for the rest of the internet: Most of what you read on Google comes from folks selling some kind of language learning snake oil and they obviously want you to buy their stuff instead of giving up before starting in the first place. I'm not finding it harder than these people, I simply don't lie about it! Articles like "Russian is not as difficult as you think" usually come from people who already spent several years on it and lived in a Russian speaking country for a while. Sure, in 5 years I'll probably find it hilariously easy too! If you look beyond the folks selling their snake oil and actually find some serious websites they usually start with "Learning Russian takes time" and they are sprinkled with "Try to be patient" or "Don't get discouraged" and "This is actually much less confusing than it looks in the beginning". Well no, it actually remains just as confusing and illogical, it's just that after a while your brain adjusts to all the weirdness and it will simply seem easier.

So Russian is hard, and I simply admit it. I'm not particularly thick or inept with languages. I even got degrees to prove it and learned French in 3 months. And it's still hard for me! I even have a significant advantage having grown up with it. It doesn't really help me beyond the sound system though - I only remembered stuff like "apple", "cow", "dog", "milk" or "bicycle" maybe. These are surprisingly infrequent words in regular conversation when you're not a 5 year old anymore!

Trust me, for most people out there, Russian is a beast. Although quite possibly to you the difference between Greek and Russian might seem negligible coming from an entirely different language altogether. I would suggest you try it out and see how you get along with it. Maybe it's easier for you than for the rest of us? I'd actually be really interested in the outcome of that experiment!

, and you're just at reading.

Actually, reading is usually tackled last in Russian, because it's the hardest skill. It needs the most vocabulary, the sentences are much longer than what you encounter in spoken language, the word order is also much wilder and there are difficult constructs that appear much more frequently in written language. Also, there is a danger that reading might kill your pronunciation because stress can't be predicted from how a word is written. I'm not "just" at reading. What I'm doing is actually immensely successful and I'm already at reading, something that most learners only tackle after having reached B2 production. Reading is only an easy skill in languages with lots of cognates.

Could it be your method? Or the books?

The books ... well, I have to admit that Russians don't complain about the quality of the translation which is a sign that it actually has quite a number of thoroughly Russian characteristics. Maybe a little harder than a bad translation of a children's book, which I wouldn't even want to read. And for me this pretty much IS a children's book: I read the whole series in German when I was 8! It certainly isn't War and Peace or some such high brow stuff, pretty regular genre fiction. I'm not sure I can go any lower than that with material for natives. Native children's books are definitely more difficult than this one, because they are less close to the English sentence logic.

[neofight78]

You seem to find Russian much, much harder than everyone else on the internet and on this forum

...They obviously don't complain right now, because they did all their complaining already some a while back!

Err... no we do In fact I've now got about 4.5 years of complaining under my belt. Although your method is not for me, it's obvious you are making some good progress. I don't see that you are struggling any more or any less than anyone else.

[Fortheo]

I can concur that Russian is indeed very frustrating. I also agree that the majority of Russian learners on this site seem to be at least low intermediate and thus slightly more accustomed to the difficulties of Russian, and despite that I still see Arnaud and neofight and others having some frustration from time to time, too. I can only think of two people on this forum who started Russian this year as complete beginners and both of us are struggling (granted it's not my main focus right now).

From my perspective, Lilly (is it okay to call you Lilly?) Is doing very well with her approach to Russian.

[smallwhite]

I didn't say you were struggling! I said "You seem to find Russian much, much harder than everyone else..." As in you talk like Russian should've been Cat VIII** instead of Cat IV. I know you're making progress; I've seen the stats. (So, bonus points for finding it harder yet still making progress like others do). So your books are rather hard. Bingo, then. But that's all you want to read and you're having fun so it doesn't matter to you if the process is hard or not. It only matters to me because I'm considering Russian.

I learned Russian for 138h several years ago and Greek for 190h this year. You're right, I do find them similar; German as well. By the rest of the internet I didn't mean ads for snake oil, but discussions on whether Russian or Greek was harder, with similar votes both sides. And by you're just at reading I meant you're just at the 1st stage of your Russian journey as you said you do reading first and listening and speaking later.

[neofight78]

I didn't say you were struggling! I said "You seem to find Russian much, much harder than everyone else..."

I don't see a meaningful distinction between the two here. In any case I don't agree with the observation.

[blaurebell]

I didn't say you were struggling! I said "You seem to find Russian much, much harder than everyone else..." As in you talk like Russian should've been Cat VIII** instead of Cat IV.

No, as Fortheo and neofight pointed out I'm not the only one who finds it hard, and to them it doesn't seem that I find it harder than they do! All Russian learners coming from Cat I or II languages find it hard, it's as simple as that. And that applies to all Cat IV languages. That's why they are Cat IV! To me Cat I languages were always relatively easy and I had lots of fun learning them. Cat IV is a whole other game entirely and it's more of a masochistic kind of fun to be learning one of them.

Just because these languages seem similar to you coming from a completely different language, doesn't mean that they actually are all that close. Russian and German might seem close to you from your perspective, but when you look at them in detail you suddenly realise that they only have 4 things in common: verb prefixes, 4 of the 6 cases and 3 genders that are actually much more predictable in Russian than in German and present tense. Everything else is pretty much completely different and German makes a lot less distinctions. Verbs of motion, verb aspect and one of the additional cases seem like a completely unnecessary complication to me. I mean, seriously, with verbs of motion you are not only likely to pick the wrong one, but also get the verb aspect wrong at the same time. That's a lot of variables to keep in mind for a single word. Add to that the cases + animate vs inanimate and your chances of getting through a sentences without mistakes is incredibly slim. Sure, with lots of drilling one gets used to the cases and verbs of motion, but frankly verb aspect seems to be some kind of arcane magic with no logic whatsoever.

And German is equally non-sensical to Russians. The word order, articles and gender make no sense whatsoever to them - gender in German simply has no logic. And the more infrequently used tenses also give Russians problems, I think some of them might not even exist in Russian. In any case, now that I know more about the structure of Russian I can actually pinpoint where most of my mum's mistakes in German come from. German is just as difficult for her as Russian is for me. And she actually never got past B2 production in German in 35 years and failed miserably at learning English, although she's had plenty of good reasons for learning it. I actually have to translate between my husband and her because my husband failed to learn German and my mum failed to learn English. My husband speaks and understands a few Cat I languages, my mum only Cat IV and II languages. Between them they understand 7 languages and share not a single common one. That Cat I to IV gap is difficult to bridge.

And by you're just at reading I meant you're just at the 1st stage of your Russian journey as you said you do reading first and listening and speaking later.

Frankly, the initial period is always the most difficult period for me. I know most people find it the most enjoyable period because it's all new and fresh, but for me it's the time where things seem most uncomfortable, make no sense, are very repetitive or give me headaches. It's very hard to have fun with a language if you don't understand it without strain yet. Once I break through the comprehension barrier for me it's just a whole lot of fun with native content, reading good books, watching TV and movies + writing and speaking. Maybe I could do without all the grammar drilling necessary for the B2+ push, but I still get a sort of perfectionist kick out of it. It isn't actually straining for the most part. And I actually get incredibly impatient if I can't just push past that repetitive, boring, headache inducing period in the first few months. With most Cat I languages I doubt I'd need more than 3 or 4 months to get to B2 comprehension and usually it's not even a strain anymore after 2 months already. With Russian I have been stuck in semi torture time for far too long already. It's been almost 7 months of daily strain and headaches! I should be past this, but since my health can't take more than 1-2h of daily strain, I feel like I'm progressing far too slowly. But well ... Russian. I suppose another 400h and I'll be complaining less