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Lol, Spanish is a Schedule 1 language. It is considered one of the easiest languages to learn. I achieved a high level of proficiency just living in El Paso for 2 years and learning form locals and Army mates from Spain, Panama and Columbia. Granted, Mexican's pretty much talk in full blown slang/street talk. Bottom line is, you can get conversational quick if you work at it. The only reason I can think why someone may believe Spanish is hard is due to the ridiculous failed way that Schools and Universities here in America try to teach it. I've met people that had 3 years of school in it and couldn't order a burrito. Yet, I could carry on a full blown conversation in it in less than a year.
Russian on the other hand, which I've recently taken up, is a Schedule 4 language. It is extremely difficult. I have some Russian pen pals / tutors that I message and skype with (mostly in Moscow) and we've had this discussion. They are not surprised that not many people outside of Russia try and learn Russian due to it's difficulty.
And Stan, you are nuts. There is nothing easy about the 6 cases. Especially when you throw in the gender rules. Another bear is the verbs in motion. I'm no longer near fluency in Spanish and French as I was in the 90's, but I never struggled this much to learn a language. I put in more hours a day learning Russian than I ever did learning those 2 languages and it's a !$#!%$#! It's ranked one of the toughest because it is one of the toughest. Period.
And the 17 verb tenses in Spanish, you can easily get by only mastering the first 3 (past/present/future) verb tenses. In Russian, until you master cases, you'll sound like a child. And I've yet to meet a Russian who says cases are easy, it's something they struggled with growing up and it's their native tongue! If you think they are easy, you probably don't know how to use them correctly.
Ok so I have Spanish from Rosetta Stone and soon I will have Russian but I am going to learn Spanish first. Is Russian a hard language to learn, just curious? I had a friend in High School that was an exchange student from Russia and she is Russian and knows Russian and she taught me a few Russian words in high school and it didn't seem to hard to me. Have you ever learned Russian? Do you want to learn Russian? I want to learn Russian so I can talk to my friend from Russia in Russian!
It sounds to me that the poster has Russian as #2 on his list AFTER he learns Spanish. Good luck Angelwngs, I think you are going to need it with Russian!
It's harder than Spanish, I suspect, because not only is there a somewhat different alphabet, but the sentence structure is different. I admire your industry, but don't know how it would be on your own, as opposed to taking a class.
Naw. Russian to me was easier than Spanish.
More phonetic spelling, easier tenses, and once you get past the predictable declentions, you're golden.
(They were two of my majors in college.)
Every one is different for sure.
I've studied both intensely. It is true that there are elements of the Russian language that are quite easy compared to Spanish.
There a lot of myths circulating about so-called "difficult languages" (whatever that means??).
The State Department will consider Slavic languages and Asian languages to be more difficult than Romance languages. I suppose it's based on the number of hours needed by a non-native speaker to achieve basic fluency. I suppose you could indeed present a very valid counter-argument to them if you really know your linguistic stuff. LOL.
Things I've found difficult about Russian:
1). Getting down pat the different between the perfective and imperfective (does not correspond in many ways to the different between the imperfect and perfect tenses in Romance languages - don't get fooled!)
2) Memorizing verbs! I just have a horrible time with this.
3) Getting someone to explain the verbs of motion correctly, if you can; once so, you'll be set.
Declensions (including numbers) - it came off hard but became almost natural after studying it for a while.
Difficult things about Spanish:
1) Keeping the verb tenses straight in your head (not just conjugations).....they're non-stop.
2) Understanding how to use the subjunctive correctly
3) Difference between imperfect and perfect tenses!!!!
I think both are hard pronunciation-wise. It's not easy to sound like a native in Spanish, either.
Two more points:
1) The more a language is exotic, the more it's considered difficult
2) Russian's difficulty is exaggerated, despite there being very difficult aspects of the language.
Russians don't have different brains. Their language can be learned to be spoken fluently. It happens and continues to happen: non-native who learn to speak and write Russian fluently. Nothing supernatural. Any human language can be learned.
I've studied both intensely. It is true that there are elements of the Russian language that are quite easy compared to Spanish.
There a lot of myths circulating about so-called "difficult languages" (whatever that means??).
The State Department will consider Slavic languages and Asian languages to be more difficult than Romance languages. I suppose it's based on the number of hours needed by a non-native speaker to achieve basic fluency. I suppose you could indeed present a very valid counter-argument to them if you really know your linguistic stuff. LOL.
Things I've found difficult about Russian:
1). Getting down pat the different between the perfective and imperfective (does not correspond in many ways to the different between the imperfect and perfect tenses in Romance languages - don't get fooled!)
2) Memorizing verbs! I just have a horrible time with this.
3) Getting someone to explain the verbs of motion correctly, if you can; once so, you'll be set.
Declensions (including numbers) - it came off hard but became almost natural after studying it for a while.
Difficult things about Spanish:
1) Keeping the verb tenses straight in your head (not just conjugations).....they're non-stop.
2) Understanding how to use the subjunctive correctly
3) Difference between imperfect and perfect tenses!!!!
I think both are hard pronunciation-wise. It's not easy to sound like a native in Spanish, either.
Two more points:
1) The more a language is exotic, the more it's considered difficult
2) Russian's difficulty is exaggerated, despite there being very difficult aspects of the language.
Russians don't have different brains. Their language can be learned to be spoken fluently. It happens and continues to happen: non-native who learn to speak and write Russian fluently. Nothing supernatural. Any human language can be learned.
Russian's difficulty is not exaggerated; it's considered difficult for good reason. Aside from the verb structure and so many complexities involved with that, there are the noun declensions, and learning which noun cases go with which prepositions (to some extent, there doesn't appear to be any rhyme or reason, it just has to be memorized). Those are the main difficulties, and they're formidable. It's a more complex declension system than German, and the preposition-noun case matching is much more complex than in German. The Romance languages have none of this, except for Romanian.
I think the OP had no idea what he was getting himself into, and may end up frustrated and disappointed. On the other hand, Rosetta Stone's approach to it might be the best way to teach it. Since the OP only posted last year, he's probably still working on Spanish, and hasn't tried Russian yet. Good luck to him/her.
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