@kirkmossing

1 year ago

I am a native English speaker, have studied Russian for 22 years, lived and traveled and been very heavily involved in that part of the world. The major difficulties I have had are in the area of verb tenses and word endings. Entire words can change dramatically, so it is not always just like adding an ending like we do in English. An example in English would be the plural of mouse and mice. I found that if you find an example of an oddity in your own language it helps to understand a similar oddity in the new language to calm yourself down :). They also have a formal "you" which is also plural and an informal "you." Later I found out we used to have the same in English and the formal "you" won out. The alphabet is easy. What is very hard is being able to say the sounds correctly, which in part is based upon they have different concepts of HOW to say a letter. Such as from the front of the mouth or the back in the throat. And that is influenced by hardened muscles in the palette as well. The REAL difficulty between languages is the NUANCES. A language is simply the MECHANICAL aspect of communicating concepts. Examples would be: you have a word that has 13 definitions. Well, not all those definitions match up in their language. Or the word "the" in English has a volume of rules about it (such as can't be used before a name...). The farther the language is from your native language the more the mechanism changes. Languages don't necessarily match up one for one. We might write "C'mon In" and they would write normally "Welcome" on a sign, but they would say "c'mon in" if speaking. Also, have you noticed little kids speaking? They speak some 80 hours a week. I found one key thing that helps to learn is to work with someone who is virtually fluent in your native tongue who can explain split hair differences and then just accept how they say something and practice it over and over till it becomes natural. If you inspect your own language you will find the goofiest things that make no sense whatsoever but we never question it. You just run with it. (Like "it's raining"...what is "it?" or the difference between "anyone" and "anybody" or "I DO not like spinach"...why the "do" in the negative form? or "there's" a dog in here...why the "there?"

66 |