Would it be much easier to learn a language with the same alphabet as my native one?

Question

I picked up a self instruction kit for Russian today on a whim. I currently can only speak English as it is my native language but am interested in trying to learn another. Would it be much more difficult to learn Russian than perhaps German because of the different alphabet? Also, has anyone else tried self instruction with Russian and how did it go? Thanks - Sean.

Answer 1

Russian certainly has a different grammar to English, but some words in Russian, perhaps more international words will be similar to English.

As for the Cyrillic alphabet, here is a great trick to learn it:

Categorise the letter of the Cyrillic alphabet in three groups:

Group 1: Looks like a Latin letter, acts like a Latin letter
Group 2: Looks like a Latin letter, acts different to a Latin letter
Group 3: Does not look like a Latin letter

For Group 1: A K M O T - no need to learn those! Yay!
For Group 2: B E H P C Y X P - tiny learning effort
For Group 3: (the rest) - just requires practicing

As we've split the alphabet in 3 groups, we can see that learning the alphabet does not require very much effort, just some practice at the most.

Consider that way, though, that once you get past the alphabet phase, you will be able to enjoy Russian much more. Plus it's always quite chic to know how to read another writing script.

Whether German or Russian is easier, as a linguist I can tell you that learning a language that is closer to your own is always easier. French speakers have less trouble learning Italian than English and English speakers have less trouble learning German than Russian.

Don't let this take away the fun from learning Russian, though! Enjoy your new language!

Answer 2

American English is my native language. I grew up in a US town that still used a LOT of German. i have taken French, Spanish, Latin, and Russian. I've learned a little Italian.

German is very complicated in terms of grammar, and even word meanings. Russian is only complicated ( to me) because of the different alphabet. I thought the different alphabet was not that much of a problem. Spanish and French seemed easy.


Mark Twain wrote a GREAT funny essay about learning German.

http://german.pravapis.org/awful_german_language.asp

Answer 3

The difficulty with a language that has a different alphabet is that it is hard just to look at words and learn them. If you want to do Russian spend some time learning the alphabet first. Teaching yourself any language is the same, it will be hard to speak it unless you practise but you can certainly make a start.

Answer 4

My recommendation would be Spanish. It's usually more difficult to learn your first foreign language as you need to understand how different the basic structure can be. Spanish is not that hard grammatically, you'll find some words Spanish and English share and the pronunciation is not as drastically different as in French. To start with Russian might just discourage you from learning languages all together. It's one of the Slavic languages (Russian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, most of the former Yugoslavian languages..) and those differ from English very significantly in most aspects. I've been watching my boyfriend, who is an Israeli fluent in Hebrew and English, trying to learn my "******* language" as he calls it. Kind of hates it, even though Czech uses the same alphabet as English..

Answer 5

I speak Russian fluently and I'm sorrry to break it to you but it is one of the hardest languages to learn in the world. My friend has been studying it for 6 years and she lives in a russian-speaking country and she still cannot speak it properly. I think a language with a similiar alphabet to English would be much easier to learn.

Answer 6

ANY language other than ENGLISH would be easier to learn. English is by far THE most difficult language on the planet. No, I have not tried Russian though. GOOD LUCK.

Answer 7

Hello,

Russian isn't that hard it depends on how you see it. You can learn Russian by romanization which is latin alphabets also known as English aplhabets.

If you really are in to it try Pimsleur learning program no notes just conversational skills ....and no learning drills

German isn't hard it is just made out prbably because of the script. try it you might suprise yourself

Good luck and Stay safe

Answer 8

Not necessarily. If you're learning a whole new language, you're learnin about re-arranging sentences, different pronounciations, new mouth positions etc - A different set of letters shouldn't take too much getting used to

Never tried russian myself, but love hearing it spoken - Good luck!