is russian an easy language to learn?

Answer 1

I am born and risen in Russia, here for 9 years.
Yes, it's hard, and it's harder than most european languages.
The best way to learn it is to stay in Russia for 2 or more years.
You will be speaking, but locals will know you are not russian, mile away.
We have 33 letters in alphabet. There is no definite word order in a sentence. Nouns have 6 tenses (called "padezh"), to find a right way to put it, you need to create a special dummy standard question towards the noun... Suffixes and prefixes sometimes three times bigger than the word itself. Changing letters in the same word. Here is a good example: "Anna" and "Nyura" is the same girls name!
Bottomline: you can learn very basics of it, just some speaking, but will never approach clean language.

Answer 2

Once you get past the alphabet - which is easy to read once you pick it up, it isn't all that hard to understand. Also, Russian still has far more greek and Latin rooted words than most other Slavic languages, such as Polish and Czech.

The hardest part is the grammar, its very much like Latin with all the case endings. Its very complex, and difficult to master. I think you could become reasonably successful at reading and understanding Russian within a year of study, but writing and speaking it correctly yourself may take a lot longer.

Answer 3

I don't think any language is easy to learn. Of course, if you have a romance language as your first language, it is much easier to pick up other romance languages but if you're going to go from say, English to Russian, it'll be much harder since there are not many similarities. My primary language is English and have been learning French for 5 years and I'm still not perfect at it!

Answer 4

It is very difficult for english speaking people to learn this language. As with any other Language is is better if you have a friend who speaks the language well. The cirrilic (russian) language is very old and so we poor mortals must be able to learn it .

Answer 5

Straight to your question: no, Russian language is not easy to learn. Of course, it is relative, because If you have some previous knowledge on other languages and in particular in any Slavic, for you would be easier. Slavic language is my mother tongue, though not Russian and at any rate for me was easier to learn it, due to two main reasons: I begun learning it while I was a little child and second, the common traces, Cyrillic alphabet, etc. If your mother tongue is English, you need to be very decisive, with plenty of drive and to put much effort in order to acquire a good knowledge of Russian..Nothing is impossible..

Hope that helps!
Wish you luck!

Answer 6

Russian was the fourth language I learned. (I speak English, Spanish, French, Welsh, Danish, and Russian.) It is actually pretty simple. It has many cognates to english and romance languages. I would defiantly learn a romance language first. However, what makes it a challenge is the alphabet. Though, you should 100% try to learn Russian.

Answer 7

The most difficult is not to learn the cyrillic letters (it's very easy), but learning the declensions. You have six cases : nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental and prepositional... Each noun has 3 genders : masculine, feminine and neuter and two forms, hard or soft...

On the opposite hand, the verbal system is much easier than in german, or french (I'm french, so I know...). You can learn the basics by following a training course, but you'll probably need to go to Russia further...

Answer 8

Not using the traditional textbook method. As they use a different alphabet from the one we use in English, it is very confusing...you have to sound out the word, hope you got it right...and then you have trouble recognizing the word by its "shape". The grammar is hard too, like Latin you have to decline verbs and the syntax is very different to English. I tried to learn Russian at the age of 20 and found it too difficult. I only lasted 6 weeks.
If however you use a more active, personal, hands-on method, it might be easier. More oral, less written until you've learned what the sounds mean.

Answer 9

It is relative, for Russians it is easy, for us American is very hard to learn. same happens with all those oriental languages like Chinese, Japanese, Indian, etc. languages having its roots in Rome or Greece are easier.

Answer 10

personally, i have no clue. it's supposed to be easier than English, for sure.
go to
www.byki.com
it's free and you can learn a few basic phrases and words in russian. if you were thinking about learning russisan, i'd definatly give this a try.