How difficult is it to learn Russian?

[CilD]

When i was in the sixth grade, I had to choose between German and Russian(I live in Estonia and here are lots of russians, who ruined our country)...I picked German. Many of my classmates learn Russian and without a good teacher it is hard to studdy. I find German quite hard to studdy too...but Estonian is very hard to learn...people say that even harder than Chinese.

 

[red_elk]

My acquaintance, a girl from Italy, also complained about conjugations. And she often incorrectly pronounced verbs and adjectives . Though, she could speak good and understandable. I think it won't be very hard to get to basic level. You will do mistakes, but people will understand you.

Udachi!

 

[Pannonius]

It's not that hard. It's easier if you speak a slavonic language allready. But it could just be my impression, my native language is croatian/serbian/bosnian.
P.S. Yeah, I know...

 

[Italian Celtic]

I learnt somewhere that english is 5 times more difficult than esperanto and russian is 10 times more difficult
So i will say that russian is 2 times more difficult than english

 

[NKVD]

took a course...harder than english, i'm french but both language are almost the same due to history of france and russia...both have gender for each word...anyway the alphabet is not that hard to learn...by the second class i knew it...the most difficult is to not forget it...did not succeed in that though

 

[Phlegmak]

I tried learning Russian. It's fun. The conjugation of verbs and nouns takes a bit to learn though. Learning the alphabet is very easy.

 

[cthom]

passed higher level russian at school. don't worry about the alphabet so much, it's not that hard and the spelling is pretty straightforward compared to others. like phlegmak says, conjugation/declension is what takes time, and even that is not outrageously difficult. you might also get to sing 'kalinka'

 

[toh6wy]

Then he might as well learn Nicobarese.

He makes it clear he wants the language he learns to be useful; maybe you should take a closer look at the OP.

What I was trying to say is that it shouldn't be an issue because Russian, French, and Spanish are all reasonably widely spoken -- in other words, if he wants to study Russian for its own sake, he shouldn't reject the idea of studying it due it to being "less useful," because there is still far more use for knowing it than, say, Nicobarese.

 

[OscarWildebeest]

I did three years of Russian at university, although it was very much pitched at beginners' level. The alphabet takes a little getting used to, but once you have got used to it, it comes naturally. Since you've learned German you'll already be familiar with the concept of declining nouns and conjugating verbs. After that, the only difficulty is learning the vocab (which is far removed from either Germanic or Romance languages, so even guessing words is difficult). Oh, and the pronunciation of course - it's not always obvious where the stress goes, and there are words like vzglyad (which means 'sight') which don't have enough vowels in them for the English-speaking tongue.

But it's a beautiful language, the literature and music are fantastic and, even if the country itself is in a bit of a mess at the moment, the Russian heritage is worth familiarising yourself with.