Today we are going to talk about the difficulties of learning Russian.
-Word stress
The word stress in Russian is flexible, i. e., any syllable can be stressed. The difficulty is that some words have the same spelling but different meanings. The meaning of the word depends on the stress.
For example,
зАмок (a castle)- замОк (a lock)
заплачУ (I will pay) – заплАчу (I will cry)
-Grammatical case
A grammatical case is a grammatical category of some parts of speech, which helps to grammatically combine words in a sentence . There are 6 cases in the Russian language, each of these has its specific questions and endings. The complexity arises from the need to ensure agreement between case endings in a sentence.
For example,
У меня нет белОГО котА (I don’t have a white cat)
белОГО котА (a white cat) is in the genitive case, however, beginner students of Russian often forget to modify ending of an adjective to agree with a noun.
-Verbal aspect
There are two verbal aspects in Russian: perfective and imperfective (совершенный и несовершенный).
While explaining this grammar topic, the focus is on the following: verbs of the imperfective aspect show the duration of a repeated action that is not yet completed. In contrast, verbs of the perfective aspect show the result of an action.
For example,
Я быстро читаю. (несовершенный вид)
I read fast. (imperfective aspect).
Я быстро прочитал. (совершенный вид)
I read quickly. (perfective aspect)
⁃ Lexical-semantic group
Russian is a rich language. It has similar words, which differ in their meanings and context of use.
Examples of verbs:
применять (to apply), использовать (to use), употреблять (to utilize).
To sum up, here are some final tips for learning Russian successfully.
1. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. Even Russian native speakers make mistakes.
2. Don’t concentrate only on grammar. Start speaking!
3. Read in Russian.
4. Watch some films and videos in Russian that you find interesting.
5. Listen to music in Russian.
6. Don’t believe and NEVER say that you can’t learn Russian just because it’s considered difficult!
