4 ms·

I have a harder time (at least as a beginner) with Russian than I do with Mandarin, because of the multiple cases and verb forms. In Mandarin I learn one word a

I have a harder time (at least as a beginner) with Russian than I do with Mandarin, because of the multiple cases and verb forms. In Mandarin I learn one word and can use it. In Russian that word has 10-20+ different forms. (This is about speaking, not writing.) Maybe it clicks at some point. I never got past the beginner stage.

tigershark 9y ago
Do you mean the declinations? In that case if I remember correctly Russian has 5 declinations, not 10-20+. I never tried to learn mandarin but I guess that it will be much more difficult than Russian. I learnt to read Russian in my free time during a couple of days. I can't even imagine how long I would need to learn to read mandarin. I was quite quick with hiragana and katakana but all in all they are just over 100 characters and now I almost completely forgot them after years of not practicing. Mandarin has something like tens of thousand unique characters.
- pandaman 9y ago
  Russian has 6 cases for nouns (and rudimentary 7th), together with plural this is already 12 forms a noun can take. Verbs change by tense, person, plurality and gender in the past singular. However there is also aspect and you probably want to know both perfect and imperfect verbs for the same action. Movement verbs have directionality on top of that. Adjective are changing together with the nouns and also have "brief" form. So yeah, you need to learn about a dozen forms for something which is one-two syllables in Mandarin. Of course, most of the forms are just semi-regular mutations of prefix and/or suffix but it doesn't help when you are trying to recognize them in speech.
  - tigershark 9y ago
    You can't possibly count the feminine form, the singular and plural and the verbs conjugation as different forms. Otherwise even Italian would be pretty much impossible from this point of view. For example "the lawyer ate" in Italian becomes: L'avvocato/l'avvocatessa/gli avvocati/le avvocatesse combined with mangiò/mangiarono/ha mangiato/hanno mangiato/mangiava/mangiavano/ebbe mangiato/ebbero mangiato. It's a complete non-sense to count the different "forms" in this way. This example has 32 different combinations using the same principles. But I would never say that Italian is more difficult than Russian. The difficult part in Russian is the 6 cases (I remembered incorrectly 5).
    - pandaman 9y ago
      I am not sure what are you saying here. I am a native Russian speaker and I can assure you that words in Russian have that many different forms. You can verify it from any other source. Your example lists 4 forms for the noun and 8 forms for the verb, which is less than these words could take in Russian, so yeah, it's a nonsense to count the number of forms a word can take by multiplying it by the number of forms another word could take.
      - tigershark 9y ago
        I know that Russian has these forms, but it's not like that you can say that Russian is difficult because of singular/plural and male/female forms and the verbs, because also Italian for example shares the same difficulty (actually the verb conjugations are even more complex). The difficult part in Russian are the 6 grammar cases. But this difficulty pales compared to having to learn tens of thousands different characters with some of them with very similar shapes. I never studied the 6 Russian cases, but I studied the Latin ones, and once you know the rules they are pretty straightforward.
        pandaman 9y ago
        The OP compared Russian to Mandarin by counting the number of forms words take in Russian (10-20) and in Mandarin (one). You objected, saying that Russian only has "5 declinations" and so it could not possibly be that many forms. I corrected you pointing at the many forms different parts of speech take in Russian. Being a native speaker I could not possibly judge how hard or easy is it to learn Russian so I have not made such a judgment. For what I know the OP is not lying and finds it difficult to memorize different forms for almost every single word.
  - tetromino_ 9y ago
    > Russian has 6 cases for nouns (and rudimentary 7th) And rudimentary 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th :) Vocative: exists for religious words (Боже - Oh God), names ending in а/я (Кать - Hey, Katya!), and some archaic expressions. Partitive: exists as a separate case for many common mass nouns (чашка чаю - cup of tea, ложка мёду - spoon of honey) but usually can be replaced with genitive. Locative: exists as a separate case for a small number of nouns (в лесу - in the forest, на дому - at home, на двери́ - on the door; compare with о две́ри stress pattern in the prepositional); for most nouns, it just coincides with the prepositional case. Counting form: exists only in the plural for many units of measure and only with exact numeric quantities greater than or equal to 5 (восемь бит - eight bits; compare to количество битов - number of bits) Paucal counting form: exists as a separate case for a few common nouns, used with exact numeric quantities between 1.5 and 4 (полтора часа́ - one and a half hours; compare to ча́са, which would be the expected stress pattern for the genitive); for most nouns, this coincides with the genitive.
    - pandaman 9y ago
      I just meant vocative since it's a proper case in other Slavic languages. A technical question - how do you type stress accents? Phone?
      - tetromino_ 9y ago
        Technical answer - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt_code In Windows, you'll need to enable a registry key. In Linux, I do Ctrl-Shift-u 0301 after the vowel to insert the stress mark (U+0301, combining accute accent). If you don't have unicode input, the simplest solution is to copypaste from Wikipedia.
        pandaman 9y ago
        I see. Thought there could be a regular input method like in French. French accents actually work with US English keyboard layout on Mac but not with Russian.

tigershark 9y ago

Do you mean the declinations? In that case if I remember correctly Russian has 5 declinations, not 10-20+. I never tried to learn mandarin but I guess that it will be much more difficult than Russian. I learnt to read Russian in my free time during a couple of days. I can't even imagine how long I would need to learn to read mandarin. I was quite quick with hiragana and katakana but all in all they are just over 100 characters and now I almost completely forgot them after years of not practicing. Mandarin has something like tens of thousand unique characters.

pandaman 9y ago
Russian has 6 cases for nouns (and rudimentary 7th), together with plural this is already 12 forms a noun can take. Verbs change by tense, person, plurality and gender in the past singular. However there is also aspect and you probably want to know both perfect and imperfect verbs for the same action. Movement verbs have directionality on top of that. Adjective are changing together with the nouns and also have "brief" form. So yeah, you need to learn about a dozen forms for something which is one-two syllables in Mandarin. Of course, most of the forms are just semi-regular mutations of prefix and/or suffix but it doesn't help when you are trying to recognize them in speech.
- tigershark 9y ago
  You can't possibly count the feminine form, the singular and plural and the verbs conjugation as different forms. Otherwise even Italian would be pretty much impossible from this point of view. For example "the lawyer ate" in Italian becomes: L'avvocato/l'avvocatessa/gli avvocati/le avvocatesse combined with mangiò/mangiarono/ha mangiato/hanno mangiato/mangiava/mangiavano/ebbe mangiato/ebbero mangiato. It's a complete non-sense to count the different "forms" in this way. This example has 32 different combinations using the same principles. But I would never say that Italian is more difficult than Russian. The difficult part in Russian is the 6 cases (I remembered incorrectly 5).
  - pandaman 9y ago
    I am not sure what are you saying here. I am a native Russian speaker and I can assure you that words in Russian have that many different forms. You can verify it from any other source. Your example lists 4 forms for the noun and 8 forms for the verb, which is less than these words could take in Russian, so yeah, it's a nonsense to count the number of forms a word can take by multiplying it by the number of forms another word could take.
    - tigershark 9y ago
      I know that Russian has these forms, but it's not like that you can say that Russian is difficult because of singular/plural and male/female forms and the verbs, because also Italian for example shares the same difficulty (actually the verb conjugations are even more complex). The difficult part in Russian are the 6 grammar cases. But this difficulty pales compared to having to learn tens of thousands different characters with some of them with very similar shapes. I never studied the 6 Russian cases, but I studied the Latin ones, and once you know the rules they are pretty straightforward.
      - pandaman 9y ago
        The OP compared Russian to Mandarin by counting the number of forms words take in Russian (10-20) and in Mandarin (one). You objected, saying that Russian only has "5 declinations" and so it could not possibly be that many forms. I corrected you pointing at the many forms different parts of speech take in Russian. Being a native speaker I could not possibly judge how hard or easy is it to learn Russian so I have not made such a judgment. For what I know the OP is not lying and finds it difficult to memorize different forms for almost every single word.
- tetromino_ 9y ago
  > Russian has 6 cases for nouns (and rudimentary 7th) And rudimentary 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th :) Vocative: exists for religious words (Боже - Oh God), names ending in а/я (Кать - Hey, Katya!), and some archaic expressions. Partitive: exists as a separate case for many common mass nouns (чашка чаю - cup of tea, ложка мёду - spoon of honey) but usually can be replaced with genitive. Locative: exists as a separate case for a small number of nouns (в лесу - in the forest, на дому - at home, на двери́ - on the door; compare with о две́ри stress pattern in the prepositional); for most nouns, it just coincides with the prepositional case. Counting form: exists only in the plural for many units of measure and only with exact numeric quantities greater than or equal to 5 (восемь бит - eight bits; compare to количество битов - number of bits) Paucal counting form: exists as a separate case for a few common nouns, used with exact numeric quantities between 1.5 and 4 (полтора часа́ - one and a half hours; compare to ча́са, which would be the expected stress pattern for the genitive); for most nouns, this coincides with the genitive.
  - pandaman 9y ago
    I just meant vocative since it's a proper case in other Slavic languages. A technical question - how do you type stress accents? Phone?
    - tetromino_ 9y ago
      Technical answer - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt_code In Windows, you'll need to enable a registry key. In Linux, I do Ctrl-Shift-u 0301 after the vowel to insert the stress mark (U+0301, combining accute accent). If you don't have unicode input, the simplest solution is to copypaste from Wikipedia.
      - pandaman 9y ago
        I see. Thought there could be a regular input method like in French. French accents actually work with US English keyboard layout on Mac but not with Russian.