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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 im

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.

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.