Chicken Sandwich
Senior Member
- Joined
- Jun 20, 2010
- Member Type
- Interested in Language
- Native Language
- Russian
- Home Country
- Russian Federation
- Current Location
- Netherlands
For those of you who find this a strange opening post, this discussion began in a different thread.
I don't necessarily agree with this. It's true that English has relatively "simple" grammar compared to other European languages (German for one), but I will say that I have never studied Russian in school, becuase I have never attended a Russian school in my life. That said, I make very few mistakes. Granted, my vocabulary isn't very large, but I rarely make mistakes when it comes to genders and cases. I was never taught how to speak Russian and yet I manage pretty well.
People who are learning Russian often say that it's impossible to learn Russian because it's such a complex language. They are perplexed at how I know intuitively which word takes which gender and which case I should use. They always think that I have learnt this "the hard way"! Not true. I always say that's it's pure intuition. I realise, though, that this may sound like anecdotal evidence.
As far as BrE is concerned, I recall spending a lot of time explaining to incredulous Spaniards that English (as a language) is simply not taught to British children in school. Because of the complexities of the grammar (verb endings etc) in many European languages, for example, children are properly taught to speak their own language. We are not. British children learn to speak their own language through experience, by listening and by repetition.
I don't necessarily agree with this. It's true that English has relatively "simple" grammar compared to other European languages (German for one), but I will say that I have never studied Russian in school, becuase I have never attended a Russian school in my life. That said, I make very few mistakes. Granted, my vocabulary isn't very large, but I rarely make mistakes when it comes to genders and cases. I was never taught how to speak Russian and yet I manage pretty well.
People who are learning Russian often say that it's impossible to learn Russian because it's such a complex language. They are perplexed at how I know intuitively which word takes which gender and which case I should use. They always think that I have learnt this "the hard way"! Not true. I always say that's it's pure intuition. I realise, though, that this may sound like anecdotal evidence.
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