Language Issues
I don't think that I have ever emphasized here just how frigging difficult the Russian language is for English speakers.
There are cases that you have to memorize and figure out when to use.
I have a hard enough time with English grammar, let alone knowing when it's accusative, genative, locative, dative, or whatever other cases they decide to throw at us. And then they just introduced the perfective and imperfective tenses to us last week. At every turn I just feel like something else is given to us and those of us with no real background in Russian are left scratching our heads.
Our language instruction overall has been excellent, I can not fault them at all, it's just my own lack of picking up languages quickly or really even being motivated to work so hard to make it happen.
I always thought that if I went and lived in a foreign country where English was not readily spoken that I'd have to learn the language and that I would do it. Perhaps this is still possible in a country that has a lazy language, like English, but Russian. Oh. I can't even begin to tell you how little I feel like I have learned. I certainly understand a lot better than I used to, but in terms of what I'm able to say, I don't really feel that I've improved all that much from when I was in Saint Petersburg, which is woeful.
Our cluster is in a unique learning situation, having to accomodate people who have a vast experience of the language to those who learned nothing. It's interesting how our instructors have learned to adapt to us and work with us, making sure that we are each perhaps being challenged a bit, but it does never seem to work out for all of us at the same time. But that would also probably be impossible.
Maybe one of these days I'll wake up and speak Russian. I'd be satisfied if I just dreamt in Russian, or if I could understand exchanges at stores. Maybe one day it will come, but the key factor is wanting it to happen--and that is the hard thing to answer. Of course I want it to happen, working for it is something else.
And besides, Russian is a crazy hard language.
There are cases that you have to memorize and figure out when to use.
I have a hard enough time with English grammar, let alone knowing when it's accusative, genative, locative, dative, or whatever other cases they decide to throw at us. And then they just introduced the perfective and imperfective tenses to us last week. At every turn I just feel like something else is given to us and those of us with no real background in Russian are left scratching our heads.
Our language instruction overall has been excellent, I can not fault them at all, it's just my own lack of picking up languages quickly or really even being motivated to work so hard to make it happen.
I always thought that if I went and lived in a foreign country where English was not readily spoken that I'd have to learn the language and that I would do it. Perhaps this is still possible in a country that has a lazy language, like English, but Russian. Oh. I can't even begin to tell you how little I feel like I have learned. I certainly understand a lot better than I used to, but in terms of what I'm able to say, I don't really feel that I've improved all that much from when I was in Saint Petersburg, which is woeful.
Our cluster is in a unique learning situation, having to accomodate people who have a vast experience of the language to those who learned nothing. It's interesting how our instructors have learned to adapt to us and work with us, making sure that we are each perhaps being challenged a bit, but it does never seem to work out for all of us at the same time. But that would also probably be impossible.
Maybe one of these days I'll wake up and speak Russian. I'd be satisfied if I just dreamt in Russian, or if I could understand exchanges at stores. Maybe one day it will come, but the key factor is wanting it to happen--and that is the hard thing to answer. Of course I want it to happen, working for it is something else.
And besides, Russian is a crazy hard language.
posted by Molly | 4:20 AM
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