{"id":7804,"date":"2015-05-04T07:41:25","date_gmt":"2015-05-04T07:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/?p=7804"},"modified":"2018-08-15T18:13:45","modified_gmt":"2018-08-15T18:13:45","slug":"learning-russian-after-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/learning-russian-after-english\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning Russian After English"},"content":{"rendered":"

We are continuing last week’s discussion<\/a> of how learning a different second language first may have helped — or impeded — you in learning Russian. Since English is the most commonly studied foreign language, it’s only natural we discuss it next. I would guess for speakers of other European languages Russian may seem infinitely more complex than English. Is there anything at all learning English as a second language first\u00a0will prepare you for?<\/p>\n

Perks<\/h2>\n

Seemingly Random Word Stress<\/h3>\n

If your first language has a fairly regular word stress (\u0443\u0434\u0430\u0440\u0435\u0301\u043d\u0438\u0435<\/strong>) pattern, English is a good segue to unpredictable word stress<\/a>. Ostensibly, there are stress patterns<\/a> to help you predict the emphasis in English, but you could spend as much time memorizing them than just memorizing the words with the correct accent.<\/p>\n

Russian is similar in that there are patterns<\/a>\u00a0and fairly detailed descriptions<\/a>, but you are better off listening to spoken Russian and practicing it rather than trying to memorize the patterns.<\/p>\n

Loanwords<\/h3>\n

Many people who commented on the previous post in this series noticed that Russian makes English\/French\/German\/insert your European language here all look like dialects of each other. While this may be true thanks to closer vocabulary and grammar ties among these languages, Russian still has plenty of borrowed vocabulary<\/a> for you to build on. A lot of science vocabulary comes from Latin and Greek, e.g., \u043c\u0430\u0442\u0435\u043c\u0430\u0301\u0442\u0438\u043a\u0430<\/strong> (mathematics), \u0442\u0435\u043e\u0440\u0435\u0301\u043c\u0430<\/strong> (theorem), \u0440\u0430\u0434\u0438\u0430\u0301\u0446\u0438\u044f<\/strong> (radiation), etc.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, Russian shares with English many French loanwords, which can be understood by someone who learned English, e.g., \u0442\u0443\u0430\u043b\u0435\u0301\u0442<\/strong> (toilet), \u0440\u0435\u0441\u0442\u043e\u0440\u0430\u0301\u043d<\/strong> (restaurant), \u043c\u0435\u043d\u044e\u0301<\/strong> (menu). Finally, scores of recent loanwords pertaining to technology and business come from English and should be easy to parse — \u043c\u0435\u0301\u043d\u0435\u0434\u0436\u0435\u0440<\/strong> (manager), \u0444\u0430\u0439\u043b<\/strong> (a computer file), \u043a\u043e\u043d\u0442\u0440\u0430\u0301\u043a\u0442<\/strong> (a contract; initially Latin, of course).<\/p>\n

We may take these things for granted and think these words are but a drop in the sea of unfamiliar Russian vocabulary. Consider, for comparison, languages like Chinese, Hebrew, or Arabic, which don’t use cognates for words like “sculpture” or “electricity” — whereas Russian does: “\u0441\u043a\u0443\u043b\u044c\u043f\u0442\u0443\u0301\u0440\u0430<\/strong>” and “\u044d\u043b\u0435\u043a\u0442\u0440\u0438\u0301\u0447\u0435\u0441\u0442\u0432\u043e<\/strong>,” respectively.<\/p>\n

Curveballs<\/h2>\n

False Friends<\/h3>\n

As my co-blogger Jenya pointed out<\/a>, some of the English loanwords in Russian either mean something different from the English sense or have acquired an additional flare not present in English — for example, \u043a\u043e\u0301\u043b\u043b\u0435\u0434\u0436<\/strong> in Russian refers to a vocational school (cf. “community college” in the US), whereas in English, this often refers to any university or a division\u00a0of one.\u00a0The same goes to many of the recently borrowed words from the business realm<\/a>, like “\u0434\u0438\u0437\u0430\u0301\u0439\u043d<\/strong>,” which only refers to the looks and packaging of products and not so much to their function and usability.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the word stress tends to be different for these words in Russian — the last syllable is usually stressed in words like “\u0431\u043e\u0439\u0444\u0440\u0435\u0301\u043d\u0434<\/strong>,” “\u0424\u0435\u0439\u0441\u0431\u0443\u0301\u043a<\/strong>,” and “\u0443\u0438\u043a\u0435\u0301\u043d\u0434<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n

Grammatical Markers in Words<\/h3>\n

It’s not always obvious from English words what part of speech they are and what role they play in the sentence. Some examples of where it is\u00a0<\/i>obvious is the -ed ending for past-tense verbs and -ly for adverbs. Many words, like “care” can be either a verb or a noun, and we can only tell from the context of the phrase which it is. Moreover, nouns can be use to modify (describe) other nouns in English, like “theatre stage” (meaning “the stage in a theatre”).<\/p>\n

In most cases, Russian does have a morphological marker indicating the part of speech of the word, for example, the ending (or suffix, but we won’t get technical) -\u0438\u0442\u044c in \u043b\u044e\u0431\u0438\u0301\u0442\u044c<\/strong> shows us it’s the verb “to love” as opposed to the noun “\u043b\u044e\u0431\u043e\u0301\u0432\u044c<\/strong>” (love). What that also means is that you cannot simply put two nouns together, like you would in English, to have one describe the other. In the “theatre stage” example, you would likely say “\u0442\u0435\u0430\u0442\u0440\u0430\u0301\u043b\u044c\u043d\u0430\u044f \u0441\u0446\u0435\u0301\u043d\u0430<\/strong>” or, more colloquially, “\u0441\u0446\u0435\u0301\u043d\u0430 \u0442\u0435\u0430\u0301\u0442\u0440\u0430<\/strong>.” In other words, if you first language is more synthetic<\/a>, meaning it has explicit indicators for parts of speech, you may want to rely on that rather than English.<\/p>\n

I would like to ask all the speakers of English as a second language — did knowing English help you at all with your Russian studies? Or was Russian a whole new level? Native English speakers are welcome to comment, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are continuing last week’s discussion of how learning a different second language first may have helped — or impeded — you in learning Russian. Since English is the most commonly studied foreign language, it’s only natural we discuss it next. I would guess for speakers of other European languages Russian may seem infinitely more…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":113,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[257623,1131,8534],"class_list":["post-7804","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-language","tag-learning-languages","tag-learning-russian","tag-russian-as-a-foreign-language"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/113"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7804"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11051,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7804\/revisions\/11051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}