Learning Russian: A Student's View
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Grammar is probably the most difficult aspect of learning Russian. . . . Learning the male, female and plural adjective and noun endings for the six cases just takes memorization. Knowing when to use them is another matter.
After four years of study, some grammar comes naturally to me, but my conversation is full of strange pauses. . . . Pronunciation also presents challenges to Americans learning Russian. Russian is much lighter than English, and Americans tend to over-pronounce it.
There are also some sounds that are simply not in English. One common vowel, for example, could best be represented in English as uy, which on the lips of most first-year Russian students ends up sounding like an expression of disgust. . . .
Russian is also verb-heavy: Instead of saying, "I am a student," you would say, "I study." This means it is necessary to learn a lot of verbs in order to speak idiomatically, and, when you consider that each verb has a perfective and an imperfective form, which are conjugated differently. . . . Don't get me started.
Don't think, after reading this, that it's not worth it to take Russian. The intricate grammar makes it easier to precisely understand the meaning of the sentence, and the fresh vocabulary is fun to learn.
-- Rachel Ruskin, senior at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in the Alexandria section of Fairfax County
