Slavic languages are considered among the most difficult European languages for native speakers of English to master for three main reasons: There are fewer cognates (same or similar words) shared between English and Slavic tongues than there are between English and say, Spanish, French Italian or even German.
Key to these peoples and cultures are the Slavic languages: Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian to the east; Polish, Czech, and Slovak to the west; and Slovenian, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian to the south.
Each branch of Slavic languages - Western, Eastern, and Southern - has a very large degree of mutual intelligibility within their grouping, at least 75%, and as much as 99.87% in the case of Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Montenegrin (They are the same language, Shtokavian, with four barely-differing standards due to intense
It works for me as a native Czech speaker with very little exposure to other Slavic languages. Serbian and Croatian are the most mutually intelligible. They are almost the same, except a small amount of vocabulary and the manner of speaking.
So it's probably better to learn Russian first, from a realistic standpoint. Unless of course you have Polish family or whatever reason that makes Polish a particularly useful language to you, in which case you should learn Polish.
Bulgarian and Macedonian, closely related Slavic languages, are innovative in the grammar of their nouns, having dropped nearly all vestiges of the complex Slavic case system; at the same time, they are highly conservative in their verbal system, which has been greatly simplified in most other Slavic languages.
Usefulness. If you want to learn a language with a large number of speakers and which is spoken in many countries, the ones to choose in order of 'usefulness' are: English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), German, Japanese, Portuguese and Hindi/Urdu.
There are 13 Slavic countries:
- Belarus.
- Bosnia.
- Bulgaria.
- Croatia.
- Czech Republic.
- Macedonia.
- Montenegro.
- Poland.
Learn Russian Fast: 8 Tips for Russian Speed Demons
- Take the time to learn Cyrillic.
- Use authentic media.
- Learn common words first.
- Learn words that tie to your native language or are the same across languages.
- Immerse yourself in Russian, at home or abroad.
- Practice your skills daily.
- Find a native speaker to interact with.
- Use a targeted program.
Russian is the seventh-most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers and the eighth-most spoken language in the world by total number of speakers. The language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second-most widespread language on the Internet, after English.
Lithuanian (Lithuanian: lietuvių kalba) is an Eastern Baltic language spoken in the Baltic region. As a Baltic language, Lithuanian is closely related to neighbouring Latvian and more distantly to Slavic, Germanic and other Indo-European languages. It is written in a Latin alphabet.
All of the Slavic languages will be quite challenging for you to learn. The easiest, relatively speaking, would be Bulgarian. Except for Bulgarian, all of the Slavic languages have case systems. Russian is probably the "easiest" (again, relatively speaking) to learn because it "only" has 6 cases.
Slavic languages, also called Slavonic languages, group of Indo-European languages spoken in most of eastern Europe, much of the Balkans, parts of central Europe, and the northern part of Asia.
All Slavic languages are believed to have descended from a common ancestor called Proto-Slavic, which, in turn, is thought to have split off from Proto-Indo-European possibly as early as 2,000 B.C. Proto-Slavic, was probably the common language of all Slavs as late as the 8th or 9th century A.D., but by the 10th
The 6 Hardest Languages For English Speakers To Learn
- Mandarin Chinese. Interestingly, the hardest language to learn is also the most widely spoken native language in the world.
- Arabic. Another of the hardest languages for English speakers to pick up is also in the top five most spoken world languages: Arabic.
- Polish.
- Russian.
- Turkish.
- Danish.
Yes, it's worth. I recommend you to learn Russian because you will expand your own world, you will find out new opportunities to travel through Russia, Ukraine, Belarussia, Moldova. You can understand poetry of Pushkin, Yesenin and other great poets.
It might take 1 year of intensive study to master somewhat pre-intermediate level of Russian. The easy part about Russian is its alphabet and pronunciation. Cyrillic letters might seem confusing, but once you learn them you will see that each letter stands for only one sound, which makes reading quite easy.
Russian is widely believed to be one of the most difficult languages to learn. The need to learn the Russian alphabet serves as yet another obstacle for many people who would like to learn the language. They might be surprised to know that the Russian alphabet actually takes only about 10 hours to learn.
It is also the lingua franca of the former USSR and official language in the United Nations. It is spoken by some 270 million people in Europe and Asia. German is more important in the economic field and Russian is perhaps more important in the politics and diplomatic field.
In her talk at the Polyglot Gathering, Judith Meyer mentions that it took her around 1500 hours to reach an advanced level in Mandarin Chinese. From these figures, we can estimate that it takes around 1500 – 2000 hours to get comfortable in Mandarin Chinese.
Duolingo is not a stand-alone language course, but it's an excellent addition to a language learner's toolbox. It's easy to use, it's fun and it works. Don't forget to do the homework, though. If your aim is to achieve real fluency, remember to read, speak, and truly live the language that you're learning!
For German, requiring 750 hours, you're looking at just over four years. For Russian – at 1100 hours – it's six years to fluency. Remember, that's to get to the heights of C1. Most people are happy with a good B2 level and you'd be feeling real progress and enjoying using your language at a lower level much sooner.
