Great and powerful: what shockes Americans studying Russian

“Almost every rule of the Russian language that I explain to my American students ends with the phrase: “But there are exceptions,” writes the author Russian in America blog on Yandex.Zen. According to her, some of her American students “cry” at the difficulties of the Russian language. So what are the main difficulties faced by Americans learning Russian?

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Next - from the first person.

Verbs of motion

We know that walking means walking, and driving means driving. But the Russian language is still convinced that you can only move around the city on foot, because “I went to the cinema” and not “drove”, even if the cinema is several kilometers away.

Soft consonants

Many of my students still call the soft sign "Little B." Hearing the pair hard/soft, reproducing it in speech and not forgetting “b” in writing is aerobatics for any foreigner. So we have “This is my mate”, “MuzEy” and “SamolOt”.

Perfect / imperfect verb form

No, do not bind English “Simple and Perfect” here, because sometimes a perfect and imperfect pair of one verb has a completely different meaning. For example, in the past tense / I like: “I liked this film” and “I liked this film (but now I don’t, I watch and think why I watched it 25 times?).”

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Unstressed vowel reduction

Most Russians say "harasho" and "thank you", but if it is at least understandable with "O> A", then "E = I" introduces even more confusion, because "te / ti-le / li-fon".

Agreement

The point is not only in six cases with different endings in all genders and numbers, but also in the fact that all words in a phrase must be consistent in the same number, gender and case. You wrote “These American students,” then you realize that next there should be a verb “like,” and therefore you must correct all three words from the nominative to the dative case - “these American students.”

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