<p>I'm enrolled in first year Russian for Fall semester, and I'm very excited for it, as it will be a great assett for my future. But I am a bit worried with how difficult it will be. In your experience how difficult is first year Russian (granted you put the work in, of course) I pick up languages quite easily, and my Mum is Ukrainian so I am kind of familiar with Cryllic (by no means am I familiar with the language or pronunciation, just reading basic phrases because of church.)</p>
<p>How difficult did you find it? And what was most difficult?</p>
<p>I did not find it much more difficult than other language. My greatest struggle was with all of the adjective and noun endings, but once you get them memorized it is all good.</p>
<p>I took a crash course during a summer program one year, and I didn’t find it all that hard to pick up (despite the fact that they were throwing a ton of stuff in our faces at once). So I’d say that even without a prior foundation, you should be okay (especially if you’re good with languages in general).</p>
<p>I think the hardest thing for me was the speaking element because it required me to make sounds I wasn’t used to making (and combine lots of consonants in a row). Took me a bit of practice to get it right (but then, I had the same issue with Mandarin, too, so it’s probably just me).</p>
<p>The hardest part for me was also changing word endings (every time there was a new case to learn, my first reaction would be WHY MORE :P). But overall, since most of my classmates were slackers, we moved at a slow enough pace that I was able to build my foundations up solidly. Too bad there’s no 2nd year Russian for me to move on to ]:
Oh, and I had no Russian-like language background. So you’ll be fine. There were actually two Ukrainian kids in my class and they picked up Russian like ducks to water.</p>
<p>I’m very fluent in Bulgarian and I’ve taken Latin so I think I’m somewhat used to crazy word endings so I’m planning on taking Russian because I think I would have somewhat of a leg up and I could use more practice and forced exposure to Cyrillic. Should be fun I guess.</p>