Posted on 03/04/2022 1:45:48 PM PST by ATOMIC_PUNK
There are no concepts of articles in Russian language. The proper usage of them is the hardest job for an English-second-language speaker.
Purdy fancy Fart~n~Fetch’Em!
Did I misunderstand or wasnt gas $2.00 a gallon? Is there a inflationairy/cost of living adjustment that makes this “so bad”?
Meh. We do it all the time.
I speak Portuguese, but when I was in Brazil, they immediately pegged me for a gringo because of the way I use the language, not to mention my accent.
While my occasional slip into English syntax still works and is understandable, it’s a dead giveaway.
My accent wasn’t too bad, because I had learned French and Italian when I was very young. But my occasional syntax mangles exposed me.
If you learned French and Italian, your pronunciation should be pretty decent for Portuguese.
That is a very hard language to speak. I can read it and understand it just fine - but speaking it, no way.
Looking at the English language - it’s probably one of the easiest languages to learn and understand. There’s no gender in the articles we use and the tenses are not that confusing.
Appreciate this post.
I just cannot help but notice the failure of every Russian or Slavic person I run into not using them.
I wonder how hard it is for Russians to learn a Romance language.
I would support banning Russian oil if Biden would simultaneously reverse his restrictions on pipelines and fossil fuel development. But he won’t, because that would go against his administration’s apparent yearning to destroy our country (BBB, GND, WEF Great Reset, etc.).
I can imagined their vision for us: living in great big apartment blocs, eating a modest amount of healthy food and working in some state-approved endeavor. I’m guessing things will realistically look more like Mad Max or A Clockwork Orange.
Indeed. I took Russian classes in college. Admittedly, it's easier to learn to do without articles than to learn articles, but I still couldn't just make stuff up, such as instead of "Eto okno" -- This is (a) window --, using "Eto bongmaster okno", in which bongmaster would be some made-up article. Native speakers would have thought me mad!
If you go into Europe, it’s actually better to ask somebody “Parlez vous Anglais?” or “Sprechen sie Englische?”, then try to use the native language, unless you’re fluent. I got the impression, when I was over their, that my attempts to speak native were irritating to them. They would simply respond in English.
Over THERE (sheesh).
The pronunciation of the ão sound was the toughest for me. The nasalized m at the end of a word, like ordem, was a close second. The unstressed o sounding like u was easy, because it’s the same in Sicilian.
Problem with English is the verb conjugations just suck. Yeah, there’s not many different endings, but that’s the problem. If you don’t use the pronoun, you don’t know what conjugation it is, let alone the tense. And there’s almost no subjunctive, as it were (pun intended).
I do find myself annoyed when folks use the past definite in English to voice the subjunctive, but, for most English verbs, that’s all you’ve got.
In Brazil, it’s the Carioca dialect that throws me. I can even understand most Mineiros, but the Carioca is just too thick for me, e.g. “as maos” in Carioca is pronounced “ash maosh”
My most used expression in Brazil was, “Uma palavra por vez, por favor.”
Yeah that’s my experience as well.
Even my Mexican Spanish accent irritated the Spaniards. Go figure :)
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