Language Learners

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Any Greek influences on the nouns, grammars and others in the Russian language?

Not a lot. The most obvious influence is in personal names - a lot of common Russian names are of Greek origin (Sergei, Elena, Fyodor and so on).

Otherwise, there's some hidden Greek influence via calques (loan translations), which came in mostly via Old Church Slavic, and is mostly manifested in religious content. Example: "theology" is translated as bogosloviye, which is a literal translation of the Greek original ("word of God").

[Jo498]

They are not closely related languages. Greek belongs to the "Kentum" branch (like all Western European languages) whereas all Slavic languages belong to the "Satem" branch (like all or most of the Indopersian languages) of Indoeuropean languages. Greek is not really close to any other modern language, I believe, the closest major language was Latin.
Russian has no articles, whereas Greek does, Russian has verbal aspects in addition to tenses whereas in Greek aspects are expressed by tense (at least in classical Greek but I am quite sure that it is the same in modern). The cases and case endings are also rather different; some commonality in the verb conjugation is probably just common IE heritage.

Cyril and Method were Greek missionaries, so naturally they used their Greek alphabet as a basis for their alphabet that eventually became the modern kyrillic.

[greg]

Have fun:

https://www.thisworddoesnotexist.com/?ref=producthunt

[Pohjolas Daughter]

They are not closely related languages. Greek belongs to the "Kentum" branch (like all Western European languages) whereas all Slavic languages belong to the "Satem" branch (like all or most of the Indopersian languages) of Indoeuropean languages. Greek is not really close to any other modern language, I believe, the closest major language was Latin.
Russian has no articles, whereas Greek does, Russian has verbal aspects in addition to tenses whereas in Greek aspects are expressed by tense (at least in classical Greek but I am quite sure that it is the same in modern). The cases and case endings are also rather different; some commonality in the verb conjugation is probably just common IE heritage.

Cyril and Method were Greek missionaries, so naturally they used their Greek alphabet as a basis for their alphabet that eventually became the modern kyrillic.

Quite interesting that there are no articles in Russian.  How would someone then differentiate meaning between, for example, "Give me a book" vs. "Give me the book"?  I did find this website when I googled about articles:  http://mylanguages.org/russian_articles.php

PD

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Quite interesting that there are no articles in Russian.  How would someone then differentiate meaning between, for example, "Give me a book" vs. "Give me the book"?  I did find this website when I googled about articles:  http://mylanguages.org/russian_articles.php

PD

I understand what you say. But often the usage of article is based on tradition, rather than rationality or logics- ie. The sun, dollar, the sky, the president. English speaking people believe that their usage of articles, words and grammars are rational, structural and logical. But often they are based on if it sounds right or not.

As for your question, they say give me some book(s) or give me that book.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

I understand what you say. But often the usage of article is based on tradition, rather than rationality or logics- ie. The sun, dollar, the sky, the president. English speaking people believe that their usage of articles, words and grammars are rational, structural and logical. But often they are based on if it sounds right or not.

Oh, I'm not at all trying to imply that there's only one way to say something (or "right way").  I'm just curious as to language structure/meanings/cultural ways of viewing things (which change over times too)...all that goes into why a language is the way it is...including things like geography, history, etc.  For example, several years ago I poked my big toe in the water as to how Finnish was structured--which made my head swim; I'd still love to learn it though--along with a bunch of other languages. 

PD

[North Star]

Quite interesting that there are no articles in Russian.  How would someone then differentiate meaning between, for example, "Give me a book" vs. "Give me the book"?  I did find this website when I googled about articles:  http://mylanguages.org/russian_articles.php

PD

Well, you could probably say something like "give me some book" or "give me that book". There are quite a few languages where articles are not a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_(grammar)

Articles are found in many Indo-European languages, Semitic languages (only the definite article), and Polynesian languages; however, they are formally absent from many of the world's major languages including: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, many Turkic languages (incl. Tatar, Bashkir, Tuvan and Chuvash), many Uralic languages (incl. Finnic[a] and Saami languages), Indonesian, Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi, Tamil, the Baltic languages, the majority of Slavic languages, the Bantu languages (incl. Swahili) and Yoruba. In some languages that do have articles, such as some North Caucasian languages, the use of articles is optional; however, in others like English and German it is mandatory in all cases.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Well, you could probably say something like "give me some book" or "give me that book". There are quite a few languages where articles are not a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_(grammar)

True!  And thanks for that info from Wiki.   

And that would save a lot of headache in terms of having to learn whether or not a noun is masculine, feminine or neuter (like in German for example).

PD

[Karl Henning]

True!  And thanks for that info from Wiki.   

And that would save a lot of headache in terms of having to learn whether or not a noun is masculine, feminine or neuter (like in German for example).

PD

There are three genders in Russian, but, no, one needn't worry about corresponding articles

[Pohjolas Daughter]

There are three genders in Russian, but, no, one needn't worry about corresponding articles

Interesting!  Thanks for the info Karl.    And that's what I get for speaking too soon before digging further! lol  :-[Did you ever study Russian?  I did find this:  https://russianlessononline.com/gender-in-russian-language/

Come to think of it, isn't your partner/wife originally from Russia?

PD

[Karl Henning]

Interesting!  Thanks for the info Karl.    And that's what I get for speaking too soon before digging further! lol  :-[Did you ever study Russian?  I did find this:  https://russianlessononline.com/gender-in-russian-language/

Come to think of it, isn't your partner/wife originally from Russia?

PD

She is indeed a Petersburger. Yes, I studied Russian while in Tallinn & St Pete.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

She is indeed a Petersburger. Yes, I studied Russian while in Tallinn & St Pete.

Neat!  Did you meet her in St. Pete.?

PD

[Karl Henning]

Neat!  Did you meet her in St. Pete.?

PD

I did, indeed.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

I did, indeed.

Sweet!    Happy for you two.

PD

[Karl Henning]

It was very romantic. we happened to be at the train station at the same time.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

It was very romantic. we happened to be at the train station at the same time.

So, did somebody decide to take a different train?  Or waiting at the same platform? 

PD

[Jo498]

Russian does have demonstrative pronomina, like Latin; all romance language got their articles from shortened/modified demonstratives ("this", roughly "ille/illa" became "le", "el" (il/lo in Italian) and "la")
So you can say (my Russian is very sketchy) "daite mne knigu" "give me (a/the) book" or "daite mne etu knigu" (give me that book); and there is also a difference between this (here) and that one (over there).

And despite missing articles there are more forms/endings to learn than in German, I am afraid. Russian even distinguishes gender in some verb forms (and not in participles where it is common), something I have not encountered before. E.g. "he spoke" "on govoril" she spoke "ona govorila"

I can't measure the difficulty of German but Russian is IMO about as hard as Latin, probably harder, and considerably harder than e.g. French, Spanish, Italian. Unless you already speak a Slavic language, they are apparently all rather similar.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Russian does have demonstrative pronomina, like Latin; all romance language got their articles from shortened/modified demonstratives ("this", roughly "ille/illa" became "le", "el" (il/lo in Italian) and "la")
So you can say (my Russian is very sketchy) "daite mne knigu" "give me (a/the) book" or "daite mne etu knigu" (give me that book); and there is also a difference between this (here) and that one (over there).

And despite missing articles there are more forms/endings to learn than in German, I am afraid. Russian even distinguishes gender in some verb forms (and not in participles where it is common), something I have not encountered before. E.g. "he spoke" "on govoril" she spoke "ona govorila"

I can't measure the difficulty of German but Russian is IMO about as hard as Latin, probably harder, and considerably harder than e.g. French, Spanish, Italian. Unless you already speak a Slavic language, they are apparently all rather similar.

Quite interesting regarding the verbs.  Thank you so much for sharing that Jo!  Quite enlightening.

PD

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

I can't measure the difficulty of German but Russian is IMO about as hard as Latin, probably harder, and considerably harder than e.g. French, Spanish, Italian. Unless you already speak a Slavic language, they are apparently all rather similar.

The US Army's Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA, has a ranking of the relative difficulty of languages for native English speakers. Slavic languages are in Category 4 out of 5 (with 5 being the hardest). You can find the ranking here:

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/language-difficulty-map/

[Mandryka]

The US Army's Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA, has a ranking of the relative difficulty of languages for native English speakers. Slavic languages are in Category 4 out of 5 (with 5 being the hardest). You can find the ranking here:

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/language-difficulty-map/

I wonder what speaking proficiency means. (In the definition of the easy ones.)