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kirby42 · Joined: 14 Nov 2014 Posts: 55

I've noticed that there seems to be a very clear divide between teachers who become really good at speaking Russian and those who don't, despite living here a while.

How's your Russian? How much do you work on it?

Phillip Schofield · Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2016 8:41 pm Post subject:

Embarrassingly bad. There's no excuse really, but I will make one all the same. My heavy work load means that the only time that I have to really learn Russian is weekends or about 11pm at night. 11pm at night I am mentally a vegetable. Weekends are drinking time.

I speak Russian on occasion to my colleagues or the odd visit to schokoladnitza with a friend, but I'm still only A2 level after 2 years.

My last Russian girlfriend (of a year) refused to speak Russian to me. Even to the extent that she'd ignore me whenever I spoke Russian to her. Apparently, to speak Russian with me was detrimental to her English. Anyway, she's an ex for a number of reasons, this being one of them.

donamari · Joined: 19 Dec 2013 Posts: 3 Location: Yakutsk, Russia

My situation is very similar to Phillip's, unfortunately!

One of the reasons I came to Russia was to learn Russian. I worked in Orenburg for a semester in 2001, so had learned some and then forgotten it. Now I've been in Yakutsk for two years and although I understand it really well my spoken Russian is still basic. I love learning languages, and got pretty good at Hungarian so I know it's possible.. What is it about Russian?! I love this quote from John McWhorter:
"Arabic, again, isn’t easy, and Russian, spoken by countless millions, is so horrifically complex that part of me always wonders whether it is an elaborate hoax."
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/aramaic-middle-east-language/404434/

I have similar excuses.. workload being #1; friends/boyfriend who prefer English, etc. My school provides a couple of hours a week of free lessons, so I at least do that but in my (little) free time I find I do other things. I also started learning Sakha (the local language), but haven't been making much progress so can't use that as an excuse either. I've threatened to stay here until I actually learn Russian, so I'm in for a few more cold winters.