The Student Room Group

How difficult IS ab-initio Russian?

hey,
im in year 13 and have applied and am atmo going to study german and ab initio russian at bristol next year.I have A* in german at gsce and A in italian and latin for gsce and an A in German AS to date.however i was worried about how difficult Russian would be,ab initio with no experience so far so i hired a teach yourself kit from school library and it has proved very challenging, i gave up after an hour since the alphabet and pronounciation seemed impossible.now i am beginning to think i've made a mistake and should defer and reapply next year for german and spanish or something which would be easier.i just don't know if i could cope with russian :frown: please help,any advice appreciated,
thanks

Scroll to see replies

Reply 1
Well, ab initio by definition implies that you will be in the same scared, leaky boat as everyone else.
I shalln't say that it isn't hard - the grammar is painful and conjugating numbers has been known to cause more than a few student suicides, but the teachers understand this and are suitably accommodating.
Try to get the script under your belt prior to starting and that will give you, what sounds like a somewhat needed, confidence boost.
Reply 2
del_piero030405
.now i am beginning to think i've made a mistake and should defer and reapply next year for german and spanish or something which would be easier.i just don't know if i could cope with russian :frown: please help,any advice appreciated,
thanks

there's no need to reapply unless youthink you've completely picked the wrong subjects. You should be able to get a place on single honours German or German and Italian/Spanish if you're that worried about the Russian.
Reply 3
I think Russian is one of those subjects where you really benefit from a teacher, especially the quality of teaching you'll be facing at a prestigious university such as Bristol. My advice would be not to worry and don't try and do too much, if anything :smile:
Reply 4
How difficult IS ab-initio Russian?

Not very, I hope:s-smilie:
db
. You should be able to get a place on single honours German or German and Italian/Spanish if you're that worried about the Russian.

Yeh i've already tried to switch to german and spanish at bristol and to german and portugese but there was no room on either course.The only other language option there would be german and czech which would be similarly difficult.I could just do single honours german but I would prefer to study two languages together,and recently i've been trying to convince myself into simply taking the german and russian,as if i started it,after difficult initiation,i would probably learn to enjoy it..right?
Reply 6
as long as you keep on top of it you should be fine. I think they second you start to slack will be the time it gets on top of you? If you have the time and money, you could try and go to langauge school over the Summer, even just two weeks or so should give you plenty of time to get to grips with the alphabet and I'd guess that's probably the most overwhelming thing.

What's wrong with German and Italian? :hmmm:
lol nothings wrong with German and Italian, i switched from german and russian to that at bath but just thought in a wider context,italian is not so useful in terms of speakers nationwide and business wise.It's just..not spanish,portugese or even russian.I don't think i will have the money to go on such a summer school tbh,as need to work during summer to get money for uni.
Reply 8
Two languages are two languages regardless of what they are. Unless you intend to work in Russia it's unlikely you'll use it in your job that often. I'd hazard a guess that most langauge grads aren't employed because of the langauges they speak, other than in a few langauge specific areas.

With regards to the langauge course, consider it an investment, two weeks shouldn't cost that much and could be the difference between you keep the language or droppping it because of the initial period at univ.
Reply 9
What's so hard about the numbers?
They're just generally quite strange and do different things with cases etc.
I'm in the same boat. Trying to decide if I'm just going to go for it, take the risk and study French and Russian or go for the easier option of French and English. I haven't researched Russian at all either, I literally don't have a clue about the language apart from the fact that they have a funny alaphabet (which I haven't tried to learn!) Oh dear...
Reply 12
del_piero030405, I've applied to study French and ab-initio Russian at uni, and I must admit that like you I've had second thoughts at times. I initially applied to study French and post A-level Spanish but I e-mailed the unis and asked to change, so at times I've worried that that might have been a major mistake! I have also wondered if I should do beginner's Italian....I fancy doing a new language (that's why I went for Russian) but I'm concerned that Russian might be a bit too difficult! Italian would be more like Spanish and Latin, both of which I'm studying for A-level...:s-smilie:

However, I've realised that Russian is what I really WANT to do. It's no good (in my opinion) choosing a subject just because it's "easier" when there's something that you would prefer. I'm actually looking forward to the challenge of studying Russian - the fact that it's not a Romance language (which is all I've studied before) appeals to me and I can't wait to study Russian Literature! Since you already study German, I imagine that you would have an advantage over other people because German has cases similar to Russian :smile: (correct me if I'm wrong, I've never studied German myself!)

The other thing I think you should consider carefully is your year abroad. I know you shouldn't base your decision entirely on this, the course is equally (if not more) important...but I personally can't wait to go to Russia! I've never been there but for some reason I've always has the ambition to go. Would you be happy to spend time there? I know it might not appeal to everyone....I've had people pull faces at me when I mention that I would love to go to Siberia :mad:

Ultimately, no one else can say whether you should study Russian or not - you need to weigh up the pros and cons :smile: My advice is to think about the content of the course. I think you need to have a genuine interest in the language/the countries where it's spoken/culture etc...that's partly the reason why I've gone off taking Spanish. The prospect of learning about Latin America is not something that appeals to me as much as studying Russian history, culture, literature....You also need to like the sound of the language (listen to radio/TV stations on the internet!).

Because I'm so excited about studying Russian, I would say go for it but then again I'm biased...it's what I want to do. Like I've already said, make sure you choose the language that INTERESTS you :biggrin:

EDIT: I've just read what I've written and it sounds really waffly...sorry :redface:
Hmm its a tough call as you say Winnipeg,i probably would be more interested in studying russian history and culture as opposed to italian and german at bath.since i've never had any long term interest in italian,although I know it has a rich culture and whatnot,russian history has always interested me and there is so much to study if had decent grasp of the language.So purely from the where my interest lies pov,i should prob go for the russian at bristol.Also the fact that again,i've only ever studied romance languages,but this is something different did first attract me.

However,russian would be much more difficult with a relatively high drop out rate,i would prefer if the languages ultimately arent that important (as someone previously stated)to spend time in Italy as opposed to Russia.Also the European studies course at Bath looks very exciting with so many options,however I havn't looked at the options for Bristol course really yet,so on balance,prob Italian and German,but any input welcome?
Reply 14
If you really wanted to learn Italian, you could probably pick it up fairly quickly. Russian would be harder, which is why it's best that you do it at university. You'll get good teaching and lots of resources and stuff.
I think people are focusing too much on 'the scary bits of Russian.' But it's not all bad, its a great language!!!! Ok, for example the case system seems scary but then there's pretty much only 3 tenses and conjugation is EASY!!! Its nothing like French in terms of that aspect. What else are people scared of? Us Russian students should try and get rid of your fear!!! haha :biggrin:
Hmm in what respect is the case system 'scary', like once you've mastered the alphabet,is that the worst bit over then or what?I guess it does just have this reputation of being scary.so yeh,anyone who has taken this subject ab-inito,could you please explain your experiences with it,cheers
lol getting the alphabet mastered is the easy part. Its just that you have to think about it until it comes naturally, its hard to explain. but you get used to the patterns. A friend of mine at notts who did a-level russian like me said that the first year post a-level students shar some classes with 2nd year ab-initio. He said that in his opinion the 2nd years grammar was better than the post a levels but that 1st years were better at vocab. You seriously should go for it, it's a great language and i love it! When you tell people you speak Russian they're always like Wow!! Plus no one else can understand you in public (well they're less likely to) if you're speaking about somone! (e.g. on the plane home from Russia me and my friend said "oo that guy's fit" who was sitting next to us and he didnt understand a word! :wink: im sorry i rambled a bit there!
Reply 18
I think the trouble with the case system is that it's so different to English, meaning for an ab-initio, it's a mind-warp. It basically forces you to change every word in a sentence according to it's function in that sentence. Whilst we do this on occassion for the personal pronouns (I, me; he, him), it's just daunting to have to do this with most words, whose inflection relies upon whether they're masculine, feminine, neutral, plural or singular.
This inevitably makes oral work a mess, but you get used eventually to how words should look and sound like.

But like I said, being ab-initio means that this is a common enemy and something to bitch and moan about in the pub. Everything will be OK (awful film btw :p: )
Those doing ab-initio Russian: would you recommend getting some language tapes and begin learning the alphabet and some very basic phrases now? Or is it best to start completely from scratch when you start your course?