The Student Room Group
Uni students - Complete our survey >>
Uni students - Complete our survey >>
Uni students - Complete our survey >>

Ab initio Russian or ab initio Spanish?

This would be in combination with French.
Does anyone have any experience with Russian or Spanish ab intio? What's the year abroad in Russia like? What are the challenges and best bits of the languages? What about employment: which one is more in demand and in which fields?

Thanks so much!! :smile:.
Reply 1
Avatar for Simbess
Simbess
14
Original post by no2573571
This would be in combination with French.
Does anyone have any experience with Russian or Spanish ab intio? What's the year abroad in Russia like? What are the challenges and best bits of the languages? What about employment: which one is more in demand and in which fields?

Thanks so much!! :smile:.


Hi!

Think I might be a bit late to the thread here but hopefully any kind of guidance will help?
I'm in quite a similar position to you, in the sense that I study post A-level French, and beginners Russian and Spanish. In terms of learning both languages from beginners (ok I had roughly GCSE knowledge of Spanish from years ago, but doing it from beginners was still extremely useful), they can be quite different!

With Russian, you have to definitely put a lot of work in. It's nothing really like French at all (besides some of the sounds), and the alphabet is completley different. However, it's super, super rewarding and has actually helped me out with my French (in terms of learning about the grammatical side of things). Something else which you won't have come across if you've only studied French as a foreign language in school, is the use of cases. Russian uses cases a lot and it's surprisingly made quite a few things clearer for me when it comes to learning about grammar in all my languages.

Spanish is great, and I love learning it. Our classes are really small, and our teacher is fab. It's quite similar to french in many ways, however you'd be learning many more tenses / moods in Spanish than you would be in Russian. You'd need less work to pick it up more quickly, which is useful, giving you more time to enjoy the cultural side of studying the language. Both sound lovely to speak as well!

In terms of the YA for Russia, we are quite limited in where we can go due to visas etc. There are more options for Spain, including British Council Language Assistants (I believe you can split that 50/50, it's usually a year long placement though from what I've heard). I've got no idea about employment with regards to the specific languages I'm afraid :P

Hopefully that helps? Feel free to ask any more questions if you have them :smile:

Quick Reply

Related discussions

Latest

Trending

Trending

Articles for you