[The Fantasist]

(09-08-2012 05:21 AM)avantgarde Wrote:  

My friend who spoke Slovak fluently, learned to speak Russian really well like 2 months through skype, VK. It is possible if u try hard and talk online with alot of girls, try VK and Italki.

Whilst I respect your friend's achievement,I think it's a lot easier to speak Russian if you are already fluent in a Slavic language. I don't know about Slovak grammar but I would think there are similarities and a lot of similar words too. It's a whole different story for English speakers.

[avantgarde]

(09-08-2012 05:58 AM)Vorkuta Wrote:  

(09-08-2012 05:21 AM)avantgarde Wrote:  

My friend who spoke Slovak fluently, learned to speak Russian really well like 2 months through skype, VK. It is possible if u try hard and talk online with alot of girls, try VK and Italki.

Whilst I respect your friend's achievement,I think it's a lot easier to speak Russian if you are already fluent in a Slavic language. I don't know about Slovak grammar but I would think there are similarities and a lot of similar words too. It's a whole different story for English speakers.

man, I am really amazed by him, in 2-3months he could hold up basic conversations, in a 1/2 year, he is like almost fluent. BTW, his first language is not Slovak, it is Turkish. Russian is the 5th language he learned.
Duh, Slovak is pretty close to Russian, it is west Slavic closer to Czech and Polish. Slovak from the looks of it, it is like Russian with more regular verbs and long vowels. Of course, they are certainly of a lot of differences, the transition is not too hard.
For English speaker, shit can be tough, long words, not too many apparent cognates, soft consonants, all sorts of sub-conjugations, cases, prefixed verbs and general and specific verbs of motions......

[chochemonger1]

Russian and Spanish should be part of every international players repertoire. Hopefully I can convince Kamaki to learn Spanish (which would be easy for him). That way he can go slay in South America in his older years

[lavidaloca]

Lets be realistic here. Anyone whose ever actually learned a language knows that your certainly not going to learn a new language in 6 months. You may know quite a few words and have a remote sense of grammar. But when you speak you will have a difficult to understand accent, your use of words will not be great nor your grammar. There are exceptions but realistically 99% of people claiming they speak a language fluent speak like 3 year old. Learning a language to the point where you can converse continuously for hours will not likely be done in 6 months. Especially a language as difficult as russian. Maybe, if you were really devoted you could get reasonable at spanish in that time period but even then 6 months is not much time.

[worldwidetraveler]

(09-08-2012 04:57 PM)lavidaloca Wrote:  

Lets be realistic here. Anyone whose ever actually learned a language knows that your certainly not going to learn a new language in 6 months. You may know quite a few words and have a remote sense of grammar. But when you speak you will have a difficult to understand accent, your use of words will not be great nor your grammar. There are exceptions but realistically 99% of people claiming they speak a language fluent speak like 3 year old. Learning a language to the point where you can converse continuously for hours will not likely be done in 6 months. Especially a language as difficult as russian. Maybe, if you were really devoted you could get reasonable at spanish in that time period but even then 6 months is not much time.

Are you talking about immersion or studying part time? I heard some have a pretty good grasp after 6 months of immersion. By good grasp, I mean being able to hold conversations at a pretty high level.

Fluency seems to be a pretty objective term.