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kemitchelltoday at 3:20 AM1 replyview on HN

What's difficult really depends on the languages you already know.

In addition to noun inflection, verb aspect, pronunciation stress, and punctuation trouble many native English speakers. That's in addition to all the simple irregularities, like irregular nouns and verbs.

Stress even troubles native speakers. When I lived there, I saw slideshow "where 's the stress?" quizzes used to fill time on screens in taxi buses, waiting rooms, and the like.


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d_silintoday at 3:26 AM

Stress is a bit of a rarer aspect, most words can be disambiguated with any stress placement, except for a few exceptions, i.e. зáмок (castle) /замóк (lock).

Punctuation is secondary, just put commas, colons and semicolons where you feel they should go, most Russians don't know any better themselves.

Noun and verb inflections you will master with enough practice, yeah.

Maybe overall a more difficult language than English or German, but not in the same league as Chinese or Arabic, in my humble opinion.

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