The land of four genders (and other head-exploding aspects of the Russian language)

Disclaimer: Please, please do not use this post as any sort of primer to learn Russian. I'm really, really hoping some native Russian speakers will comment and correct my misconceptions, which I'm sure are multitudinous.

So in preparation for the big trip, I've been listening to Pimsleur Russian on iTunes and trying to relearn the whole freaking language while I drink my coffee and fold my laundry. I was practicing in the car for awhile, but seriously, for the safety of motorists and pedestrians everywhere, I've quit that. Because it was breaking my brain so badly that I was running stop signs.

Russian is a freaking hard language. In the early stages, I'd say it's way harder than Chinese (yet another language I've studied intensively and forgotten). Just to give you an idea, try to imagine a language with ...

1. Impossible consonant blends.

Forget tying a knot in a cherry stem. If you want to impress me with your deft tongue-work, just say hello in Russian. In our alphabet, it would look something like:

Zdrast-vwee-tyay (Hello)

Yes, all those letters, all those sounds, all those torturous syllables, just to establish rapport with the bartender or the scary border guard. To learn this language, you have to force your mouth to make sounds not found in nature. Other examples:

Kto (who)
Ftor-nik (Tuesday)
Mne (one of the 89 forms of "I" in Russian -- read on for details)
Fsig-dah (always)

Seriously, if you can master Russian's bizarre, three-letter-deep consonant blends, your tongue isn't just talented. Your tongue deserves it's own Cirque show in Vegas. Maybe that's why there are so many great Russian figure skaters and gymnasts. Just talking over there requires agility.

2. Hard and soft vowels

Much like Chinese has tones, Russian has hard and soft vowels that are really hard for us foreigners to hear. Here's a conversation I once had with a Russian-speaking friend in Kyrgyzstan:

Galya: Foreign people always say my name wrong. They say it 'Galya.'
Me: Isn't that your name?
Galya: No, I'm Galya.

She thinks she's giving me a whole different pronunciation, but to me it sounds exactly the same. So we continue:

Me: Gal-yah.
Galya: No. Ga-lya.
Me: Guh-lee-uh?
Galya: (losing patience) Ga-lya. Ga-lya. Ga-lya.
Me: Gal-yuh.
Galya: Oh, forget it.

So what's the right way to say Galya? You have to blend the "lya" into a single, fluid syllable while smacking your tongue against the roof of your mouth. That's called "palatization" (or something like that) and it creates little landmines all over the Russian language. Especially if you're like me and don't always get the subtleties of English pronunciation. (I'm one of those boneheads who says "acrosst" and "expresso." I blame my mom. She's from Pittsburgh.)

3. Four genders

In English we don't worry a lot about gender (in the language anyway), but it's very important in Russian. So important that they aren't content with just the two standard genders. In Russian there are, count 'um, four:

Male
Female
Neuter
No gender

The last two might seem redundant, but they're not really. Personally, j'adore the "no gender" words like "kofye" because they don't decline. Whereas with a neuter word like "morye" (sea), you have 10 different versions to pick from. Kind of like Latin, only far more torturous.

4. One word, many forms

In English, we have three forms of "I." (I, me, my). In Chinese, there's only one (wo). Whereas in Russian, there are myriad ways to say "I." Because in Russian, there are myriad ways to say everything (except coffee):

Ya - I
Men-ya - me
Moi - my (my husband)
Ma-ya - my (my wife)
Ma-yo - my (my sea)
Ma-yee - my (my plural anything)
Mnoi - with me
Mne - to me
Ma-yeekh - my (my friends, direct object form)
Ma-yay - my (my wife's)
Ma-ye-vo - my (my husband's)

And there are like 20 more which I forget. But you get the idea.

5. Long words (really)

I won't belabor this one. You think War and Peace is epic in English? In Russian, it's a multi-volume set. Hey, we're talking about a language where the word for "hi" is "zdrast-vwee-tyay."

6. Nicknames

Even names have like 20 versions in Russian. When I was teaching English in a Russian-speaking school, for example, I had an attendance book full of Anastasias, Stefans, Dmitris and Alexandras. But the kids in front of me were Nastya, Styopa, Dima and Sasha. Or Nastinka, Styopichka, Diminka and Sashushka to their close friends and families.

You better believe they all had perfect attendance that first semester, because it took me until Christmas before I could match everyone up and take attendance properly.

This is one of the (many) super-annoying things about American movies set in Russia. American filmmakers always get the names wrong. A good example, since it's based on real people, is Enemy at the Gates. For two-plus hours, you listen to everyone calling Jude Law's character "Vasiliy," including his girlfriend. But in real life, Vasiliy Zaitsev went by "Vasya." (And arguably Rachel Weisz should be calling him "Vasenka," especially in all those gooey, hooking-up-in-the-bunker scenes.)

It gets even crazier with Central Asian names, because they take a name that's already pretty long and slap the same Russian suffixes on it when talking to close friends. For example, our Kirghiz landlord had a daughter named Salamat. When her friends came looking for her, they'd be like, "Where's Salamatinka?" Uh, who?

We also had another neighbor named Altimishbai. So I guess he would be Altimishbayichka in the affectionate form. I can't remember what he went by exactly.

Parting thoughts

Now I suppose this post may sound like I'm picking on Russian or Russians, but really nothing could be further from the truth. Because despite its crazy consonants and four genders and all that, it's a very rich and beautiful language. Master it and you can travel awesome places with ease (not just Russia, but Central Asia, the Caucasus, Mongolia and some of Eastern Europe) and talk to all kinds of diverse, clever, fascinating people.

And if you learn to read Russian, you can read some of the world's greatest literature in its original form. Though I tried to read the BBC Russia headline this morning and my head exploded, so I guess Crime and Punishment and Anna Karenina will have to wait.

Anyway, I hear English is pretty maddening to learn as a second language too. Arguably worse than Russian. Maybe that could be a guest post. Takers?