Hello Anna!
Hello Steve!
Today I will be speaking Russian and I will be speaking with Anna Chernyshova.
Yes, Anna Chernyshova, “Anna Cher” on YouTube.
Yes, Anna has a YouTube channel where she -
I always have trouble with “uchit”/«учит» (teach), “izuchayet”/«изучает» (study), “obuchayet”/ «обучает» (teach) -
I teach Russian, yes.
(Steve) Huh? (Anna) I teach Russian (“prepodayu” - «преподаю»).
A teacher! She teaches Russian and -
- it’s a little difficult for me to speak Russian because I focus on other languages, but we’ll see.
Anna, I have many questions, but first I would like to ask you to introduce yourself, please.
Where do you live, and how did you come to start teaching Russian on YouTube?
I live in New York. I’ve been living here for almost 10 years now,
and I began teaching Russian as soon as I arrived here.
In Russia I got a University degree in Linguistics, so I am a professional teacher.
But when I came to New York I realized there was probably no need for my English skills here – I have an English teaching diploma.
I decided to teach my mother tongue, and it turned out I wasn’t too bad at it.
As I progressed over time, I began recording YouTube videos.
Now I teach, create courses and record videos for YouTube.
First question.
The Russian language is a language of huge significance for Russian literature and the culture of Russia - a giant country with a colossal history.
This is all very appealing to me.
But for the people who study Russian with you, what is their main motivation?
You know, it’s mostly family related.
New York has a large Russian commune and many of my students either come from a Russian family or have a Russian spouse.
They may want their children to speak Russian
if they are Russian parents of children born in the US, and want to preserve the language in the family.
Of course, there are people who love Russian culture, Russian literature.
But frankly, I consider it quite a big goal when people tell me they want to read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in Russian.
That, of course, requires a huge amount of effort and many years of work.
And the third motivator is probably business. People do business with Russia and need to study the language.
Do you think that Russian is difficult compared to other languages?
You know, it all depends on what your native language is.
If we take those whose native language is English, then yes, Russian is difficult
because Russian has grammatical concepts that English lacks,
such as cases, verbs of motion, verbs aspects, and of course a totally different alphabet,
and Russian words don't sound similar to English, so, yes, I consider Russian an objectively difficult language.
That’s interesting. For me the difficulty of a language is not that important
motivation is what's most important
When it comes to the difficulty of a language, in this case Russian, the writing system is not as difficult as say, Chinese or Arabic.
The grammar is hard, yes, there are concepts in Russian which don’t exist in English, but the same can be said about German and any other language.
And thus I think the most crucial thing is motivation.
In the case of your students,
those who study the Russian language
because their girlfriend, husband, or husband's father speak Russian,
if you compare the motivation of these people
and those who study the language because they’re interested in the history, culture
– of these two groups, which students have more motivation in your experience?
Great question, Steve.
If I give it some thought, I would say those who are interested in the culture.
Those who have a Russian wife or husband may quit studying sooner or later
because it’s hard, there’s no time, they may have a family to take care of and other things.
But if a person is in love with the culture it will definitely help them stay dedicated much longer, it will keep them afloat much longer
I agree with you that there must be an interest when learning a language.
If you are in love with the culture, interested in the history and literature, then it’s a huge plus and is very helpful.
Yes, I think so too.
I think if someone has a husband or wife from Russia,
they may say: “I want to study Russian!”
But if there’s no motivation, they won’t stick to it for months on end.
“It’s hard! I don’t want to do it!” Yes, there are difficulties, to overcome them motivation is necessary.
Yes, well, I’d like to show you my history of studying Russian on LingQ.
Because I’d like to hear your comments on it.
Let’s see if we can do this.
I’m a bit old, so I’m sometimes not great with technology.
Let’s see, Share Screen.
Okay, can you see it?
So these are my statistics in LingQ.
It means that according to the LingQ statistics
I know, passively, but I do know ninety
boy I always get confused, 90,000 words in Russian.
Of course “slov”/«слов» (words),“slova”/«слова»(words), “slovami"/«словами» (with words) – these count as 3 words
In our system it is impossible to calculate word families for every of the 37 languages we have,
so 90,000 could more realistically be 40,000 or 30,000, I don’t know.
But, either way, when I read books or literature, I always encounter words I don’t know, every time.
But when it comes to magazines or the news I understand everything.
Okay. So, I started many years ago, 14 or 13 years ago.
And there were periods – these are “words of reading” – which show how much reading I did .
Let’s take “All Time”, for all time I’ve read, what is it?
One million three hundred and twenty thousand.
Oh, a million, yes, but I think it was really more than that, because I wasn’t just reading with LingQ, I also read books independently.
Of course.
Okay, so. There were periods when I wouldn't study much, but when I was especially interested, I would read more.
But all the same, that’s 14 years, which means it became a part of my life.
It has given me the opportunity to be able to read or watch a movie in Russian whenever I feel like it.
And the Russia “world”,
meaning the culture, the people is a very very huge world,
(knowing) it has given me lots and lots of pleasure.
That’s why I am grateful to Russian culture and the Russian nation.
I think that for me the most important thing –
that for people to - how do you say "overcome"? To overcome the difficulties in learning Russian
– you always need to have this motivation.
I was going to say I’m thankful that you are such a proponent and champion of the Russian language.
I always tell my students that the Russian language is a vast world,
and if you can really endure and overcome the difficulties that come with learning it,
the reward will be great, you will discover a whole new planet.
Russian culture is incredibly profound and incredibly beautiful,
and it’s worth investing time and effort to study this culture and its language.