In the end it is of course whatever you feel more attached to, and I can’t say what would be best for you, but I’ll share my experience.
I wanted to study a slavic language because my grandmother was Ukrainian. When I was at the University Ukrainian wasn’t an option and I didn’t think it would be personally useful to me (my grandmother and her relatives who spoke Ukrainian have unfortunately all passed away, and she taught her children only English). In the summer between my second and third year I had learned French well and felt like my level in Spanish was acceptable (and had enough outside of the classroom opportunities to continue with Spanish without needing more classwork), and I had a roommate fulfilling his foreign language requirement with Russian. I borrowed his textbook to teach myself the alphabet. The Russian professor (we have only 1) is an eccentric, incredibly friendly woman from Moscow. My roommate told her that I was good at languages and learned the alphabet and she said “I have to meet him”. She basically told me that in the next two years, I can take first year Russian, take a second year Russian intensive summer course (4 hours a day), take third year Russian as a third year, and then I could qualify for a scholarship to go to Russian after I graduate for a month. She also said I could apply for a $1,000 scholarship for studying Russian after I complete the second year and continue into the third year course. I obviously took the offer and have loved every minute of learning Russian, and spent a fantastic month in Moscow. When I moved to New York for medical school I made friends with a Russian-American student from Brooklyn (where there is a large Russian immigrant population), and became good friends with his friends too. When we hang out we mostly speak English, but listen to old Russian music, and I speak with the parents in Russian, celebrate Russian holidays with them, I’ve gone to see a Russian play that was on tour in NYC, we’d go to Russian restaurants and even to banya (a Russian bathhouse). Now that I’ve moved to Dallas for residency I don’t use Russian as frequently, but there are still great movies, literature, interesting history, Russian news is always interesting to read from an American point of view (because of the “political BS” you mentioned), so I still make use of the Russian I learned. Learning Russian really enriched my life personally and intellectually, and opened up opportunities for me to travel and meet fun and interesting people.
So if you’re still reading, I’m not advocating that you necessarily pick Russian over Polish, but just think about which language given your circumstances will give you these kinds of life experiences, because that is what really makes language learning special and worth while, and it’s what will make you want to keep battling with the language to improve for the rest of your life.
I really hope that Russia opens up a bit to the west in terms of travel. I mean, russia has borders with Poland and China. You could spend a lifetime exploring. My current goal is to learn enough russian and go to the world cup in 2018.
Yea, but honestly you are splitting hairs. In terms of grammatical structures. Russian may have less exceptions to rules and be a bit more straightforward, but I don’t think russian learners should expect it to be a walk in the park.
Russia has a policy of reciprocity. As soon as the States allows Russians in visa-free, they’ll allow us in. At the end of the day, getting a tourist visa isn’t a big deal. Lots of foreign (including Western) tourists go to Russa - they crowd Saint Petersburg and Moscow at this time of year. I’ve heard more French at the Hermitage than at the Louvre… The rest of the country isn’t visited much by foreigners for the same reasons that Russians don’t visit other parts of Russia than their home towns, the capitals, and a few major tourist routes (Golden Ring, Lake Baikal, etc).
I really hope Western countries will be more friendly to Slavic countries like Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. I don’t really understand why Europe invites people with different mentality from Middle East and is so frightend about Eastern Europeans with almost the same European mentality.
In the meantime (yup you’ve all guessed it!) I’ve also been blowing the dust off of my copies of Assimil “Tschechisch ohne Mühe” and some interesting stuff from Buske Verlag that I have…
Madness! Why do there have to be so many Slavic languages? And why do they have to be so attractive? :-0
Can поиск be used as the imperative? Wiktionary lists it as a noun. I would use the imperative of искать: ищи. Can a Russian speaker please clear this up?
You are absolutely right.
We may also say: ищи or поищи, the meaning is almost the same with a very slight difference.
Another possibility to say is: используй поиск.
Polite ways to say the same are:
ищите
поищите
используйте поиск
I like Slavic languages, but I don’t think one could comprehensively learn the grammar of more than one of them without going insane! Hence the dilemma. The head says Russian has to be the one to commit to. But the heart casts admiring sideways glances at fluttering Polish, Czech and Croatian eyelashes! (So to speak!!)
EDIT
Here in the UK, Polish speakers really are right here on the ground in numbers, BTW!
