Well, just as Nabokov said: Russians have an impression that foreign languages are simpler than Russian.

It's ironic, seeing tons of exclusively russian-speaking immigrants not being able to learn the native language after decades living in the country.

But it's not about complexity really. I think it's more caused by the deeply ingrained superiority complex in most russians. And just in case, most russians != every russian.

	▲	mlrtime an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I was surprised as well living in Hong Kong that many kids grow up never learning Cantonese being born there (Non Chinese heritage). Their parents spoke their native language, and they learned English in a private school. You could live there until very late in life never needing to know more than a few sentences.

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tguvot 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I have my own sample set as I presented.

Russian is seriously messed up language. Especially after learning Hebrew (which is simple and algorithmic) , I was able to look back in Russian and realize what a horrible mess of a language it is.

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delitrem 10 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> Russian is seriously messed up language.

Some (most?) national languages, which developed chaotically, are very illogical, with weird constructions and some inexplicable features (Russian and English are examples of this). Artificial/planned languages such as Esperanto are a different matter -- they are very easy to learn and very pleasant to the ear.

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nephihaha 15 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I have just watched a video about Hebrew spelling which suggests it is a lot more complicated than people realise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_h541RkCTI

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vkazanov 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Hebrew was literally synthesised a century ago. Language designers really did great work on taking a core of a dead language and proposing a cleaner, more modern version of it.

Russian and English never had this "rearchitecture-and-cleanup" moment. In fact, English borrows heavily from different languages (old german, old danish, latin, old french...) adding even more complexity. Russian borrows from greek, old slavonic (bolgarian), among others. So an advanced speaker/reader of these languages has to understand the influences.

A couple of years ago I tried learning some minimal Ancient egyptian. A fascinating language in its diversity. Middle kingdom egyptian, old and new kingdom written dialects. Then, there's a simplified cursive script which almost feels like modern writing.

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Muromec 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>Russian and English never had this "rearchitecture-and-cleanup" moment.

Then 1918th spelling reform was a thing. It's of course always easier to reform other languages to make it closer to yours than change yourself. Those silly natives can't ever figure out the spelling and dictionary themselves without a bit of a genocide.

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rgblambda 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>Hebrew was literally synthesised a century ago.

I had heard somewhere that much of the vocabulary of Modern Hebrew consists of loanwords from Arabic. Is this correct and if so, would it mean that the "cleanliness" of the language is more a reflection of Modern Standard Arabic?

Apologies in advance if this is seen as some falsehood or if it's a sensitive topic.

	▲	nephihaha 13 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		No, that isn't true. Hebrew has taken a lot of Arabic words but not the majority. It has also taken a lot from Yiddish (as you'd expect) and certain modern words which are common across Europe.
	▲	vkazanov 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		No idea. But vocabulary and grammar are mostly orthogonal.

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lovegrenoble 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Because Hebrew has been revived artificially.

	▲	tguvot 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		it doesn't really diminishes my point

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yongjik 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Don't we all?