What's the most difficult thing in the Russian language… for Russians?

Stress

Many foreigners admit that remembering where the stress is in Russian is one of the most difficult aspects. However, it also causes problems for native speakers, because the main difficulty lies not only in the lack of clear rules, but also in the fact that the stress can shift when a word is declined or conjugated.

Mikhail Shtudiner, author of ‘Dictionary of Russian Language Difficulties’ and an associate professor at Moscow State University, told Gramota.ru (Грамота.ру) that journalists often call the Department of Russian Language Stylistics at the Faculty of Journalism, where he has been working for 48 years. Sometimes, just 5-10 minutes before a broadcast, they’re asking questions about controversial moments in the language. And the most common ones are related to where the stress is.

“A long time ago, a journalism student asked me before a broadcast how to correctly find the stress in a word: ‘плы́ло’ or ‘плыло́’ (literally ‘was swimming’)? And I answered very quickly: ‘плы́ло’. I have my own method for checking the stress in the past tense neuter forms of verbs: in the vast majority of cases, it matches the stress in the plural form (‘плы́ло’ – ‘плы́ли’),” professor Shtudiner says. 

Stress fluctuations are also very common in borrowed words. In most cases, one should refer to the source language, but, sometimes, Russian has a different pronunciation tradition and then that must be followed.

Numerals

“A very common mistake, made even by journalists at major radio stations, is related to the declension of numerals. For example, instead of the correct ‘нет восьмисот рублей’ (I don’t have 800 rubles), they say ‘восьмиста’.” 

Even more difficulties arise when declining compound numerals, where every word within them changes: “В девяноста одном экземпляре” (“In 91 copies”). Whereas, people often simplify and say: "В девяносто одном").

The year 2000 is correctly pronounced as ‘двухтысячный’, while, for example, the year 2002 is ‘две тысячи второй’, because it’s a compound ordinal numeral.

The quantitative numeral ‘полтора’ (‘one and a half’) often causes confusion: “Мне нужно полторы минуты” (“I need one and a half minutes”) is the form in the accusative case, whereas, in the genitive case, it would be: “Мне не хватило полутора минут” (“I was a minute and a half short”). By the way, the stress also shifts here: ‘полторы́’, but ‘полу́тора’.

Gender of certain nouns

One of the most prominent examples is the word ‘кофе’ (‘coffee’). According to the literary norm, this noun is masculine. But, its usage in the neutral gender has become so common among people that it has now become an accepted variant of the norm. And Shtudiner believes that, sooner or later, ‘кофе’ will completely change its gender to neuter. And this is the fate of all inanimate indeclinable nouns.

“Interestingly, in the early 20th century, the word ‘такси’ (‘taxi’) had fluctuations: it could be used in the masculine (‘такси приехал’ – ‘the taxi has arrived’) or feminine (‘моя такси’ – ‘my taxi’) gender. But, as we see, now this word is exclusively neutral.”

Words agreement

If an adjective agrees with several nouns of different genders and even numbers, it’s quite acceptable to agree the adjective only with the first noun.

“Once, the deputy minister of culture of the then USSR called us. He asked: there is a magazine called 'Советская эстрада и цирк' (‘Soviet stage and circus’) and everyone says the title is composed incorrectly, is that true?”

The deputy minister suggested that with such a wording, only the stage was “Soviet”, as the adjective is in feminine form, like stage, while the circus was not “Soviet”, as it’s masculine. The minister wondered if 'советская' feminine form in the title needed to be changed to the plural form of 'советские'.

But Shtudiner reassured the official, saying that the circus was, of course, also “Soviet” and gave a similar example from Turgenev: "Дикий гусь и утка прилетели первыми" (“The wild goose and duck were the first to arrive”). In this case, ‘утка’ is feminine and ‘гусь’ is masculine and grammatically the adjective ‘дикий’ only agrees with ‘гусь’, but it is consistent with both words in terms of meaning.