As a New Zealander, Maori should be one of my second languages, but Russian could be attractive based on literature alone. Tolstoy, Pushkin, Dostoevsky and such are all well known in the West, and one good reason for learning other languages would be to read literature in its native tongue.
And I can see Russian becoming one of the important languages to know this century.
Russian is beautiful but very hard to learn (although Iris Murdoch, to my great astonishment, not once said it was "easy" - I think it was her personal twist of mind). I always am very much disturbed when I imagine I could be the one who had to study it as foreign language. I think only Ancient Greek could be worse.
I don't know, of course, having never tried to learn any other language. However, while your alphabet is different to ours, it is at least a phonetic alphabet that's similar to ours, which must make it much easier to learn than Japanese or Chinese. With Arabic somewhere inbetween, I guess.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2008-09-06 07:25 am (UTC)And I can see Russian becoming one of the important languages to know this century.
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Date: 2008-09-06 08:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-06 08:19 am (UTC)