Re: Spanish and Portuguese

[Marc]:

> At what age do Russian children completely master the declension? I may be
> wrong about 7 years, but I red somewhere that the declension is the last
> thing that has to be completed?

Maybe pedagogues could give you a precise figure, I can not, sorry. I rely only
on personal impressions and opinion of several people I asked. Nobody can
recollect a phase in the children speaking development when they speak correctly
in (almost) all aspects but declension.

In primary school programs the declension of nouns is one of grammar sections to
be learnt in the beginning (in the 3rd form). The conjugation of verbs is to be
learnt much later (in the 5th form AFAIR).

> (When I was 15, I had to learn German & English at school (1 hour every
> week -- until then I had had Dutch, French & Latin). German was easier to
> understand, to read, to pronounce & to write for me (Dutch speaking) than
> English, but I never completely learned the German declension.)

German declension always has been a problem for me too :-(
Especially difficult is to keep in mind genders of all the German nouns which
often have no gender markers and don't coincide with Russian ones.
Still I have warm feelings to German, probably because it is my first foreign
language.

Alexander