Articles. Not only there are none in Russian, but there is nothing that serves their function.
Happens all the time:
-- I just put my towel to laundry.
-- Okay.
-- But I just realised that I need towel again. Could you go fetch towel for me?
-- Here, I brought you towel.
-- This is another towel.
-- Oh, so you needed that very towel that you put into laundry?
-- Oh. (switching to English) I wanted to say “I need the towel”, not “I need a towel”!
Next, Russian often requires you to specify a lot of extra info, compared to English. Example:
-- Why is that thing a fish?
-- It isn’t. (because it’s a dolphin)
“It is a fish” = “Это рыба” (it fish). No ‘is’ in this sentence in Russian. So, instead of “it isn’t” you must say “it isn’t a fish”. There is no easy way to say this sentence without using the word “fish” or some extra clumsy wording like “not the thing you are asking about”. That makes it very hard to make stuff like chatbots in Russian, or write generic lines for RPG games where the same line can be used in different circumstances.
Same thing with grammatical genders. When you say “X does Y”, you must specify gender of X in Y’s form. A lot of media was botched in translation, when one character thinks that another character is a girl when he’s actually a guy (and is not trying to deliberately deceive). In Russian, it is hard to say more than a couple of sentences without revealing your gender in the process.
Is that enough? There is more where that came from.
Thanks! I didn’t mean to have you produce a small essay - ‘definite/indefinite articles’ and ‘gender ambiguity’ would have covered me on the first and third.
I remain curious, but not to the extent I’m asking you to put in significant effort.
“It depends”. I have never been able to get away with just saying “it depends”—Russian version prompts you to either specify what it depends on, or explicitly refuse to, begging the question of why I am being so sneaky.
There is no word that means “complexity”, but can not be alternatively understood as “difficulty”. When I tell someone I want a complex challenge, they ask why I am not carrying heavy things around, as that is quite difficult.
In same vein, no word for “challenge” that doesn’t also mean “ordeal”. The distinction seems to be also missing from Russian brains, a very peculiar phenomenon that Russian culturologists are always upset about.
No different words for ‘accuracy’ and ‘precision’.
No word for ‘awesome’ that is both strong enough and can be shown on TV. But, on the other hand, the obscene word for ‘awesome’ is much more awesome that ‘awesome’.
English tenses are more flexible and consistent. Russian only has three, plus the standalone “have been”-like form. They don’t distinguish between “I do things” and “I am doing things”, for instance.
In English, you can put an emphasis on ‘am’ or ‘is’. In Russian, to do that, you need to throw in a few extra words.
Context-independency. Russian has a small basic vocabulary, and compensates it with insanely complex syntactic structures that makes it harder to pull a couple of words from a sentence and understand what it is about.
To even things a bit, here are some advantages of Russian over Englsh:
Phonetics. If you know how to write a word, you automatically and unambiguously (with a single notable exception) know how to pronounce it. It works a little less perfect the other way around, but good enough that Russian spelling bees do not exist and don’t even make sense.
English has a ridiculously huge amount of words that sound the same or similar, like ‘to’, ‘two’ and ‘too’, or ‘bot’ and ‘bought’. The last one is just horrible—you insert three new letters, doubling word’s length, and it still sounds the same. No such thing is possible in Russian.
Word formation. It is much more flexible than in English. You can easily say things like “недоперепрыгнул”, which means “tried, but not succeeded, to jump over something”.
Distinction between singular and plural “you”.
Mat. English swearing pales in comparison to this.
I have never been able to get away with just saying “it depends”
I have: “Зависит.” Everyone understands that very well.
There is no word that means “complexity”, but can not be alternatively understood as “difficulty”.
Kinda. “Запутанный”, “навороченный”, etc. Besides, just as any language, Russian depends on the context. In some context the word “сложный” will be understood as “complex”, and in other context—as “difficult” and that’s fine.
But to your complaints about expressing certain concepts in Russian I would add the observation that the Russian language has no word for “privacy”—none at all.
In same vein, no word for “challenge” that doesn’t also mean “ordeal”. The distinction seems to be also missing from Russian brains, a very peculiar phenomenon that Russian culturologists are always upset about.
This actually seems to be an argument in support of the original quote, to some degree.
I guess the grandparent means “охуительно”. The fact the Russian has flexible word formation combined with a well-developed swearing vocabulary means that you can express quite complicated concepts using nothing but swear words and it works wonderfully well.
As a non-Russian-speaker, I would need more details to make sense of that. I gather that “охуительно” (1) is obscene and (2) means something like “awesome”, but what’s its obscene meaning and what’s the link between that and meaning something like “awesome”?
A bit of googling suggests that the word is somehow derived from a word meaning “penis”, but it’s a lot longer than that word so presumably there’s some other stuff going on.
Okay, instead of making myself feel better by professing myself of possessing knowledge mere mortals do not, I will at least try to describe what is going on in this word (it is going to be very simplified and with some omissions, because I am no linguist and am operating from instinct).
Let’s start with хуй, that means “dick”. “Хуеть” is this word transformed into a verb, which can get a lot of different meanings as it goes, but we’ll just focus on one—“becoming progressively more and more surprised/daunted”. “Охуеть” transforms it from continuous form into “have become” form, with a touch of “all over” or “completely” meaning added in. Then goes “охуить”, which is the same verb in a sort of passive involuntary form, from “become” to “having been made to become”. Note that “охуить” is not usually used on its own. At this point we have “forcibly make one dauntingly surprised enough that 1) you usually can become that surprised only by progressively becoming more and more surprised for a very long time 2) it is totally all over you, as in, it is now a dominant feeling”. From “охуить” we get “охуительный”, which is a standard way to transform a verb into adjective, so the meaning specified above is now used as adjective. From “охуительный” we get “охуительно” which looks like adjective being transformed into adverb, but that’s optical illusion (although you can potentially use it as an adverb “awesomely”). What actually happened, is that we just stripped the word from its referent. So, it’s just very generalized version of “охуительный”.
So, you can use “охуительно” as an adverb “awesomely”, or as a generalized “awesome” without a referent, like a cheer (Awesome!!!). The adverb version can alternatively just amplify the “all over” meaning, so you can use it as a strong “very”, or “so much that it it daunting”.
You can use “охуительный” as an adjective “awesome”, like in “awesome thing”.
Compared to “awesome”, “охуительно” is much easier to use in a negative form, as a sarcasm (“My car just broke, that is just awesome”), because nowhere it is specified that the surprise must be positive. That one helps to combo it with all the other profanity to complicate and refine its meaning even further, abusing this ambiguity.
Правда, охуительно?
Edit: I forgot about one more factor: “хуеть” does get a couple of additional meanings as it goes in this case, namely “be nuts/asshole”. “Ты что, охуел?” == “Are you nuts?/How do you dare?/You must be an asshole if you are doing this”. I am not going to elaborate how exactly this meaning adds to the final word.
I agree: that is all distinctly more awesome than the English “awesome”.
(A rough parallel might be the exclamation “Fuck me!” which, at least if said with slight stress on both words, means something like “well, that is very surprising and maybe impressive” for reasons a bit like the ones you give for “охуить”. But it doesn’t have an adjective or adverb form.)
Perhaps I misunderstood what timujin meant about that being “a sort of passive involuntary form”, then. (But I remark that “fuck” is also a transitive verb, to put it mildly, so I’m not sure I understand what the problem is.)
Охуеть! would be Fuck me! Охуить would be Fuck [somebody] … though I don’t recall hearing that form, there are synonims that are just much more natural. Sorry, this is bizarre...
You can, of course, create a verb охуить, but I do not think that it exists in “normal” Russian speech. The adjective охуительный is formed from the verb охуеть and the fact that a vowel has changed is completely normal for Russian (compare зреть и зримый).
I wasn’t claiming it was anything like an exact translation! Only that there’s a certain commonality between that English way of expressing awedness, and the Russian one we’d been discussing.
Yeah, well. Maybe there are suspiciously many differences in expressions of awesomeness in the two languages. I was concerned rather of an opposite mistake. I have read somewhere that in one of S. King’s novels, a man was heard having sex in the next room and crying out, Der’mo! Der’mo! etc. Now, in Russian, der’mo doesn’t have an ‘awesome’ connotation, the way shit seems to in English. It was as if he was crying, Poop! Poop!..
You forgot that an adjective хуевый means bad, for example instead of saying “I am feeling sick” u say мне хуево, but as parent points it out, the adjective formed from the same root “охуительный” means exactly the contrary - мне охуительно is the russian equivalent of “I am super fine”
As you can see it is quite complicated, but even people who never went to school are the great masters of the skill
ahahaahahahaha as a native russian speaker I can say for sure that u can define ANY concept just by slightly transforming words derived from “penis” or “cunt”. There is almost infinite set of variations, each having particular meaning; u have no choice rather than to beleive me or dedicate lifetime into learning Russian filthy language
I would argue with you, if someday I ever happen to write fanfiction named something like HP and the Methods of Russian Profanity as you put it, there would be prophecy suggesting “and he has the power of which the other does not know”
Yep, doesn’t it sound awesome (or охуительно?) Your masters will be all kinds of rednecks, prisoners and other honorable authorities of the craftsmanship
Really fascinating! But my russian brains can’t grasp this one thing, could you please at least try to explain what is this mysterious additional meaning of the word ‘challenge’ that can’t be translated into Russian, and doesn’t mean “summon to contest” or “high degree of difficulty”
In same vein, no word for “challenge” that doesn’t also mean “ordeal”. The distinction seems to be also missing from Russian brains, a very peculiar phenomenon that Russian culturologists are always upset about.
to paraphrase, what is the meaning of challenge except “вызов” or “испытание”
There is no extra meaning in “challenge”. “Вызов” and “испытание” cover the English word “challenge” more or less completely. The problem is that they also accidentally cover the English word “ordeal” as well. Challenge is not something bad or painful, but ordeal is. When you say you want “испытание”, you can potentially be understood as “I want more pain in my life”, which is not what English “I want a challenge” means.
That seems like a bug in English, not in Russian, that you can’t say “испытание” without specifying whether you mean “challenge” or “ordeal”. What if you’re not interested in making that distinction?
It seems like half your complaints are that Russian doesn’t make some distinction that English does and the other half are that Russian forces you to make distinctions that English doesn’t. It strikes me that you’re simply more comfortable thinking in English.
It strikes me that you’re simply more comfortable thinking in English.
Which begs the question: why is it so that my native language that I spoke since I was two and everyone in my circle understands, is less comfortable for me than a foreign language I am not even confident in my skill with, possess a limited vocabulary (compared to Russian), and have much less practice in?
It seems like half your complaints are that Russian doesn’t make some distinction that English does and the other half are that Russian forces you to make distinctions that English doesn’t
Not being able to make a distinction and forcing you to make a distinction, are both bad. Look at the “It isn’t a fish” example. In English you can distinguish between “It isn’t a fish” and “It isn’t a mammal”, or you can leave it ambiguous (“It isn’t”). If you can make a distinction, but don’t have to, it gives you a lot more flexibility than both “not able to” and “can and must”. Russian is inflexible exactly because of that.
I think Russian is just worse at carving reality at its joints. Accuracy and precision and two very different things, down to the point that more precision = less accuracy and vice-versa. That’s a good distinction. Forcing you to specify a noun’s gender when you’re talking about it, with said genders distributed mostly randomly/historically (dare you to say why “mechanism” is male, “machine” is female, and “device” is neuter?), makes no sense, because different-gendered items do not have different behaviour. That’s a bad distinction.
Which begs the question: why is it so that my native language that I spoke since I was two and everyone in my circle understands, is less comfortable for me than a foreign language I am not even confident in my skill with, possess a limited vocabulary (compared to Russian), and have much less practice in?
The comfort a language brings comes with it’s associations. If you are introverted you likely had a lot of negative social experiences in your native language.
If you learned English in a more comfortable enviroment it likely brings other associations with it.
I’m personally more light and make jokes when dealing in English than in German. I got my verbal English via Toastmasters and the rest via the internet.
Okay, a valid hypothesis, but I don’t think it is actually the case. I learned English for 2 years with a teacher, and then via books, internet and video games. I certainly did have negative social experiences in Russian. But the comfortableness doesn’t feel like being more light and effortless. More like more powerful, less unwieldy, more precise and compact. As a programmer, I often have the same set of feelings with programming languages, and I assure you, I wasn’t bullied in school in C++.
Internet, books and video games don’t produce lightness. You might feel powerful while playing a video game but you don’t joke around.
The Toastmasters social enviroment on the other hand does produce that vibe.
When I was socially inconfident, I did very often choose English over German. As I personally got more confident I started using German with people who don’t speak it (I’m living in Berlin, it happens) to have them tell me to switch to English.
As a programmer, I often have the same set of feelings with programming languages, and I assure you, I wasn’t bullied in school in C++.
C++ education is still very dry. A language like Python with it’s Zen has values like “There should be one—and preferably only one—obvious way to do it.”
A lot of the python tutorials are written more lively than c++ tutorials.
I’m not saying that languages are the same when you ignore personal conditioning. I know a few people with strong NLP background where effects of language really matter who say the can’t simply translate things one-to-one.
Compactness however is relative. If you translate a single German sentence into English the English one is often shorter.
On the other hand one author I know with an NLP background said she probalby would need halve the text write a book in German than in English you don’t say things as directly in English than you do in German.
There is less hinting around.
I recently watched the Liar’s game with subtitles and it contained a bunch of instances where forms of politeness were used to express meaning that simply don’t exist the same way in English.
Kinship terms are also very intestesting. English doesn’t distinguish between cousins on the mothers side and on the fathers side. Other languages do.
I’m sure essay was already on timujin’s mind. Articles in Russian are big problem for us all.
(Though if I were asked that question, I would have gone on a rant about how unreasonable it is to have to write using a completely different alphabet from just about everybody else.)
Articles. Not only there are none in Russian, but there is nothing that serves their function.
Happens all the time:
-- I just put my towel to laundry.
-- Okay.
-- But I just realised that I need towel again. Could you go fetch towel for me?
-- Here, I brought you towel.
-- This is another towel.
-- Oh, so you needed that very towel that you put into laundry?
-- Oh. (switching to English) I wanted to say “I need the towel”, not “I need a towel”!
Next, Russian often requires you to specify a lot of extra info, compared to English. Example:
-- Why is that thing a fish?
-- It isn’t. (because it’s a dolphin)
“It is a fish” = “Это рыба” (it fish). No ‘is’ in this sentence in Russian. So, instead of “it isn’t” you must say “it isn’t a fish”. There is no easy way to say this sentence without using the word “fish” or some extra clumsy wording like “not the thing you are asking about”. That makes it very hard to make stuff like chatbots in Russian, or write generic lines for RPG games where the same line can be used in different circumstances.
Same thing with grammatical genders. When you say “X does Y”, you must specify gender of X in Y’s form. A lot of media was botched in translation, when one character thinks that another character is a girl when he’s actually a guy (and is not trying to deliberately deceive). In Russian, it is hard to say more than a couple of sentences without revealing your gender in the process.
Is that enough? There is more where that came from.
Thanks! I didn’t mean to have you produce a small essay - ‘definite/indefinite articles’ and ‘gender ambiguity’ would have covered me on the first and third.
I remain curious, but not to the extent I’m asking you to put in significant effort.
No, it’s actually fun. Brief examples:
“It depends”. I have never been able to get away with just saying “it depends”—Russian version prompts you to either specify what it depends on, or explicitly refuse to, begging the question of why I am being so sneaky.
There is no word that means “complexity”, but can not be alternatively understood as “difficulty”. When I tell someone I want a complex challenge, they ask why I am not carrying heavy things around, as that is quite difficult.
In same vein, no word for “challenge” that doesn’t also mean “ordeal”. The distinction seems to be also missing from Russian brains, a very peculiar phenomenon that Russian culturologists are always upset about.
No different words for ‘accuracy’ and ‘precision’.
No word for ‘awesome’ that is both strong enough and can be shown on TV. But, on the other hand, the obscene word for ‘awesome’ is much more awesome that ‘awesome’.
English tenses are more flexible and consistent. Russian only has three, plus the standalone “have been”-like form. They don’t distinguish between “I do things” and “I am doing things”, for instance.
In English, you can put an emphasis on ‘am’ or ‘is’. In Russian, to do that, you need to throw in a few extra words.
Context-independency. Russian has a small basic vocabulary, and compensates it with insanely complex syntactic structures that makes it harder to pull a couple of words from a sentence and understand what it is about.
To even things a bit, here are some advantages of Russian over Englsh:
Phonetics. If you know how to write a word, you automatically and unambiguously (with a single notable exception) know how to pronounce it. It works a little less perfect the other way around, but good enough that Russian spelling bees do not exist and don’t even make sense.
English has a ridiculously huge amount of words that sound the same or similar, like ‘to’, ‘two’ and ‘too’, or ‘bot’ and ‘bought’. The last one is just horrible—you insert three new letters, doubling word’s length, and it still sounds the same. No such thing is possible in Russian.
Words “себя” and “авось”.
Word formation. It is much more flexible than in English. You can easily say things like “недоперепрыгнул”, which means “tried, but not succeeded, to jump over something”.
Distinction between singular and plural “you”.
Mat. English swearing pales in comparison to this.
I have: “Зависит.” Everyone understands that very well.
Kinda. “Запутанный”, “навороченный”, etc. Besides, just as any language, Russian depends on the context. In some context the word “сложный” will be understood as “complex”, and in other context—as “difficult” and that’s fine.
But to your complaints about expressing certain concepts in Russian I would add the observation that the Russian language has no word for “privacy”—none at all.
I think the more proper translation of “it depends” would be “как сказать”.
Also, while it is true that the Russian language has no word for “privacy”, note that it also has no word for “gun” :-)
Стрелковое оружие (firearm) (?)
That doesn’t cover artillery, unlike the word “gun”.
This actually seems to be an argument in support of the original quote, to some degree.
Yes, it is.
Come on, you can’t just say something like that without giving details.
I guess the grandparent means “охуительно”. The fact the Russian has flexible word formation combined with a well-developed swearing vocabulary means that you can express quite complicated concepts using nothing but swear words and it works wonderfully well.
As a non-Russian-speaker, I would need more details to make sense of that. I gather that “охуительно” (1) is obscene and (2) means something like “awesome”, but what’s its obscene meaning and what’s the link between that and meaning something like “awesome”?
A bit of googling suggests that the word is somehow derived from a word meaning “penis”, but it’s a lot longer than that word so presumably there’s some other stuff going on.
Okay, instead of making myself feel better by professing myself of possessing knowledge mere mortals do not, I will at least try to describe what is going on in this word (it is going to be very simplified and with some omissions, because I am no linguist and am operating from instinct).
Let’s start with хуй, that means “dick”. “Хуеть” is this word transformed into a verb, which can get a lot of different meanings as it goes, but we’ll just focus on one—“becoming progressively more and more surprised/daunted”. “Охуеть” transforms it from continuous form into “have become” form, with a touch of “all over” or “completely” meaning added in. Then goes “охуить”, which is the same verb in a sort of passive involuntary form, from “become” to “having been made to become”. Note that “охуить” is not usually used on its own. At this point we have “forcibly make one dauntingly surprised enough that 1) you usually can become that surprised only by progressively becoming more and more surprised for a very long time 2) it is totally all over you, as in, it is now a dominant feeling”. From “охуить” we get “охуительный”, which is a standard way to transform a verb into adjective, so the meaning specified above is now used as adjective. From “охуительный” we get “охуительно” which looks like adjective being transformed into adverb, but that’s optical illusion (although you can potentially use it as an adverb “awesomely”). What actually happened, is that we just stripped the word from its referent. So, it’s just very generalized version of “охуительный”.
So, you can use “охуительно” as an adverb “awesomely”, or as a generalized “awesome” without a referent, like a cheer (Awesome!!!). The adverb version can alternatively just amplify the “all over” meaning, so you can use it as a strong “very”, or “so much that it it daunting”. You can use “охуительный” as an adjective “awesome”, like in “awesome thing”.
Compared to “awesome”, “охуительно” is much easier to use in a negative form, as a sarcasm (“My car just broke, that is just awesome”), because nowhere it is specified that the surprise must be positive. That one helps to combo it with all the other profanity to complicate and refine its meaning even further, abusing this ambiguity.
Правда, охуительно?
Edit: I forgot about one more factor: “хуеть” does get a couple of additional meanings as it goes in this case, namely “be nuts/asshole”. “Ты что, охуел?” == “Are you nuts?/How do you dare?/You must be an asshole if you are doing this”. I am not going to elaborate how exactly this meaning adds to the final word.
I agree: that is all distinctly more awesome than the English “awesome”.
(A rough parallel might be the exclamation “Fuck me!” which, at least if said with slight stress on both words, means something like “well, that is very surprising and maybe impressive” for reasons a bit like the ones you give for “охуить”. But it doesn’t have an adjective or adverb form.)
Not охуить (that would be a… transitive verb, to put it mildly). ОхуЕть. And it’s a bit like ‘I never!’
Perhaps I misunderstood what timujin meant about that being “a sort of passive involuntary form”, then. (But I remark that “fuck” is also a transitive verb, to put it mildly, so I’m not sure I understand what the problem is.)
Охуеть! would be Fuck me! Охуить would be Fuck [somebody] … though I don’t recall hearing that form, there are synonims that are just much more natural. Sorry, this is bizarre...
As I said, охуить is not usually used on its own, and its meaning is only relevant when you derive things from it. And it is a transitive verb.
Also, this thread gives me giggles.
You can, of course, create a verb охуить, but I do not think that it exists in “normal” Russian speech. The adjective охуительный is formed from the verb охуеть and the fact that a vowel has changed is completely normal for Russian (compare зреть и зримый).
I wasn’t claiming it was anything like an exact translation! Only that there’s a certain commonality between that English way of expressing awedness, and the Russian one we’d been discussing.
Yeah, well. Maybe there are suspiciously many differences in expressions of awesomeness in the two languages. I was concerned rather of an opposite mistake. I have read somewhere that in one of S. King’s novels, a man was heard having sex in the next room and crying out, Der’mo! Der’mo! etc. Now, in Russian, der’mo doesn’t have an ‘awesome’ connotation, the way shit seems to in English. It was as if he was crying, Poop! Poop!..
You forgot that an adjective хуевый means bad, for example instead of saying “I am feeling sick” u say мне хуево, but as parent points it out, the adjective formed from the same root “охуительный” means exactly the contrary - мне охуительно is the russian equivalent of “I am super fine”
As you can see it is quite complicated, but even people who never went to school are the great masters of the skill
Хуевый is not derived from (о)хуеть, but directly from хуй. It has nothing to do with the word in question.
ahahaahahahaha as a native russian speaker I can say for sure that u can define ANY concept just by slightly transforming words derived from “penis” or “cunt”. There is almost infinite set of variations, each having particular meaning; u have no choice rather than to beleive me or dedicate lifetime into learning Russian filthy language
As another native Russian speaker, I can say that Russian profanity is indeed powerful, but is not as precise as the parent post puts it.
I would argue with you, if someday I ever happen to write fanfiction named something like HP and the Methods of Russian Profanity as you put it, there would be prophecy suggesting “and he has the power of which the other does not know”
I would be delighted to read it. Please, do happen to write it.
That sounds like quite an enjoyable lifetime, actually.
Yep, doesn’t it sound awesome (or охуительно?) Your masters will be all kinds of rednecks, prisoners and other honorable authorities of the craftsmanship
Really fascinating! But my russian brains can’t grasp this one thing, could you please at least try to explain what is this mysterious additional meaning of the word ‘challenge’ that can’t be translated into Russian, and doesn’t mean “summon to contest” or “high degree of difficulty”
I have some trouble understanding what you want. Try to rephrase, or expand.
to paraphrase, what is the meaning of challenge except “вызов” or “испытание”
There is no extra meaning in “challenge”. “Вызов” and “испытание” cover the English word “challenge” more or less completely. The problem is that they also accidentally cover the English word “ordeal” as well. Challenge is not something bad or painful, but ordeal is. When you say you want “испытание”, you can potentially be understood as “I want more pain in my life”, which is not what English “I want a challenge” means.
That seems like a bug in English, not in Russian, that you can’t say “испытание” without specifying whether you mean “challenge” or “ordeal”. What if you’re not interested in making that distinction?
It seems like half your complaints are that Russian doesn’t make some distinction that English does and the other half are that Russian forces you to make distinctions that English doesn’t. It strikes me that you’re simply more comfortable thinking in English.
Which begs the question: why is it so that my native language that I spoke since I was two and everyone in my circle understands, is less comfortable for me than a foreign language I am not even confident in my skill with, possess a limited vocabulary (compared to Russian), and have much less practice in?
Not being able to make a distinction and forcing you to make a distinction, are both bad. Look at the “It isn’t a fish” example. In English you can distinguish between “It isn’t a fish” and “It isn’t a mammal”, or you can leave it ambiguous (“It isn’t”). If you can make a distinction, but don’t have to, it gives you a lot more flexibility than both “not able to” and “can and must”. Russian is inflexible exactly because of that.
I think Russian is just worse at carving reality at its joints. Accuracy and precision and two very different things, down to the point that more precision = less accuracy and vice-versa. That’s a good distinction. Forcing you to specify a noun’s gender when you’re talking about it, with said genders distributed mostly randomly/historically (dare you to say why “mechanism” is male, “machine” is female, and “device” is neuter?), makes no sense, because different-gendered items do not have different behaviour. That’s a bad distinction.
The comfort a language brings comes with it’s associations. If you are introverted you likely had a lot of negative social experiences in your native language.
If you learned English in a more comfortable enviroment it likely brings other associations with it. I’m personally more light and make jokes when dealing in English than in German. I got my verbal English via Toastmasters and the rest via the internet.
Okay, a valid hypothesis, but I don’t think it is actually the case. I learned English for 2 years with a teacher, and then via books, internet and video games. I certainly did have negative social experiences in Russian. But the comfortableness doesn’t feel like being more light and effortless. More like more powerful, less unwieldy, more precise and compact. As a programmer, I often have the same set of feelings with programming languages, and I assure you, I wasn’t bullied in school in C++.
Internet, books and video games don’t produce lightness. You might feel powerful while playing a video game but you don’t joke around.
The Toastmasters social enviroment on the other hand does produce that vibe.
When I was socially inconfident, I did very often choose English over German. As I personally got more confident I started using German with people who don’t speak it (I’m living in Berlin, it happens) to have them tell me to switch to English.
C++ education is still very dry. A language like Python with it’s Zen has values like “There should be one—and preferably only one—obvious way to do it.” A lot of the python tutorials are written more lively than c++ tutorials.
I’m not saying that languages are the same when you ignore personal conditioning. I know a few people with strong NLP background where effects of language really matter who say the can’t simply translate things one-to-one.
Compactness however is relative. If you translate a single German sentence into English the English one is often shorter. On the other hand one author I know with an NLP background said she probalby would need halve the text write a book in German than in English you don’t say things as directly in English than you do in German.
There is less hinting around.
I recently watched the Liar’s game with subtitles and it contained a bunch of instances where forms of politeness were used to express meaning that simply don’t exist the same way in English.
Kinship terms are also very intestesting. English doesn’t distinguish between cousins on the mothers side and on the fathers side. Other languages do.
I’m sure essay was already on timujin’s mind. Articles in Russian are big problem for us all.
(Though if I were asked that question, I would have gone on a rant about how unreasonable it is to have to write using a completely different alphabet from just about everybody else.)
Nitpick: I believe you meant “X did Y”.
Yeah.