Comment by cosmodisk
5 years ago
Plenty of contribution already,so I'll just add a personal anecdote. Some years ago I happened to have some beers with a Latvian Russian,who lived here, in London. He tells us that he doesn't get the Brits. He just doesn't understand the reasoning in some situations. I ask to elaborate. He says: last year, I had a pretty serious trauma and ended up in a hospital. It's so bad, pain, lots of tests,etc. And I'm pretty fed up with all of it. Then, one day, a surgeon comes in, says hello and asks me 'how are you?'. And I reply: 'really bad!'. And suddenly surgeon's face changes: his eyes start moving faster,he looks at me and then observes the room,then at me again. Then the surgeon,in a slightly panicky voice ask me again: well what's wrong,is it the food? Is it the nurses? Did they do all the tests? What's going on?' Then the Russian looks at the doctor and says: well look, I'm in a hospital, I'm ill as hell, I'm in pain and you have the audacity to ask how am I? Are you crazy? It should be pretty clear that it's definitely not my day! The surgeon goes on to explain the subtleties of the question and etc. At that point I already lived in the UK long enough to understand the doctor's position but I also found the Russians point to be absolutely hilarious.
From personal experience I find the Russians absolutely hilarious even without much smiling (the young ones smile more).They are somehow similar to Italians,who are also hilarious, but as is the case with the Russians, the funniest things tend to be equally tragic too. Kind of a never ending tragicomedy on full blast.
Russians are so extreme.
Even though my favourite professors at Waterloo in Canada were Russian, it wasn't until I learned some basic Russian that I finally got over the typical view of them drilled into people by Hollywood.
Your run of the mill Russian is honest about their feelings. Not honest about the facts, no, they can cheat on an insurance filing just fine. But that coldness that so many of them seem to have is often just an outer shell. Once one of them trusts you and gets to know you they're so warm and intense about their love for you. So excited to show you something dear to them. Even devoted enough to learn a new language just to speak to you, even if they're a senior[0]. It doesn't mean the relationship always survives, because that intensity is still there when they're angry, but the highs are so high.
I do not regret learning basic Russian.
[0] This happened to me. Twice.
A few years ago Masha Gessen did an episode of Conversations With Tyler, a podcast hosted by Tyler Cowen, and at one point she said this about Russian friendships [1]:
> ... I think that — and this may answer your question — Russian friendships are much more emotional and intense than American friendships [...] When I moved back to [the USA] five and a half years ago, it was like this sense of whiplash because I had a lot of friends here, but I had been absent for 20 years. I would get together with my friends, and then two hours later, our get-together would be over. I’m like, “Well, what was the point of that? Was that just to let each other know that we still exist?” Because you don’t really get into deep conversation until about four hours in and a number of bottles of alcohol [...] I think that maybe that’s what you’re referring to. Maybe you’re just referring to the emotional intensity of Russian friendship, where it’s hard. It’s like lovers, even in this country, don’t really drift apart usually. You have to break up. You can’t just stop calling, and go from talking every day to talking every few weeks, and then forget about each other’s existence.
I usually take claims about what people from a country are like with a big grain of salt, but it's interesting to see this in your comment, too. Maybe I should pursue some Russian friendships.
[1] https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/masha-gessen/
That is a great quote, though I have a minor quibble about alcohol being necessary as some of the Russians I befriended were former alcoholics and sober for years. Though others drank beer at dawn.
I found I made deep friendships more easily after speaking even a bit of Russian. If you can say "My name is X" and "awesome" and a couple other small phrases it helps. That said, it wasn't until I had put in around 1000 hours of practice until things really opened up. It's such a hard language and I'm below average in my ability to learn human languages. But I did make steady progress with Verbling and I even met up with my tutor when I was in Ukraine.
One of the things that learning Russian clears up is why they sound so angry to English ears. The language doesn't use tone for emphasis as much as English. It uses word order because the grammar is more flexible so they're able to put the important stuff at the end. Plus the sounds are more constant based. So once your ears get used to the language, you don't really hear Russian (or a Russian accented English) the same anymore. It sounds more human. Plus you learn so many words, you end up finding some of the endearing / superior to the English translation.
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Eh. "Friend" in English just isn't a good translation, it should be something like "BFF". You aren't expected to have 50 friends in Slavic countries because it would be too much of an investment and in English people call others friend after they waited together for 20 minutes at a train station.
But the concept exists, it's just a different word.
I once met a russian person online who had learned portuguese, my native language. I was extremely impressed. To this day I've never seen anyone else learn portuguese as a second language.
On my travels, I have met several people who, after living in Brazil for only a few months, learned to speak Portuguese fluently. This always impressed me hugely, because English speakers normally have a really hard time learning a language that has "gendered" nouns and inflected articles/adjectives/pronouns, for example... but many of them seem to do just fine! But I met enough of them to now think Portuguese must be quite easy to learn (or maybe, due to the fact that they MUST learn Portuguese when living in Brazil, given most people only speak Portuguese there).
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What I find interesting (I speak not a word of Portuguese) is the multitude of Portuguese-X creole languages, particularly the ones tha flourished and are some time still spoken in Sout Asia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese-based_creole_langua...
I think many originated as trade languages, but I find it interesting that languages with such very different roots would mix and create a new language (a Creole, more so; not just a pidjin).
I'm Dutch and learned it as a second language, when I moved to Brazil (at age 24). I met some Europeans who did the same.
Well, it's usually the third or fourth rather than the second (second tends to be English or Spanish).
Portugese is a really nice sounding language. I love it. It's on top of my "to learn" list. Spanish on the other hand no, though I like better how it's spoken in the Americas.
>> Your run of the mill Russian is honest about their feelings. Not honest about the facts, no, they can cheat on an insurance filing just fine. But that coldness that so many of them seem to have is often just an outer shell. Once one of them trusts you and gets to know you they're so warm and intense about their love for you. So excited to show you something dear to them. Even devoted enough to learn a new language just to speak to you, even if they're a senior[0]. It doesn't mean the relationship always survives, because that intensity is still there when they're angry, but the highs are so high.
I'm not a great fan of serious literature, but I've read a bit here and there and I think the above should be blindingly obvious to anyone who's read at least as little as I have (basically, Crime and Punishment, three or four pages from The Idiot and Gorsky's The Flaming heart of Danko). Or, anyone who's listened to the music (hello, Chaikovsky? Black Swan? You wanted feelsies?) or watched the movies (Tarkovsky) etc.
I think in the past the literature and the art in general would have been where Western people learned about Russians (and everyone else not in the West, also, but the Russians have a lot of literature). It's a bit of a shame if this has really been replaced by tinny stereotypes promulgated by Hollywood.
When my wife was dying (she has since passed away) and nobody could figure out her illness, she'd be in the most wretched pain, in the ER again, and she'd be retching awfully and almost uncontrollably.
A doctor would walk in, having heard of all this already and ask "How are you?"
Sometimes she gave them the benefit of the doubt, and sometimes she was a bit less charitable.
My point? Americans (as she was), Russians, Ukrainians, Latvians, Japanese, Kurdish, Bolivians, Icelandians, Koreans, Germans, Chinese, Scottish, Irish, Australians, Austrians, Swiss, South Africans, Egyptians, Mixolydians, Bohemians, and even Canadians all agree one one thing:
Being asked "How are you?" is the LAST thing somebody wants to hear when they are suffering.
But in this you can also see the difference between an American and many others. I find the "how are you greeting" very tiring nomatter how I am. When I am being asked the question I internally go through an assessment of, how am I today, how interested is the person, how much do I want to share of this. It takes significant mental effort.
When I was a teenager I did a one year high school exchange to the US and for a long time I really struggled with the daily "what's up?". I was going through the above internal dialogue more than 10 times a day struggling to come up with an answer. Even, when I learned to just answer "yeah what's up" internally the dialogue would often still be triggered.
I’m very sorry to hear that, for both you and your wife.
I hope any healthcare for your wife was eventually able to manage her pain and make her at least comfortable.
Thank you. For the most part she was, but it was a pretty awful thing that happened so there was only so much that could be done. But I appreciate it. The last year of her life saw her getting the best care she'd ever had. Unfortunately, it was hospice care. But it was in home, and my adult daughter and I took care of her til the end.
I have a difficult life and I'm growing very tired of this question. I've even had to ask some of my neighbors not to greet me that way.
Indeed. People do not realize how destructive it is. The other one that really irks me is "let me know if you need anything!"
1) You are putting it on me to tell you that I need something, right in the middle of my need. 2) If you're my real friend you don't need to say that, I already know I can call you 24/7/365 3) Your willingness to help is nulled by your lack of initiative.
The best thing anyone ever did was call me and say "I'm at Costco. What do you need? And don't say 'nothing'. I'm going to bring you something, and that's that." That whole pizza and frozen burritos were bad for me, but the last thing I needed on my mind at that time was cooking. And that's what true friends are there for.
So don't say "If you need anything let me know!" It's borderline passive aggressive.
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Lol, whats the point? Don't ask how people are?
maybe it's a trick because there is no you? You know, the idea of "no self" or non-duality:
Sam Harris https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fajfkO_X0l0
Paul Hedderman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2T9e-uW1Dc
I suspect in "American", "how are you" is often a request for actionable information. Your Russian friend took the question as an absolute, was confused why the doctor was asking a question with an obvious answer, and proceeded to give a reply which communicated no new information to the doctor. The doctor meanwhile was expecting an answer relative to the information he had, and hence took the negative reply as a sign of a sudden ill turn of health.
Similar when interacting with customer service. They don't want to know how you are, they want to know why you're talking with them, how they need to approach you. If you're calling about your cable bill and tell them you're not doing well because your aunt died, well, that's not actionable by them. They want to know how you're doing in the context of your cable bill. Even if your answer is "good, but I have a billing issue", it usefully sets the tone for the conversation in a way that "bad, Aunt Gerda passed away" does not.
> “good, but I have a billing issue"
I think this gets exactly to it, but I don’t agree with the rest of your comment.
In both the provided examples, the fact that there's a request for actionable information is already implicitly understood based on the situation. When a doctor comes into your room, you already know they're checking on your condition. The "How are you?" is just general greeting (to which, in casual situations, the proper response is "Fine, and you?").
And this is the crux of the misunderstanding. The Russian takes it as a request for information when it isn't.
*Edit*: A YouTube video pulled from another comment in this thread that explains what I was trying to say much better: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eGnH0KAXhCw&feature=youtu.be
I think the doctor was asking, relative to the situation that you're in, how are you? In other words, given that you're in this shitty situation, do you feel worse or better than you expect?
If he's still in a lot of pain then the doctor would expect the patient to say that. "The nurses are treating me well, the food is fine, but I'm still in a lot of pain. Is there anything you can do about that?"
The doctor was asking a question relative to the situation and the Russian interpreted as an absolute question.
It is a request for new information, in the specific case of a doctor seeing an admitted patient. Which makes his nervous response more inappropriate.
A common Russian greeting "Как дела?" is exactly as same as "How are you?" (it literally means "How are (your) affairs?") and people also do not take it literally. Sometimes people reply with some pun playing off even more literal meaning of the question, e.g. "дела" could also mean "criminal cases" so one might respond "Дела у прокурора, а у нас - делишки" (something like "The DA has cases but we just hustle"). I suspect the hero of the GP post might be making a similar joke in English.
>I suspect in "American", "how are you" is often a request for actionable information. Your Russian friend took the question as an absolute, was confused why the doctor was asking a question with an obvious answer, and proceeded to give a reply which communicated no new information to the doctor.
This situation is a very common standup joke here in Russia since like the 70s or 80s when some of our movie or theater stars were in the US (or some other 'capitalistic' country) and were constantly asked 'how are you' in a hallway.
The typical reply in Russian to "How are you" is "normalno" (normal), which I always thought should appeal to computer geeks
I always answer "still alive" in either language when I am asked by the people I know. When asked by random person like bank teller I would answer something weird. This would usually throw them out of their sleepy mood and suddenly they become more alive and attentive.
"normalyok" and more informally "zayebis"
So for others "zayebis" = "fucking awesome".
A bit vulgar to use.
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I once had a similar situation with the question "Is everything OK?", which is slightly different from "How are you?".
I am a German living in Germany and i once caused a car crash that made another car spin into the ditch on the side of the road. That car was driven by a family of Russian heritage.
After getting out of the car i spoke to the other parties wife first and I asked "Is everything OK?" with what i ment: "Is there something very wrong beyond the things that are obviously wrong. Like, is your child bleeding to death or is it only the car damage."
But the woman did not understand it this way at all and was a little bit furious because to her obviously nothing was OK.
Of course she had every reason to be upset, but the likelihood of a German interpreting my question in a rude way would have been way lower.
As a Balkanian living in Germany I can confirm, it is quite hard for us to get used to a German level of stoicism.
Have been in a doctors office with near suicidal levels of pain a few times. Past a certain point Humor doesn’t go over well. Particularly if you have been trying and failing to get help.
That said, doctors see a lot of misery, so anything to lighten the mood should be encouraged.
Had to explain to a doc once that when you've been in extreme pain for long enough your mind starts to regress to survival circuits. This was apparently not obvious. Doctors are fallible.
It’s hard to judge pain. Some people go to the hysterical quickly. Others walk in with an arrow in the head, calm.
Even with my own kids. It can initially be difficult to judge how serious an injury a fall of bump is. 99% of time I’m right, but the missed stick with you and the kid.
Russian here (to be precise Russian Canadian of Ukrainian descent :-)
There is a saying in Russian: if a stranger, on your question "how are you?" (ru: как дела?), starts explaining in details what is happening with him/her - please know, you've met complete idiot.
So I am classifying that 'how are you?' as never ending test of my life position :)
What is that saying, in Russian?
A bit confused. My mental model is - Ukraine is part of Soviet Union - currently the Russian speaking Ukraine part is well ...
other than that I do not associate Ukrainian as Russian. They are separately in identity ?
Ukraine has a lot of Russian speakers, I would think most of the population can actually speak Russian, or a mix of Ukrainian and Russian (given the similarity between the languages)... on TV, it's common for people to switch languages mid-conversation, for example...
With that said: Ukraine is a big country with a very strong culture that differs from Russian culture in (for us, foreigners) subtle ways. Near the border with Russia, however, Russian culture is stronger, hence some regions even associating themselves more strongly with Russia than with Ukraine (Krimea was one of those regions, by the way, which may explain to people who are unaware of this situation why there was no popular revolt - quite the contrary - against the Russian occupation).
Yes, they're quite different and similar at the same time. More than that, Russians are not all the same (Southern Russians are more like Ukranians, Siberian Russians are not very similar to Moscow Russians and so on). With Ukranians, you have at least two different cultures — east (relatively similar to Russians) and west (these guys were more influenced by Poland etc.). So, yeah, Russians and Ukranians are quite similar (they are two Slavic nations with common background), but there are a lot of differences too.
Countries and identities do not have a 1-1 mapping. This has and is causing a lot of issues I’m the world. Or is used to create a lot of friction by people that wants that.
> They are separately in identity ?
That is a heavily debated question, both in Russia and Ukraine. It is possible to say the "russian" culture originated in (what is today) Ukraine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kievan_Rus
What we now call "Russia" was the expanding frontier of the original.
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They mentioned they are of Ukrainian descent so perhaps they are of Ukrainian ethnicity, but they or their family came to Canada from Russia.