Comment by mycologos
5 years ago
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.
Could you give some examples of some Russian words that are more enduring than English words? I've always been fascinated by this.
Молодец, нельзя, фу, тоска, почемучка.
When learning Russian these are just a few of the words I found myself saying even when speaking English. Which gives a hint that a good direct translation maybe isn’t quite there.
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>> One of the things that learning Russian clears up is why they sound so angry to English ears.
Funny. To me (I'm Greek) Russians sound like they're always complaining about something. It's Germans that sound angry.
Edit: I wonder what Greek sounds like to foreign ears. The closes I've come to understanding it is hearing Spanish people talk, who sound a lot like Greek -that I don't understand.
Both Spanish (The Spain-version, not the Mexico-version) and Greek have a bunch of S sounds _everywhere_.
That's what makes them sound similar to people who don't speak the language that much.
Interesting. Do you have a recommended method for learning Russian?
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.