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Comment by 3pt14159

5 years ago

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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3pt14159

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nwb  5 years ago

Could you give some examples of some Russian words that are more enduring than English words? I've always been fascinated by this.

  • davidgh  5 years ago

    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.

    • cperciva  5 years ago

      There's a rule in linguistics, that the more often a word is used, the shorter it will be -- almost like Huffman coding.

      In that light, comparing the one-syllable English "Why?" to the three-syllable Russian "почему?" says something about the safety of asking questions in different countries.

      11 replies →

YeGoblynQueenne  5 years ago

>> 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.

  • theshrike79  5 years ago

    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.