Comment by dragonwriter
5 years ago
> Unlike English, Russian has two words for "why".
English has at least three in the same space, two of which are in modern use.
> "почему" asks - how did things come to be this way?
In English, that's, unambiguously, “How". Which is kind of why your own translation starts with it.
> "зачем" asks - what is the purpose of things being this way?
In English that is, again unambiguously, though somewhat archaic, “wherefore”.
“Why” can mean either and is usually disambiguated by context (but is usually read modernly as “wherefore” if the context isn’t otherwise unambiguous, though the existence of the archaic phrase “whys and wherefores” which seems to mean the same as the modern “whys and hows” suggest to me that the bias has flipped over time.)
Though I know very little Russian, I know enough to say that "how" and "pochemu" do not map 1:1 -- If I asked, in English, "how is this cardboard box flat?", the natural response would be "it's designed to be flattened" rather than "someone folded it down", but the natural response to "pochemu" would be the second. The full translation that was given would be necessary to disambiguate.
"Pochemu" is closer to "why" than "how", it asks why something happened regardless of how.
"zachem" is closer to "what for".