> ... 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/
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.
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.
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.
"почему" asks - how did things come to be this way?
"зачем" asks - what is the purpose of things being this way?
Note the difference in implication if I ask you "why" you were late for work. "почему" allows room for circumstances beyond your control, while "зачем" places the blame squarely on your shoulders.
English speakers may be completely unconscious of the overloaded nature of "why" - such is the value of learning other languages.
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.)
"zachem" is closer to "what for".
To be serious, Russian morphology restrict the number of short words. A verb or a noun will have a suffix that changes by plurality, case, gender, tense etc. and often a prefix. E.g. a pretty common word such as "come" in "Come to dinner with us" will have four syllables in 'заходите' because its root has a vowel, prefix has a vowel and suffix has two.
Question words are grammatically pronouns in Russian so they have all the morphological features of nouns.
(Disclaimer: I do not smile)
I’m really interested in linguistics, but I’ve never heard of such a rule. Could you give a source please? I’d be curious to know if this is true.
(A striking counterexample I ran into just yesterday: the Urim word for ‘head’ is tukŋunakŋ, and ‘we (incl.)’ is mentepm-. I don’t think this is because Urim people avoid talking about heads or groups of people. That being said, it’s tricky concluding anything from a sample size of n=1.)
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.
That's what makes them sound similar to people who don't speak the language that much.
But the concept exists, it's just a different word.
(Though yes, by how they learn you notice what they get easily and what confuses them)
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).
Well, it's usually the third or fourth rather than the second (second tends to be English or Spanish).
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.
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.