Differences between English and Russian

[MurMur]

» ‚‡Ò ÚÓÊ Ô?Ë‚ÂÚÒÚ‚Û?, jansenov. œ?Ë?Ú“Ó ÛÒ”?¯‡Ú¸ ?Ó‰“Û? ?˜¸ “‡ ?ÚÓÏ ÙÓ?ÛÏÂ.

Of course, my comment regarding English language was not meant to offend anyone. But English is a little weird for me. In English, there are things like articles (a, an, the), and I don't understand why they are needed (or how they are used), because Russian doesn't have them. Also, in Russian, there's no definite order of words in a sentence; you can use any order of words, and every one of them has its unique flavor. There are other interesting things about this language, but that's enough for now.

Anyway, thanks for your welcome, jansenov. But I'm curious: where did you learn Russian?

[jansenov]

I'm self-taught. But you should remember that there's an definite-indefinite contrast in Russian as well. In English, and in other Germanic languages, and Romance languages and Albanian as well, there is a definite and indefinite article. But in Balto-Slavic languages, to which belong Croatian, Russian, Lithuanian and other languages, there is the definite and indefinite form of the adjective.

As for the free word order in Russian versus the more rigid one in English, as I said in my previous post, all languages are equally complex, but express complexity in a different way. Balto-Slavic languages don't need a rigid word order because they have a ton of prefixes and suffixes they can attach to words and so determine their function in the sentence. Most modern Germanic and Romance languages don't have that option, and so a word's function is determined by its position in the sentence.

It's all about language economy. The English don't get to put words where they like, but in return they don't have to memorise all the prefixes and suffixes that perform that function. Russians, on the other hand, can put words where they want, but it comes at a price; they must memorise their language's complex morphology.


An extreme example would be Chinese, where there can be 5 or more words that sound exactly the same (tone and all), but each word has a different symbol in the Chinese script. In this way the script is the main carrier of information, the main source of complexity in Chinese, not the spoken language.

[MurMur]

But you should remember that there's an definite-indefinite contrast in Russian as well. In English, and in other Germanic languages, and Romance languages and Albanian as well, there is a definite and indefinite article. But in Balto-Slavic languages, to which belong Croatian, Russian, Lithuanian and other languages, there is the definite and indefinite form of the adjective.

Sorry, but I honestly don't understand your point here. My point is that in English, the phrase "Give me a pen" and the phrase "Give me the pen" have different meanings. But in Russian, they both look identical, and no one has any problems with that. Another example: I'm still struggling to understand the difference between the Past Simple tense and the Present Perfect tense, because in Russian, there is no such (visual) difference, and again, no one has problems with that. Also, English requires more (redundant) words to express anything, unlike Russian. This, in my opinion, makes English look a little ugly. Why are there articles needed, anyway?

The English don't get to put words where they like, but in return they don't have to memorise all the prefixes and suffixes that perform that function. Russians, on the other hand, can put words where they want, but it comes at a price; they must memorise their language's complex morphology.

But this already means that Russian is more complex than English. And one more thing: in Russian language, the word order also allows to put emphasis on individual words in a sentence. This is something that is completely alien to English speakers. A simple experiment: use the Google translator to translate anything from English to Russian. The end result will be quite neat. But if you try to translate Russian into English, you'll get a mess. Honestly, I don't believe that all languages are equally complex. Some are simple, and some are complicated, and there's nothing wrong with that.

So you learned Russian by yourself, jansenov? That is a great achievement. I myself don't see a point in learning foreign languages. But what was your reason to learn it? One more thing: I've noticed that your Russian writing has plenty of mistakes. Doesn't matter, the text is very clear. But if you have any questions regarding Russian, I'd be glad to help.

[Ducky123]

I'd like to give my two pence on this, too

I consider my native language, German, as a quite difficult language since we have a lot of grammar rules... for example every person (I, you, he/she/it ...) has a different ending Ich gehe, du gehst, er/sie/es geht ...
Since English isn't that much different from German I don't have much problems with it... grammar isn't hard though the word order is indeed very strict.

we also have the the/a thing in German..

since I absolutely know nothing about Russian I won't say much about that
One thing I wanna add is that Google Translate doesn't work very good from English to German as well

anyway, since this seems to be very interesting you may start a discussion thread about this topic Just a suggestion

[jansenov]

@MurMur: My point is that all languages have features that seem unnecessary to outsiders, but to natives are valuble, because they have a practical use or add a "poetic" quality to the language. That's why I mentioned the definite vs. indefinite adjective in Slavic languages ("novyj", "novaja", "novoe" vs. "nov", "nova", "novo" in Russian), because while this distinction has a stylistic value in Russian, and still retains a practical value in Croatian (in Croatian "visok chovjek" which means "tall man" vs. "visoki chovjek" meaning "a man distinguished by tallness among other people"), to an English native this distinction may seem impractical.

It's the same situation when a Russian like yourself thinks about English articles. To an English native it is important to be able to distinguish a particular object among objects of the same kind. That's why Littlefoot says "not a lone dinosaur, the lone dinosaur" to emphasize the significance of this particular lone dinosaur. In Russian this significance would have to be expressed in a different way, like "only lone dinosaur" or "lone dinosaur my grandpa talked about". The English language could work without articles, but in some situations you would need more words to express the same thing, and the language would lose some of its distinctiveness, some of its "beauty".

Regarding the difference between the tenses, the Past Simple expresses an action of short duration or a habitual action ("the sun shined") in an undefined past, while the Present Perfect express an action that ended recently ("the sun has shined"). When using the Past Simple there is a sense of distance between the events of the past and current events, while with Present Perfect the past events still feel immediate to the current events.
As you can see, English has more complex system of tenses than Russian.

As for English always needing more words to express the same thing as Russian, this is not always true. How many Russian words would you need to translate "quarterback", "fog of war", "raytracing", "hard-wired", "finger food" or "antiestablishmentarianism" to have exactly the same meaning in Russian? Also, keep in mind that English words even when they are more numerous than Russian words in a text, the Russian words are usually longer and take longer to pronounce (that's why all languages, per Noam Chomsky at least, carry the same amount of information per syllable).

Speaking about complexity, I already mentioned that English matches the morphological complexity of Russian with its tense system, its syntactical complexity and its ability to form new words and idioms. In computer science, for example, how many technical terms have been borrowed into Russian from English, versus how many of them have been successfuly translated into Russian?



And I thank you for offering help with Russian. I hope you won't mind if I start bugging you with helping with scientific articles and such . I make many spelling errors in Russian because I frequently mix up words with Croatian words, because Croatian is closely related to Russian (close enough to interfere, but not so closely that a Russian and a Croat would be able to understand each other without tremendous effort on both sides). It can be solved with more dilligence and a good Russian dictionary (which I don't have, unfortunately, but I will work on getting one).

And yes, I as well would like if a mod could separate this discussion in a different thread.

[MurMur]

As for English always needing more words to express the same thing as Russian, this is not always true

But it's true in most cases. Also, "fog of war" = "ÚÛχ“ ‚ÓÈ“?". Only 2 words.

To an English native it is important to be able to distinguish a particular object among objects of the same kind. That's why Littlefoot says "not a lone dinosaur, the lone dinosaur" to emphasize the significance of this particular lone dinosaur. In Russian this significance would have to be expressed in a different way, like "only lone dinosaur" or "lone dinosaur my grandpa talked about".

Actually, in Russian, there's no need to emphasize the significance of something. You can do this, but you don't have to. In the Russian translation of LBT, this character is simply called "Lone Dinosaur", and that's all (actually, he is called "Long Dinosaur", because of a stupid translation). In Russia, you can say the word "Kremlin", and everyone will be able to understand what are you talking about, wherever it's "a kremlin" or "the Kremlin".

In Russian, the usual way to put emphasis on a word is by using capital letters. Here's an example: "’?ÂÏ”¸" is not as "cool" as " ?ÂÏ”¸". And you don't have to put any more words here. And if you want to emphasize something while speaking Russian, just say it a little louder. No, this is not a joke, this is how things are here, in Russia.

Regarding the difference between the tenses, the Past Simple expresses an action of short duration or a habitual action ("the sun shined") in an undefined past, while the Present Perfect express an action that ended recently ("the sun has shined"). When using the Past Simple there is a sense of distance between the events of the past and current events, while with Present Perfect the past events still feel immediate to the current events.
As you can see, English has more complex system of tenses than Russian.

That is true. But why so many tenses? Russian has only three, but there are no problems with it.

And I thank you for offering help with Russian. I hope you won't mind if I start bugging you with helping with scientific articles and such.

There's no issue. But please, not too often. I have a life too.  

EDIT: There's one more thing that I forgot to put here.

Speaking about complexity, I already mentioned that English matches the morphological complexity of Russian with its tense system, its syntactical complexity and its ability to form new words and idioms. In computer science, for example, how many technical terms have been borrowed into Russian from English, versus how many of them have been successfuly translated into Russian?

Russian borrows many words from English, but that's only because of practicality. Why invent a new word when it's better to take an existing one? Many (but not all) inventions come from Europe, and Russian uses European words to name these things, because it's easier. Russian language's ability to create new words is incredibly powerful: you can invent new words as you speak, and everybody will be perfectly able to understand you (those Bolsheviks used this a lot). There are native Russian analogues for words like "atmosphere", "television", etc, but they are not used because of eurocentrism.    English instead often has to borrow words from Greek/Latin, and also from French.

I consider my native language, German, as a quite difficult language since we have a lot of grammar rules... for example every person (I, you, he/she/it ...) has a different ending Ich gehe, du gehst, er/sie/es geht ...

Then it seems that English is actually easier than German. I said that English is hard for me, but that is not because of its difficulty. English is not very hard to learn. The real reason is that English is too strict and "formal", and it has some odd features such as articles (totally useless, as proven by Russian and many other languages) and its many tenses (useless too; Russian has only three tenses - and you don't really need more). And I cannot understand all of this, because my native language has nothing like that.

since this seems to be very interesting you may start a discussion thread about this topic

But this wasn't intended to be a linguistic discussion. I'm just explaining that, even though my English looks relatively good, it doesn't mean that I have no problems with it. And the problems themselves are stated above. That's all what I wanted to say, so let's speak no more of this matter.  

[Mumbling]

Here you go, feel free to send suggestions for a better title to me via PM. This part of the topic had now been split from Murmur's welcome topic

But this wasn't intended to be a linguistic discussion. I'm just explaining that, even though my English looks relatively good, it doesn't mean that I have no problems with it. And the problems themselves are stated above. That's all what I wanted to say, so let's speak no more of this matter. smile.gif

Unless you don't want it to be a discussion, in that case I will merge the topics together again

[MurMur]

I think there's nothing to discuss.    I just wanted to say that, from my Russian perspective, English feels too "robotic" and lifeless, and that's why I have difficulties with it. And I don't think that anyone or anything could change my opinion regarding English language. So there's no need to discuss it, and this topic should be closed instead. Again, this wasn't meant to offend anyone.

Oh, and there's no need to return those posts back to the Welcome center, because they seem really out of place there. Simply close this topic.  

[DarkHououmon]

Robotic and lifeless? Sorry but I must disagree. As an english speaker, I see the english language as full of life, just like any language. To say it's "robotic and lifeless", well I consider that a bit of an insult, personally. I don't judge other languages like that just because I am used to something else.

As for why so many tenses instead of just three, well that's just how things are in english. Do I know why? No. But keep in mind that, as already said, each language has its own complexities and rules that seem strange to an outsider. Just because you are a russian and don't understand why english does what it does doesn't mean that what english is doing is really all that strange. You don't understand it and think that some rules of english are unnecessary. Well I can say the very same about the russian language, but I won't, because it would be unfair of me to judge it just because I don't understand it.

There is no one right way to create a language. Every language follows its own rules, borrows rules from others, etc. Every language is going to be confusing to someone. No language is truly wrong or truly weird. They're all just different, all complex in their own way. The russian language is not and never will be superior to the english language, and the reverse is true, and this applies to all other languages. No language is superior.

[MurMur]

If you read Russian novels translated into English, you'll see that they usually don't have the same charm as the untranslated ones. On the other hand, English novels translated into Russian are often full of their original charm. I'm sorry if I offended you, I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. But there's another fact of life that we have to accept: that not everything in the world is perfect, and some things are always better, just because they are. Do you accept my apologies?

[Cyberlizard]

Since this regards other languages, not just Russian, I think I'll make a few comparisons regarding English and Japanese.

Japanese is often a very difficult language for English speakers, or Westerners in general to grasp.  Funny thing is most Japanese people would say the same about learning English.  The Japanese alphabets, in some respects, are much easier and are less arbitrary than the English alphabet.  For the most part, the characters in the phonetic alphabets Hiragana and Katakana are much more straight forward.  Almost every character sounds the same when forming a word or a sentence, and I stress almost.  Because there are three, maybe four exceptions.  One is the hiragana particle "は" which is often pronounced as "ha" but as a subject particle it is pronounced "wa."  The particle を or "wo" in romaji, which is a particle defining the use of an object is often pronounced as "o."  Regarding non-particle characters, there is "す" or "su."  When put at the end of a conjugation of a verb in polite form, or pronouncing the word "desu" at normal speed, the u is silent, so it would sound like "des".  し or "shi" is sometimes subject to a silent vowel.  When using a past tense conjugation with a verb such as "arimashita" the i is silent, so at normal speed it would sound like "arimashta".  Other then that, much of their phonetic alphabets are pretty straight-forward.

Kanji, or the 2000 or so Chinese characters most commonly used in Japanese are subject to many different forms of pronunciation. Often, the pronunciations change depending on whether the kanji is a stand-alone word, a compound word of multiple kanji, or if it's a transitive or intransitive verb.  Much of this differentiating is solid memorization so it can be head-explodingly difficult and often turns off most people learning Japanese by the time they reach intermediate level.

Another turn-off for most is 敬語, "Keigo" or honorific speech.  This is another part of the language with no secret work-around.  Pretty much the equivalent of repeatedly bashing your head against a brick wall.  You literally have to tear down everything you learned about the Japanese language to learn Keigo.  Basically, there is the honorific form when talking about a superior, and humble form when you are talking about yourself, in which you refer to yourself of a lower status.  It is confusing as hell, and if you want to get a job in Japan you better learn Keigo pretty darn quick.

How does Japanese compare to English?  Well, it's both really easy and really difficult in some regards.  English and Japanese have about the same amount of exceptions, though with English, the exceptions are more alphabetical.  While the exceptions in Japanese tend to be more grammatical.  Japanese has more straight-forward conjugations, but the amount of situation-specific particles that make up grammar and sentence structure can really make one's head spin.  

Another quick comparison to make is the basic sentence structure of both languages.  English: Subject-Verb-Object  Japanese: Subject-Object-Verb.

I would go in to how there are also gender specific words, but I don't have a lot of time.  I'm not gender as it is known in languages like German either.  I'm talking about literal gender specific words that only boys or girls can say.

Whew...  I could go on and on talking about the workings of the Japanese language and how it differs from most Western languages, but if I did that it would take about six months.  xD

[jansenov]

@MurMur:
Don't you think an American reading a Russian translation of Huckleberry Finn's or the Mad Hatter's unique way of talking would feel slightly underwhelmed as well?

To tell you the truth, an English text doesn't have the same emotional impact on me as a Croatian text. A Russian text has even less impact than an English one. A German text has less still. And Latin the least of all. In case you're wondering, in each case I mean a text where I know all the words and am familiar with the grammar displayed. Does this have anything to do with language complexity? No. Because complexity-wise (complexity in the sense as you understand it) it should go like this: English<German<Russian<Croatian<Latin.

What really is the culprit is my level of emotional investment in each language. The less effort and feelings I invest, the more emotionally distant the language feels. That's why a powerful word like "death" or marked word like "cunt" sounds like any other English word to you and me, but to a native it stands out in a text or speech.

You have good formal knowledge of English from what I can tell, MurMur. But have you made any emotional investment in the language so far, like writting peotry in the language, or regularly talking with a friend (or, even better, an enemy) in that language (I mean really talking, not writting to each other over the Internet)? I'm not asking you to make an emotional investment, but I do ask you to consider that a lack of such investment may be coloring your judgement.





Back to language complexity. Linguists differ between absolute complexity and relative complexity. Absolute complexity is the total length of the full description of all features of a languge. Relative complexity is the level of difficulty an unbiased L2 learner (meaning a learner whose L1, that is, whose native language is totally unrelated to the subject language and who was minimally exposed to relatives of the subject language) has in acquiring a language.

In terms of absolute complexity, there are languages that seem so complicated they blow your mind. For example English has only 2 cases (nominative and genitive), German has 4, Russian has 6, Croatian has 7, but Tabasaran, a language spoken in the North Caucasus, has no less than 53 cases. Another language from the same area, Chechen, has 6 genders (Russian 3), 44 vowels (Russian 10, including diphtongs), 8 cases and a ton of postpositions who have a function similar to that of a case. There are languages in the Americas, like Yupik or Navajo, where the verb can carry the meaning of an entire complex sentence in some European langauge.

According to your theory, these languages are the pinnacle of human achievement. To people speaking these languages English must look like a language of retards, and Russian a language of slightly smarter retards. Yet there are no Chechen or Yupik masters of words who would put Tolstoy or Shakespeare to shame. Just people who speak English and Russian greatly or slightly worse than natives. Children fully master these languages at the age of 4 or 5, just like they would do with a language with "simple" grammar like English or Russian. How can they do that? Does it perhaps mean that English and Russian are really not that simple?

[DarkHououmon]

I do agree that how emotional a language sounds depends largely how much time is invested into it. Any language could sound dull and robotic to an outsider, because that outsider is used to their own language. Even a language that may sound monotone, to a native speaker, that language is sparkling with life and emotion. This is because they grew up with said language, heard it all their life, and they put the most effort into learning it.

This is why I believe that no language is truly robotic and lifeless.  It all depends on how much time you spent with the language and how much effort you're willing to put into it. I think it's natural to feel the most emotion from the language you grew up with, to believe that the language you grew up with makes the most sense. You heard it all your life. That is what you are used to.

I don't believe any language is truly superior to any other. To me, they are all on equal level. They all have their own rules that people will find either hard or easy to learn. All have complexities that make it hard for an outsider to learn, but to a native comes perfectly naturally.

[Path Light]

Well, German and Japanese are my favorite languages.