Peculiarities of the Russian Language

Copperfox

Well-known member
Now that Vlad Putin's Russia is throwing its weight around more, it's time for some U.S. residents to notice that Spanish is NOT the only European-rooted language that might be of importance. As I am trained in Russian, I can offer some illustrations of the Russian language's intriguing special features (really found in multiple Slavic tongues, but I haven't learned Ukrainian, Polish or Bulgarian).

In all foreign-language study, it is useful to _avoid_ mental shortcuts with definitions, shortcuts which actually _hinder_ understanding. For instance, when high-school Spanish teachers introduce the phrase "me gusta such-and-such," they almost always cheat and _say_ that this means "I like such-and-such." But what it strictly means is "Such-and-such IS PLEASING TO ME."

As for the complexities of Russian, let me begin by just hinting at something that would take many classroom sessions to explain sufficiently. The Russians do something called "declining nouns;" this is also done in Latin, which may explain why the Roman Empire finally fell. To decline a noun means to change its form according to the grammatical role it is playing in a sentence.

We have a _little_ bit of declension in English, just with pronouns. When we say, "I like him, but he doesn't like me," the pronouns are declined according to which is the subject in its clause and which is the object. But in Russian, they decline the nouns, and even the accompanying adjectives.

I will not yet write any actual Russian words, because I am now more concerned to clarify the _concept_ of declension. So we'll pretend that _English_ contains declensions like those in Russian. Let's leave a noun or name unchanged if it is the _subject_ of the sentence, but put the suffix "-HA" at the end of it if it is an object _receiving_ action, use the suffix "-UM" if the thing referred to is the MEANS OF doing something, or use the suffix "-KO" if something belongs to or comes out of something else. If we "decline" in this way, then see how sentences are affected:


"Bill broke the window with a hammer" becomes "Bill broke the window-HA hammer-UM." (Note that the word "with" drops out of the declined version, because the declensional suffix _carries_ the meaning that we would express by the "with." In the other examples, you will see the word "of" likewise becoming unnecessary.)

"A piece of glass hit Bill, and we had to pull it out of his face" becomes "A piece glass-KO hit Bill-HA, and we had to pull it-HA out his face-KO."

"When Bill came out of the hospital, we doused him with buckets of champagne" becomes "When Bill came out the hospital-KO, we doused him-HA buckets-UM champagne-KO."
 
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Glad to oblige, Ephinie.

Like the Romance languages, Russian has different conjugations for the different grammatical "persons," and for singular/intimate versus plural/formal. As an added complication, in past tense only, any singular verb conjugation is also affected by the GENDER of the person (or even arbitrarily-gendered inanimate object) DOING the action.

Here's an example right out of a thrilling courtroom drama. Someone has murdered Boris Badenov! Note that, in accordance with what I hinted at above in my made-up declensions of English, the victim's name is declined because he was the recipient of the (illegal) action. There are two suspects in the crime, a man and a woman: Igor and Svetlana. The following, then, are alternative statements about who killed Boris:

IGOR UBIL BORISA BADENOVA.

SVETLANA UBILA BORISA BADENOVA.

But then, since the old Soviet habit of punishing everybody for everything or even for nothing is resurging under Putin, the prosecutor receives orders from the Kremlin to say that Igor and Svetlana killed Boris together. The word for together is V'MESTYE, literally meaning "in the same place." Thus the prosecutor, with Soviet-style fake moral solemnity, declares:

IGOR I SVETLANA VMESTYE UBILI BORISA BADENOVA!!
 
The Russians do something called "declining nouns;" this is also done in Latin, which may explain why the Roman Empire finally fell.

lol Hey Copperfox, no need to be mean! Greek and German have those as well, and they still live!

As an added complication, in past tense only, any singular verb conjugation is also affected by the GENDER of the person (or even arbitrarily-gendered inanimate object) DOING the action.

I never thought this to be any complication at all, until I found out that Spanish and French seem to have the bad habit of rendering things the exact oposite gender we do... :rolleyes:

I'm loving your lessons, Copperfox, go on!
 
Then let's look at phonics. There are some letters in the Russian alphabet which are not at all Latin-rooted, and each of which represents a sound that we would use MORE THAN one letter to represent.


ч

--has the sound "CH" as in "chair."


ш

--has the sound "SH" as in "shoot."


щ

--is a sort of heavier version of the previous, and gets transliterated in our alphabet as "SHCH."


ю

--sounds just like our word "YOU."


And then there are letters which _look_ like our letters, but _don't_ have the same sound. For instance, the Russian letter making the _sound_ of "R" _looks_ like our "P." And the Russian letter _looking_ like our "X" makes the _sound_ of a guttural "KH," as in German "Achtung!"
 
ш

--has the sound "SH" as in "shoot."

Or my Portuguese X :)

For instance, the Russian letter making the _sound_ of "R" _looks_ like our "P."

Any relation with the Greek ρ (rho)?

And the Russian letter _looking_ like our "X" makes the _sound_ of a guttural "KH," as in German "Achtung!"

Hum, could you give us another example, Copperfox? My knowledge of German is (apart from my previous quote) zero.
 
A "guttural" sound is like clearing your throat.

And yes, the Russian version of "R" is derived from Greek "rho."

While I'm posting again, here are some letters which _are_ the same in Russian as in English:

K M O T
 
If it helps, think of the guttural "KH" being formed at a place a little higher up in the throat than a guttural "R" would be.

But to make this post count for more, let me mention: COGNATES! This means words which are the same in one language as in another--either because of parallel development from a shared root-language, or because of lateral borrowing from one language to another.

Here are some Russian words which mean just what they look like (note that I am writing them transliterated in OUR alphabet):

AVTOMOBIL

BANK (in the financial sense; only, the A has an "AH" sound, not like English short A)

EHLEMENT

KOSMOS

RADIO (again, the A having an "AH" sound)

SIGARETA

TSEMENT
 
>> Do you think you could show us the whole Russian alphabet in its
>> proper order with the sounds that each letter makes?


I was _afraid_ someone was going to request that! It's a real chore coaxing Russian alphabet out of my computer; I really am worn down by certain stresses I've had to face today which are far from resolved; and I'm certain there are sites you can look up that show the whole Russian alphabet. But what I will do is give you all two helpful clues which most alphabet breakdowns _won't_ bother to give you.


1) First, about this letter: г

It carries the sound of our hard "G." But what they won't tell you in a simplistic phonetics intro is that, in certain uses, it assumes instead the sound of our "V." Every time this letter becomes a "V" sound, you will see it being followed by an "O"--but there are also still times when it is followed by an "O" and retains the "G" sound! One example of a word where the Russian G acts like a V is the word "SEGODNYA," meaning "today." (Note further that the ending of this word is NOT "nigh-ah," but one undivided syllable "NYAH.")


2) Now for a deceptively familiar-looking letter: E

In Russian as in English, most vowels have "long" and "short" sounds. The "long" sound for this vowel is "YEH," while the "short" sound is like our _long_ "E." For a further complication, their "E" sometimes is seen with two dots on top of it, in which case it is pronounced "YO." But the real kicker is that, because all Russian speakers are expected to know ahead of time when it's YEH and when it's YO, publishers of Russian books and magazines usually _omit_ the dots when they're supposed to be there!


Another time--when, God willing, my current worries are healed--I'll tell you all about "the infamous sixty-one."
 
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I did pick up fragments of it in earlier times before my Naval service--for instance, from Khristina, the Ukrainian cleaning lady who used to come to my family's house each week.

This turns my thoughts to the subject of names. All or most Russian first names, like many Western names, have their informal variants. The often-heard "Natasha," for instance, is really the informal version of "Natalya." The nickname for Ivan is Vanya; for Anastasiya, Nastya (NOT pronounced at all like the English word "nasty"); for Pavel, Pasha; for Mariya, Masha; for Galina, Galya; and so on.
 
You know, I'm not sure! "Joseph" in Russian is "Yosif"--as with many Biblical names, the Russian version is closer to the Hebrew than the English version is--but I never even thought of learning its informal variant.

Now, excuse me, but I have to go to bed before I give myself an INFARKT--the Russian word for heart attack.
 
You know, I'm not sure! "Joseph" in Russian is "Yosif"--as with many Biblical names, the Russian version is closer to the Hebrew than the English version is--but I never even thought of learning its informal variant.
.

I`m not sure what version is closer to Hebrew. In hebrew, the name sounds "Йосэф". While in russian it is "Иосиф", with long I. So russian changes the vowels, and english the consonants.
 
I considered it a big point that English puts the "JUH" sound, absent from Hebrew, at the start of the name.

Also, when I transliterated that cognate word as "EHLEMENT," it was because in one translit system they use "EH" to stand for the "EH OBOROTNOYE" backwards E, as distinct from frontwards E pronounced "YEH." No guttural was intended by the H in my "EHLEMENT."


Now for another look at structuring thoughts. In English, we tend to put the subect of a sentence at or near the beginning, as in this example:

"Bob Riley found the watch Teresa had lost under the lilac bush in the backyard this afternoon."

Many Russian sentences position their subject at or near the end, producing an effect somewhat like this:

"The one who this afternoon found under the lilac bush in the backyard the watch Teresa lost was Bob Riley."

This makes it still more important to pay attention to noun declensions. In the actual Russian sentence I have just vaguely approximated in English, you would see that Bob's name was declined in the manner of the _subject_ of the sentence (what's called "nominative case"). Without recognizing declensions, you could be confused for a moment about who or what _is_ the subject of the sentence.
 
To those who actually have in mind to study Russian seriously for the first time, let me explain myself a bit further. I _know_ I'm jumping around from one component of the language to another. I don't _expect_ you, from what I'm doing, to carry away a complete command of Russian grammar which will be right on the surface of your awareness, ready to be called upon at will. What I'm hoping to achieve is sort of to _program_ your minds at least to be alert for the _existence_ of the numerous complications of Russian, so they don't completely throw you when you come to study them in an organized way. Call this a "Pre-Russian" course.

Now, therefore, let me fulfill my word that I would tell you about "the infamous sixty-one."

It is a Russian vowel that looks like this: ы --resembling the numeral 61. It is also known as "Yery."

This is possibly the hardest of all Russian letters for Americans to pronounce. It sometimes sounds like the English word "we;" sometimes like just an English long E; and sometimes like a French "EU" as in "peut." Or somewhere between them. Normally, this vowel is never the _first_ letter in any Russian word; but it is often found in word _endings,_ particularly the endings of many plural nouns and male-singular adjectives. Transliteration usually represents this vowel with a Y.
 
Since I _have_ now explained "the infamous sixty-one," let me give one example of a word that actually contains it. This particular word comes with a neat history lesson.

When Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 had collapsed, a great many French soldiers were captured alive. Because the French had not been so vicious in conquest as the Nazis would later be, the Russians did not hate them nearly so much as they were later to hate the Nazis. On a number of occasions, Russian peasants who had any food they could spare actually gave some to hungry captured Frenchmen who were being marched along under guard. The Russian soldiers would tell the generous peasants to hurry up about this, using a single word which is Russian for the adverb "quickly." This word, written in the actual Russian Cyrillic alphabet, is:

Быстро

--which, you will notice, has the "sixty-one" vowel as its second letter. This is actually one of those cases where this elusive Russian vowel can be pronounced fairly easily, because it is coming after a vocalized consonant. The word is pronounced, approximately, "BWIST-ruh." (Russian letter O fades into either "ah" or "uh" as its "short" sound.)

Numerous Frenchmen thus became familiar with "bwistro" as a word associated with eating, but having to eat in a hurry. Some enterprising gentleman among them, upon being released and allowed to return to France, opened a restaurant or cafe which would serve people quickly...and that, like a Paul Harvey "Rest of the Story" anecdote, is how French "BISTROS" were born. As far as I know, although many French words have migrated into the Russian language, "bwistro" is the only Russian word to have been adopted into the French language.
 
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It is interesting no note that Russian is very similar to the Ancienth Bulgarian language of medieval times. Also, their alphabette, the Cyrillic, was first used in the Bulgarian Empire centuries before Russians accept it or Orthodox Christianity.
Because of these things, and because the Russian Empire made us free from the Ottoman rule, our two countries share many thing and generally Bulgarians like Russian country and Russian language.
It is, as Ancienth Bulgarian, too difficult to me, however and I never mastered it, although I was interested when I was a small pupil.
 
Saints Kirill and Methodius, evangelizers of Russia, were themselves Bulgarian, going by what I've read. They brought Russia not only faith in Jesus Christ to supplant false gods like Yarilo and Perun, but also brought literacy.
 
It is true that the Holy Brothers are considered Bulgarian. Even if they are from the Byzantine empire, as other historians claim, what they did benefited Bulgaria and the Slavic people and not the Byzantine Empire.
 
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