A Russian native speaker’s perspective on the Russian language
For those of you learning Russian or just curious about it :)
punctuation is even worse: you have to know 76487658 rules and conduct a 10-step linguistic analysis to put proper punctuation marks in a more or less complex sentence
we constantly mix up similar-looking letters in English and Russian on the keyboard
everyone’s New Year resolution is to brush up their English
no one actually says ‘zdrav-stvuj-teh’ (здравствуйте, hello). It’s usually ‘zdras-tu-te’, ‘zdras-te’ (the most common variant), or even ‘dras-te’ (there is a russian meme ‘дратути’ (dra-tu-tee) mocking a way of shortening the word)
in fast speech it’s normal to drop like 10-20% of sounds
there are quite a few widely used words an expressions originated from criminal argot, presumably left over after mass imprisonment under Stalin
the common way to address a stranger is мужчина, женщина or девушка (literally ‘man, woman, [young] girl’). Everyone finds it weird and inconvenient, but can’t to come up with smth else
Russian swear words sound way ruder than English ones (still almost everyone swears)
quite a lot of English words don’t have well-sounding alternatives in Russian (words like self-consciousness, counterintuitive, a rule of thumb will sound strange translated literally)
…but good luck translating 50 shades of meaning of Russian diminutives (кошка, кошечка, киса, кисонька, кисуля, кисулечка vs cat or kitty)
don’t ask me how Russian works without articles and link verbs, it’s probably just black magic
the Russian language is amazing. I’m fucking blessed to speak it as a first language.
areudirty
theartofmadeline
