whoever first pointed out that ilya americanises his accent around other people but not around shane i owe you my fucking life
also the idea of like when its just the two of them ilya can like just slip back into the more comfortable rudimentary accent he had at the start of their relationship :â) and that in itself being nostalgic for shane :â)
this would also be linguistically accurate!
i speak english the most in day to day life and also think in english sometimes. my accent in english is americanized, pretty indistinguishable from a native (excluding sets of certain phonemes like /rl/) .
but if iâm really tired or spending time just around my wife (with whom i speak english), i sometimes switch to what i call âlazy englishâ.
what this usually consists of is i allow myself to speak english with the russian /r/ phoneme that is more natural for me, i drop articles, replace continuous and future tense with simple present, use the ââŚ.,yes?â construct, avoid contractions (bc the verb âto beâ is dropped/implied in russian, so contractions arenât always natural)
for example, when iâm in âlazy englishâ mode, this is how my speech varies:
âiâm making the bedâ = âi make bedâ.
âyouâll help me later, right?â = âyou help me later, yes?â (for this one, in russian, the same phrasal construct ends with the word âyesâ instead of the word ârightâ)
âcan you give me a tissue?â = can you give me tissue?â
âwhereâs the pen? do you have it?â = âwhere is pen? you have?â
if you pay attention, youâll notice that a lot of these patterns also occur in ilyaâs speech, especially earlier on. thatâs why iâm particularly impressed with the writing of his dialogue â it doesnât come across as stereotyping/caricatural because the way he speaks english is consistent with russian linguistic/grammatical rules. this is often how russian-speaking people speak english when it is their second language and theyâre still learning.
i like to imagine ilya reverting to âlazy englishâ or speaking in a similar manner to me around shane. it is linguistically consistent and a sign of comfort/deep familiarity with the person.
The next layer of linguistic accuracy would be for Shane to start occasionally modulating down into a similar "lazy english" that's reflective of Ilya's style. I forget the technical term for this, but it's a legit thing in linguistics -- if there's someone you love/admire/respect and you spend a lot of time with them, you unconsciously start picking up and mirroring a couple aspects of their idiolect (like a dialect but rather than being spoken by a group, it is a single person's unique linguistic fingerprint), whether that's gestures, vocabulary, or speech patterns.
So when Ilya says something like, "Where is pen? You have?" then over time Shane's response might naturally shift towards, "Yes, I have."
he already does this!!!
you still want?
i still want
!!!!!!
