A Russian Perspective on How Non-Russians View Ilya Rozanov: Ilya’s English proficiency
Hi! I’m a Russian covering Russian moments in the Heated Rivalry fandom. First, thank you for your sweet reaction to my previous posts on pet names in Russian and Ilya being touchy-feely! I didn’t expected my posts getting more than 10 likes in total, so the numbers feel strange now.
Today, I wanna cover Ilya’s English proficiency, and I’m gonna tell you what mistakes would be natural for him as a Russian native speaker. As usual, don’t be mean to fic writers in the fandom and don’t use my post for that purpose
The post is (heavily) linguistic loaded.
The books, the show, and lots of fics demonstrate how Ilya always omits a pronoun in sentences with a structure pronoun + verb + adjective/adverb (or noun)
My American friend told me “it’s a common English-speakers’ perception of foreign speech production,” and “whether it’s a baby talking, or a caveman, or a foreigner, an English-speaker would might be more tempted to omit the pronoun to mimic broken speech.”
That makes sense, as we have our own way to imitate broken Russian but I guess it also doesn’t represent real mistakes non-native speakers of Russian would make.
So, what’s a problem with is big?
Ilya would likely omit a verb in such sentences due to the influence of his mother tongue. Look at the examples:
It is good — Это хорошо (eto khorosho) — it good
I am busy — Я занят (ya zanyat, a man saying this) — I busy
You are pretty — Ты красивый (ty krasivyi: addressed to a man) — you pretty*
Did you notice the pattern? We don’t need any verbs in such sentences in the present tense.
However, if we move to the past or future tenses, the situation is different.
It was good — Eto bylo khorosho — it was good
I’ll be busy — Ya budu zanyat — I’ll be busy
So, we have the whole set here. However…
In the past or future tenses, it’s common to omit pronouns, especially when it’s clear from the context what we’re talking about (like, you asked me in Russian how I found the food, and I reply “was good,” cause we both know we’re talking about the food).
How could you implement it to you story, if you’re a fic writer?
It would be more natural if you turn “is big” to “it big,” and let Ilya omit pronouns in such sentences only in the past or future tenses. Or, you still keep “is big” but don’t overuse it. Like, he can say one sentence with no mistakes, then he would omit the verb and say “it big,” then “is big” would suddenly appear.
Also, keep in mind that sentences like “it is big” are not the most complicated thing for foreigners. Yeah, Ilya is a hockey player, not a professor of linguistics, but he can figure out what is wrong.
Don’t forget about the timeline either. A rookie, who was just drafted and didn’t pay attention to the English classes, can make lots of mistakes. But if your Ilya has been living in the U.S. or Canada for 5 or more years, then he would unlikely make mistakes in simple sentences.
Well, this is simple. The Russian language has zero articles. We don’t even have any analogues for them. Everybody makes mistakes regardless of their proficiency, I think only Russian-English bilinguals, born and raised in a English-speaking country, would be safe.
If your Ilya is a rookie or has been living in the U.S. or Canada less than 2-3 years, then the recipe is simple.
You write his lines in English and use zero articles. He has other things to do instead of thinking about articles.
If he has been around for a while, then you can start introducing articles in fixed expressions: a lot of, once upon a while, the biggest, the greatest (superlatives) and so on. We usually learn fixed expressions or collocations as a whole phrase. Also, you can mix it in his lines. In one sentence, he uses articles correctly but then immediately makes a mistake.
If Ilya has been living in the U.S. or Canada for 15-20 years, you can reduce the mistakes with articles and keep only a few. However, you can 100% keep mistakes with geographical or proper nouns (it’s a nightmare).
Some people may argue and say they know a Russian-speaking person who is still a beginner in terms of language proficiency even after 30 years of living in a different country. Yeah, that happens when people don’t integrate and stay in the familiar environment: they work for a Russian-speaking boss and have Russian-speaking colleagues, consume content in Russian and talk to Russian-speaking people only. If you stay true to the canon and don’t change Ilya’s profession, then he would spend most of his time using English. Even if his team has other Russian players or Russian-speaking staff, everything would be in English. Also, majority of hockey guys are still native English speakers. Finally, Shane Hollander. Dating a native speaker does miracles to your language proficiency :)
Russian has only three tenses: past, present, future. All nuances within the tenses are shown with time markers, (usually) not with grammar. Examples:
I do it every day — Я делаю это каждый день (Ya delayu eto kazhdyi den’)
I am doing it right now — Я делаю это прямо сейчас (Ya delayu eto pryamo seichas)
I just have done it — Я сделал это только что (Ya sdelal eto tol’ko chto)
I did it yesterday — Я сделал это вчера (Ya sdelal eto vchera)
You’ve probably noticed that verbs didn’t change in the examples like they did in English (and that’s why the tenses are the second most hated thing in English for Russians after articles).
Just keep all the simples: present simple, past simple and future simple. For example:
“I listen to Russian rap when I work out.”
“I listen to music right now. So, Marly, shut up and fuck off.”
He wouldn’t intuitively use “I’m listening to music” in the second sentence.
However, don’t forget the timeline and the main rule: the more years in the U.S. or Canada, the less mistakes.
4. I don’t, you don’t, he don’t, we all don’t
Do/does can be a tricky thing for Ilya, and he can sometimes say something like “he don’t know what to do,” “he do it every day,” or “they doesn’t look nice”.
5. Word order
The word order in Russian is way more flexible than in English, so you can play with words a bit and put them in unpredictable places. Also, look at the questions.
You did this — Ты сделал это (Ty sdelal eto)
Did you do this? — Ты сделал это? (Ty sdelal eto?)
See, nothing happens when we ask questions in Russian, we only change the intonation. A nice touch to your story, when Ilya keeps the same word order when asking questions (but not every single time).
You say in on Instagram, we say in Instagram.
You’re waiting for a bus, we’re just waiting bus.
You depend on something, we depend from something.
This is just FYI though, such mistakes are really difficult to imitate accurately, if you’re not bilingual Russian-English speaker.
7. Accent, intonation, tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon
Let’s move from grammar to other things.
The accent doesn’t disappear completely but softens over time (unless a person stays in the Russian-speaking environment). So, if your Ilya has been living abroad for many years, don’t emphasize his “thick accent” in every paragraph. He obviously has it but the accent has transformed over the years.
Moreover, at some point Ilya can develop the accent in his first language, using English intonations when speaking Russian. It doesn’t happen to everyone though. Alexander Ovechkin still speaks clear Russian, not really influenced by English. Andrei Svechnikov from Carolina Hurricanes speaks Russian like a guy who moved to the U.S. as a teenager (which is actually what he did), his intonation and speech manners now combine both Russian and English elements (here he is btw).
Ilya would definitely forget some words in Russian and substitute them with English words (are you still with me or did you get distracted by something else?). It could be a fun and really accurate scene, when he and Svetlana are both struggling with it and try to help each other recall words in Russian. Well, if you’re bilingual and live in a different language environment, you’ll get it. It happens to all of us.
Or, Alexei could call him and notice it and then blame Ilya for forgetting his language, his family, his country and so on.
Yeah, Connor did an amazing job with the accent..
*I specified in the examples they were about men. In Russian, word forms depend on a grammatical gender or whether we talk about men or women.
