Language Subtleties
Dusty at Goodbye Baby Lenin has been preparing for his year in Siberia, and in doing so has complied a list of random useful vocab. while I am in no way a linguist and have had very little formal instruction in the language, I’d like to add a few thoughts from my three years on the ground. There was vocab on there that was new to me, and some of the others have language subtleties. Native speakers, feel free to chime in.
сотрудник - employee
коллега - co-worker
I have always understood сотрудник as coworker, and коллега as someone who works in the same field. Two engineers, for example, would be colleagues, even if they didn’t work together.
я благoдарен тебе за помощь – I’m grateful to you for the help
я очень рад с вами познакомиться – I’m very glad to meet you
вы могли бы это повторить? - Could you repeat that?
мне без разницы – to me there isn’t a difference
These seem a bit too formal to me, I would be very surprised if I heard a young person use them. Russians don’t use polite words nearly as often as we do in English, so you don’t hear lots of “pleases” and “thank yous.” Oddly enough, they also don’t curse as much as we do. In general, though, the communicative norms are much more brusque and straightforward. My alternatives:
спасибо за помощь - Thanks for the help
приятно познакомиться - Nice to meet you
Повторите, пожалуйста - Please repeat
You could also just say “что” (what) or my favorite “чё” (huh).
Мне все равно - It’s all the same to me
Мне по фигу - I don’t care (not quite vulgar, but close. Use this with your peers, not with professors, etc.)
Я изучал два предмета, русский язык и компьютерную технику
I studied two subjects - Russian and computer scienceкакой ваш родной язык? – what is your native language?
The first one really feels like a forced translation from English, not just the words, but the thought process, “I double-majored in ….” The Russian education system is structured in a fundamentally different way than ours, and this is reflected in their speech. Russians wouldn’t ask, “What did you study in school,” like Americans would. Instead, they ask, “What did you study to become?” (Ты на кого учился?) The answer would be something like “a linguist,” “an economist,” or “a computer programmer.” (На филолога, на экономиста, на програмиста) My standard answer, while technically incorrect, is “I studied to become a political scientist” (на политолога), because it’s much easier to say in Russian than “I studied at the faculty of international relations” (Я учился на факультете международных отношений).
In Russian, they have a strange grammatical construct to indicate possession. In English we ask, “What is your native language?” And the Russian translation given corresponds exactly to those words. While this is acceptable, it just doesn’t sound right. I would instead say “Какой у вас родной язык?” Which translates woodenly to “Which native language is around you?” This construct of “around you” is used often instead of the direct replacement words твой, ваш, их (you can say ихний if you really want to sound like a hick :)).
доход - income
зарабаток - wages
I’ve never heard зарабаток, only зарплата. A very common question is “Какой у вас средний доход,” “What’s the average income where you’re from?”
Возбужденный - excited
Perhaps it says something about the people I hang out with, but I’ve only heard this used in a sexual context.
встаньте - stand up!
If you really want to convey that exclamation mark, say встать!
по-видимому - аpparently
I’ve never heard this, maybe because it’s too formal for dorm life. I would say “кажется.”
впечатление о чём - impressions ABOUT something
Whenever you come back from a trip or see a sight, Russians will ask “Какие впечатления.” It translates directly as “what were your impressions,” but an American would more naturally say “What’d you think?”
я был шокированный - I was shocked
I wouldn’t use shocked as an adjective, I always heard people say “Я был в шоке,” (I was in shock). Another option is “Я удивилися,” or “я был удивлен” (I was surprised)
Виноватый - guilty
There’s a great song by Фабрика called “Не виноватая я,” which mentions all the best (rich) boyfriends (sponsors) to have, including an oligarch, an oilman, and an American.
рад тому, что - glad about the fact that…
My passport is in a cover that says “Russian Federation” and has the double-headed eagle embossed on it. I was stopped by the police once, and wanted to warn him that there was an American passport in there. I handed it over and said “I’m American.” He curtly responded “Я рад за вас” (I’m happy for you). I figured that from now on it was better to just keep my mouth shut and let them figure it out themselves.
Thanks for this. I’m studying the language but have little to no interaction with native speakers. I haven’t been over to Russia yet but plan to go next summer. Thanks for the little bit of cool phrases.
Comment by yoda31419 — June 13, 2007 @ 7:15 pm
For subtitles, you want to go with fansubs, if at all possible. Official subtitles inevitably suck, in any language. Ok, most fansubs suck too, but you can usually find the good ones.
A few notes:
* I’d translate “mne bez raznitzy” as “I don’t care” or “whatever”. “Mne po figu” is a more vulgar expression, I’d almost translate it as “f*ck that”, depending on context.
* “Kakoi u vas rodnoi yazyk” does not literally mean, “which native language is around you”; it means “what kind of native language do you possess”, or, more loosely, “which native language are you composed of”. F.ex., “kakaya u vas mashina ?” means, “what kind of car do you have”, not “which car is around you”.
* It’s “zarobotOk”, not “zarabAtok”. It literally means, “thing given to you for working”.
* “vstat’ !” is what KGB officers yell, it’s not something you’d hear in a normal conversation. It’s kind of like when the American SWAT teams yell, “on the GROUND ! NOW !” Note how both forms of address dehumanize the listener: “vstat’ ” in general, or “on the ground” in general, not “you, stand up”.
* “ya byl v shoke” — absolutely right, whoever translated it as “ya byl shokirovanniy” doesn’t speak any language well, apparently.
And yes, be glad, be very glad that you have an American passport, although “ya rad za vas” could also be translated as, “good for you”.
Comment by Bugmaster — June 13, 2007 @ 8:56 pm
Owen,
You communicate with very limited and uneducated people. It is the polluted youth lexicon. Simply ask the friends how many words they know to say , describe “It’s a Horse” КОНЬ, КОБЫЛА, ЛОШАДЬ and so on including personages from the literature. I know about 30 words to name horse a horse and the interlocutor understand me what I mean. (it’s not about your friends who are spamming my phone).
When american nigga asks me: “Woz up m-a-a-an?” than I do not make any conclusions on american (english) language.
Comment by Pietari — June 13, 2007 @ 10:27 pm
Uh… No. These words mean “to wake up”, or “to waken” if you’re feeling formal. The word for “oversleep” is “prospat’”, meaning, literally, “sleep through (something)”. You can say, “ya prospal” (I overslept), or “ya prospal ekzamen” (I slept straight through my test).
There’s also a word “prospat’sya”, meaning, “to have slept until you’re sober again”. As Terry Pratchett would say, “you need a special kind of history in order to get all that into one word”.
Comment by Bugmaster — June 13, 2007 @ 11:55 pm
@yoda31419:
I’d take Dusty’s (not Owen’s) vocab with a big grain of salt. I skimmed it, and there are tons of inaccuracies there…
Comment by Bugmaster — June 14, 2007 @ 2:07 am
Bug,
I would use “mne naplevat” for “screw that.” I should have emphasized that “po figu” is slightly rejectionist in tone, ie. used when someone proposes something and you don’t want to do it. Though I’ve also heard it used as “I don’t care,” in the sense of choosing between two choices. “Do you want the round or square ramen noodles?” “Mne po figu.”
I disagree about “u vas.” You’re translating it contextually, the concept is that of possession, but “u” is a preposition signifying spacial proximity. For the life of me, I still can’t tell the difference between “около” and “у,” except that “У” means possessive when used with a person. For example, in these constructions “u” refers to spacial proximity: “Ты где сейчас?” “Я у магазина.” Or when in a marshrutka, “Остановите, пожалуйста, у кинотеатра.” I agree that the simplest way is to just think that “ваша” and “у вас” mean the same thing, for all intents and purposes, they do. I just wanted to point out that Russians often use “u vas” when an English speaker would be inclined to simply use “vasha.”
There are all sorts of things that I’ve used in everyday conversations
Again, I wanted to point out that one can use the infinitive of a verb to really make a sharp command, thus earning the exclamation mark. Another example, “Molchat’!” I still don’t quite understand the difference, however, between making commands from the perfective and imperfective. What is the difference between “vstavai,” and “vstan?”
Yes, it could be translated as “good for you,” as long as the sarcasm in his voice was carried over in translation. There are little inaccuracies in his vocab list, but nothing serious. They’re all the kind of thing that will get smoothed out in the course of normal conversation. I’ve learned plenty of things wrong only to get them corrected later. The most important thing is learning them in the beginning, even if not completely correctly. I wanted to highlight a few of them that I felt could benefit from my experience.
Comment by Owen — June 14, 2007 @ 11:18 am
OWEN,
Всё очень серьёзно.
Меня этот спам уже заебал. Значит делать будем так:
1. Твои друзья-любовники опять активизировались и поставили мой телефон на автоматический дозвон. SIM-ку я выкидывать не собираюсь и завтра я получу всю распечатку и расшифровку звонков и sms.
2. Скинь мне в личку свои контактные данные. Тебе лучше это сделать и пойти со мной в ментовку вдвоём, т.к. в противном случае я укажу в заявлении, что ты организатор всего этого безобразия. Я бы не хотел, чтобы тебя объявили в Федеральный розыск, а потом бы ещё и судили здесь. Знаешь, что такое русская тюряга? А ещё и денег с тебя поимею.
У меня есть твоя фотография и догодайся за сколько времени менты разыщут ту квартиру в доме «на курьих ножках» возле Приморской из которой ты фотографировал реку Смоленку и Дом «ЦФТ» на Октябрьской набережной? Я думаю за час найдут хозяина, а ещё через час выйдут и на тебя.
Поверь, это всё в твоих интересах. Эти твои друзья любовники , возможно, твои враги и тебе самому решать выгораживать их или сдать метам.
3. Скорее всего менты передадут дело в ФСБ (я консультировался с юристом), т.к. ты иностранный гражданин. Далее это дело техники и этих уродов вычислят очень быстро в какой-бы стране они не были.
Пока нужно только обращение в милицию. Тебе лучше пойти со мной.
Comment by Pietari — June 14, 2007 @ 5:15 pm
Owen,
Thanks for the link and your feedback on the vocab I listed. To everyone else, go to hell. Just kidding…
The vocab I listed probably does contain some errors, so feedback is appreciated.
Dusty
Comment by Dusty — June 14, 2007 @ 9:49 pm
@Owen:
I think that “U” is just an overloaded particle in Russian language, sort of like the Japanese “ni”, but not as bad. It is quite often used to indicate possession, especially combined with “yest’” or “n’et”, f.ex.: “U vas yest’ ruchka ?” — “Do you have a pen ?” You can’t convert that sentence to say “vasha”, except maybe as “gde vasha ruchka ?”, which changes the meaning. But, obviously, it can also indicate proximity.
I’m not sure how to define “vstavai” vs. “vstan’” formally. “Vstavai” means, “commence the process of standing up”; “vstan’” means, “stand up”. “Vstavai” is more mild than “vstan’”; “vstan’” is pretty much an order, whereas “vstavai” could be used as a permission; i.e., “Mozhno vstat’ ? — Vstavai”.
@Dusty:
Also,
Well, I think the difference between “oversleep” and “wake up” is fairly significant
* “Я посмотрю один фильм на неделья” is not Russian. You could probably say, “Ya smotryu po fil’mu v nedel’u”.
* “otospat’sa”: I’d translate this as “sleep in”, or “get enough sleep”… It’s somewhere between “vyspat’sa” and “prospat’sa”, not sure what a good translation is
* “Nebo pasmurnoye” literally means “overcast sky”, though “dull sky” is much more poetic
* “syraya pogoda” means “damp weather”, i.e. drizzling rain. You were thinking of “sEraya pogoda”, which, again, is more poetic.
* “popularnost’” is one word, meaning “popularity”; “popularnost’yu” is just a declination
* “mnogie” means “many”, not “most”, but only when indicating a fraction of something. “mnogo” means “many” when indicating absolute quantities.
Other than that, and what Owen and I mentioned previously, your vocab is actually pretty good, so I’d like to get a ticket out of Hell, now
Comment by Bugmaster — June 14, 2007 @ 10:13 pm
Дорогой, уважаемый мною Оwen!!!
Вы были так любезны, что написали данную статью о «красоте» русского языка в
. У меня нет слов, что бы выразить Вам свою признательность за это, покорно Вас благодарю. Я испытываю самые высокие чувства к Вашему родному языку, совсем не считаю его языком деловых людей, как это делают многие. Для меня это один из самых прекраснейших языков, он как музыка, если англоязычный человек имеет красивое произношение 
. Спасибо Вам за то, что Вы говорите именно по-английски, хотя Ваш русский мне нравится не меньше 
.
Но вернемся к интересующей меня и Вас теме - восприятия русского языка, если Вы не против. Я так полагаю, что когда Вы изучали это чудесное явление, Вы не задумывались, что русский язык не так примитивен, как Вам приходится слышать, иначе он не был бы так сложен в изучении. Может на Ваш слух, он не очень приятен, но на самом деле он духовно богат, думаю, что при помощи нашего языка можно выразить самые тонкие чувства и желания, у нас для этого хватит слов. И что интересно, Вы можете одинаково успешно общаться как на современном, так и на очень красивом, сложном и возможно устаревшем языке и это будет выглядеть нормально. Хотя для меня , наверное, нет понятия «современный русский язык», скорее просто новые слова. То, что мы не употребляем так часто слова благодарности и не улыбаемся так же много как вы, не говорит о том, что мы менее уважительны
. Когда то меня учили, что англоязычные люди регулярно вставляют «Спасибо!» и улыбаются, даже если им не очень хорошо и они не испытывают чувство благодарности. Но это уже похоже на простую привычку, так что и вы и мы не сильно отличаемся ))). (а еще у нас часто нет солнца, и это тоже влияет на улыбки людей).
Приятного дня, Owen, и плодотворной учебы на поприще лингвистики!!!
(Надеюсь ты все понял ))))
Comment by Olesya — June 15, 2007 @ 11:46 am
Personally, I find that there’s as much (if not more !) beauty in day-to-day, conversational speech, as in very formal, “literary” speech. The formal speech has an occasional tendency to sound verbose and forced, whereas common speech is often laconic and expressive.
One thing I would like to see, though, is take off those hideous graphical smileys… Ugh. I should write a Greasemonkey script to convert them back to text.
Comment by Bugmaster — June 15, 2007 @ 12:53 pm
Beautifully put, Olesya. I always had the sense that the Russian language is in many ways more subtle than English, and that some Russian social customs (i.e. not enthusiastically thanking, smiling, or saying life is great constantly) might somehow be related to that subtlety. Of course that’s probably just romanticism.
I came away from Russian with most of the same impressions that you did about formality/informality, Owen. Of course, I had had four years of drilling by the dear Marina Borisovna before that, during which she made it clear that none of us were to disgrace her by ever sounding like rude, uneducated boors. This meant using lots of long, complicated constructions with liberal sprinklings of subjunctives, and never, EVER saying ‘cho’. Once during my first trip to Russian she caught some of us listening to a Leningrad cd. We got a stern half-hour lecture about the beauty of the Russian language and the horrible state of a world which would allow such debasement of the native tongue of Tolstoy. Granted, it sounded a lot like my own grandmother’s impressions of hip-hop, but I did at least walk away with the goal to never be one of “those” foreigners. As a non-native speaker you always have to tread that fine line between using enough so-called slang to sound normal, but not so much that you come off like a foul-mouthed idiot… Never an easy task, especially when you’re learning most of what you say from the very people you could offend by repeating it.
I’d also like to add that lots of people I’ve met actually do judge English first and foremost by pop culture and slang. Which is not to single out Russians or imply that most people think ‘fo shizzle’ is a good ruler by which to judge the English language. It’s just that English speakers are, in my experience, far more likely than speakers of just about any other language to meet someone in a foreign country who speaks that language and will immediately break out in slang. I mean, I was once literally greeted with a “what up dawg” by a Hungarian kid. Which is actually tame compared to some peoples stories I’ve heard. American pop culture is mostly at fault, but it doesn’t make it any less weird. If foreigners in Russia pick up a lot of pop culture slang (which they definitely do), then you can probably thank Fabryka Zvezdy and Sergej Shnurov as much as anything else. And of course that little thing called language change…
Comment by Kari — June 15, 2007 @ 1:01 pm
Aw, but I actually think “fo shizzle” is kinda funny… But I also find American slang constructs fascinating at times. F.ex., the construct indicating total improbability of some action of event — “there’s no way !” — is almost Zen Buddhist
Comment by Bugmaster — June 15, 2007 @ 7:45 pm
I would never say “I studied to become a political scientict” but I always say exactly “I studied at the faculty of international relations”, partly because it’s hard to explain people what it’s all about and what I’m supposed to do as a professional. But so do people I know: they say WHERE they studied, although not what.
And I agree with previous commentators on “I don’t care” issue. I often use “po-vidimomu” as apparently. And indeed, language usage differs a lot and depends on people you communicate with.
Comment by Alex — July 18, 2007 @ 4:40 pm