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I like English, and I love Russian. I can do with Russian wonderful bewildering things. Ow, I've seen some wonderful things that can be done with English and ca
by ordu 7y ago
I like English, and I love Russian. I can do with Russian wonderful bewildering things. Ow, I've seen some wonderful things that can be done with English and cannot be translated into Russian, but I know much more language tricks that cannot be translated into English.
It is a funny thing to borrow English tricks and to make them with Russian. For example I love the idea of phrasal verb, especially when a preposition becomes a word the sentence ends with. It is so alien for Russian, but somehow it have meaning when done in Russian.
I mean, I like English but I'm not ready to throw Russian away. From other hand, using grammar of one language with other is a way to converge languages into one, but it mightn't work. Some people become nervous when their language borrows features of other languages, they see it as an expansion of that other language, they are afraid of losing their beloved language.
There is a vocal opposition in Russia to the borrowing words from other languages, especially from English, which is seen as a dominant language abusing its power to oppress weaker languages (a natural Russian reaction to any power: power exists to be abused, it is an axiom in the Russian culture). I know that French have an opposition like this, though maybe due to other reasons.
Maybe if English started to incorporate words and grammar from all languages around the world, it could become a language of languages, but I suspect that languages needs rules forbidding some constructs to be language that allow express things. Incorporating all possible rules probably would make any word combination to be allowed and language might lose its purpose.
- gshubert17 7y ago> Maybe if English started to incorporate words and grammar from all languages around the world, it could become a language of languages, but I suspect that languages needs rules forbidding some constructs to be language that allow express things. Incorporating all possible rules probably would make any word combination to be allowed and language might lose its purpose. English borrows words promiscuously from other languages. Many were borrowed from French after the Norman conquest. Many were borrowed from Latin and Greek by scholars. In fact there's a list of lists here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_English_words_by_country_or_language_of_origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_English_words_by_coun... All the loanwords in English is one reason why its orthography (spelling) is so difficult.
- pessimizer 7y agoThe worst thing (more exaggerated in American English) is that English speakers attempt to both pronounce and conjugate those borrowed words as they are in the source language. Part of that is obviously the Germanic roots, where there aren't any regular conjugations, and plenty of the conjugations are arbitrary infixes - but listen to an English person say "valet" or "herb," or worse, the horror of "Nicaragua" and it's obvious that Americans do this more.
- azangru 7y agoIt’s interesting that your first language is Russian. It happens to be mine, too. And I would eagerly — without a moment’s hesitation — throw it away for English as a common language. And this despite having studied Russian linguistics and literature at university level and having translated a handful of books into Russian.
- ordu 7y agoIf English as a common language was a real possibility, then I might accept it. Not without hesitation, but I think I would. But I couldn't imagine clearly such a possibility, because it is unreal. For example: why someone needs to abandon his/her native language? I personally couldn't just unlearn such a thing.