Why Your English Brain Finds Russian So Strange

Why does Russian feel so strange to English speakers? In this episode, I explore one of the biggest mistakes I made while learning Russian: trying to translate words instead of concepts. From почему vs. зачем to the surprising ways Russian and English organize information differently, I share the realization that changed how I think about language and made Russian feel much more logical.

Because  sometimes the hardest part of learning Russian isn't understanding Russian—it's learning to stop thinking like an English speaker. 

Спасибо, что послушали Russian One Mistake at a Time. 

 До следующей ошибки.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Why does Russian feel so strange to English speakers? That's the question I want to try to answer today. But I'll give you a hint. The problem isn't the Russian, it's English logic. I had eventually realized that the problem wasn't that Russian was weird. The problem was that I had thought English was normal. One of the most frustrating things about learning Russian is discovering that one English word can be translated into three, four, or even five different Russian words. And I'm not talking about synonyms here. I mean words that you can't just use interchangeably. I would constantly think to myself, well, how am I supposed to know which one to use? Eventually I realized I was looking at it all wrong. I was asking the wrong questions. One of the first examples of this I can remember was these two words, but zachiem. I struggled to understand when to use one over the other. And why did it cause me these problems? Well, it's because I had attached both of these words to the English word why, and that was a mistake. So what I really needed to do was to attach concepts to words instead of trying to match a Russian word to an English word. So now if I hear someone say put, I don't hear why, I hear for what reason. And when someone says zachiem, I don't hear why, I hear for what purpose. Now sometimes you can attach a Russian word directly to an English word, and for things like nouns, that's usually fine. But for verbs, adverbs, etc., it's much better to attach a concept. For a long time, I thought Russian was complicated because it had multiple words for one English word. But now I think English is the one hiding the complexity. I often find Russian words are more precise. Not always. In fact, sometimes the opposite is true. They can be more generalized. For example, one of the first verbs I remember learning was to cook. And I was taught that in Russian it is gatovit. And for a very long time, I thought gatovit literally meant to cook. But that is actually an oversimplification of the translation of this word. Russians do use this word to say that they cooked something like dinner, but the word has a much more general meaning than just specifically cooking by the English definition. What a Russian speaker is really saying is that they prepared some food. So for example, in English, I would say I cooked dinner, but I certainly would not say I cooked everything for my trip. Now, if I had used the word prepare there instead, I could have used it in both sentences. I could have said, I prepared dinner. And I also could have said, I prepared everything for my trip, which is why in my brain, Gatovit is attached to a concept of preparing something, getting something ready. For a long time I thought Russian had too many words. But then I started to realize that maybe English doesn't have enough. So my first piece of advice today is to attach concepts to Russian words and don't try to tie them directly to a specific English word. Now my second piece of advice is equally as important, and that is to make sure that when you're learning the meaning of a new word, you pay attention to what kind of word it's being used as. For example, the word leachit means to treat, as in like a doctor treats a patient. Now, when I learned this, it was using flashcards, and it was before I understood the language well enough to recognize that this is obviously a verb. The card did not define litchit as to treat, it just defined it as treat. Now, I have a bit of a sweet tooth, so maybe this is just me, but my brain thought that treat was as in to have a treat, like ice cream or chocolate. You can only imagine the confusion on my boyfriend's face when I asked him in Russian, Možesz kupit mni litřit. Needless to say, he did not return from the store with ice cream. I often tell people how I've realized so much more about the English language than I had ever known before, simply from trying to understand Russian and from having Russian-speaking friends who had their own struggles learning English. Now, don't get me wrong, I still think Russian is much harder to learn than English, and I would never suggest otherwise. In fact, that is a hill I am willing to die on. But what I want to make everyone understand is English can be illogical too. And the better that you understand English and how it actually works, the easier it will be for you to learn Russian, and probably any foreign language for that matter. Now I've mentioned this before, but I have a degree in math and physics. English was never my strong suit. I am probably one of the worst spellers in the entire world. So I'm certainly no expert on the English language. But through this process, I was forced to really analyze word structures, their true meanings, and those little fine details. A lot of people will go through life speaking English every day, but when they're asked to define something or explain the difference between two things, sometimes they have a hard time doing that. It's a very strange feeling when you realize that you can use a word, but you don't know how to define or explain it. I mentioned in my last podcast that cases were like the boogeyman of the Russian language. They are the thing that holds you back. And I'd have to say, for anyone learning English, phrasal verbs must be an absolute nightmare. Now, if you don't know what a phrasal verb is, you're not alone. I had never heard of them before. I mean, maybe I had been taught in school and somehow I've just forgotten. I'm not sure, but I literally do not remember ever hearing the term phrasal verb. If you take the time to analyze phrasal verbs, and I mean really think about how they form a meaning that is completely unrelated to the actual meaning of the individual words that make up the phrasal verb. That's when you truly empathize with anyone who is trying to learn English. I'm not going to talk about phrasal verbs today because, well, that's an entire podcast on its own, so we'll save that for another episode. All I wanted to say about them today is that you most definitely cannot translate them directly word for word. It will make absolutely no sense in Russian. So for this reason, you have to be able to recognize and understand what a phrasal verb is. So there are three main points that I wanted to get across in this episode. And these are the things that really changed the way I understood the Russian language. And so I'm hoping that they can really make a difference for somebody else, because they were definitely aha moments for me. So the first, of course, is that it is important to attach a Russian word to a concept in your mind, not just a specific English word. Now, as I said earlier, for things like nouns, you can usually just connect the words directly. But for everything else, you're better off using concepts. Of course, I'm not going to say that you won't have multiple Russian words attached to one concept. Russian, just like English, has plenty of synonyms. But these words are interchangeable, and understanding the slight differences between them is less important, and that will happen gradually over time. You will eventually get a feel for when one word fits a situation better than another. When I'm trying to differentiate two words in my head, I will often ask my Russian-speaking friends to give me an example where the words could be used interchangeably, and then give me another example for each word when they could not be used interchangeably. This helps my brain form a conceptual meaning around each one of the words. The second thing from today is that because of all these words, all these extra words in Russian, sometimes the Russian language can be more precise than English. Too often in English, we use the same word for way too many meanings. Now, when I say sometimes it's more precise, the Russian language, I'm referring to how sometimes Russian sentences are shorter. It can even make Russian sound cold or rude to an English speaker. But the thing is, English requires so many filler words and extra context just for us to understand the meaning behind some English words. You need more information in order to know which concept to attach to the word, if it is one of these words that has multiple meanings. One thing I started noticing was that Russian often seemed to just leave words out when I translated them. Or I would hear someone speaking and I would notice words were missing. So for example, let's say someone responds to you with znile. Well, my English brain immediately asks, why can they just drop the ya from the sentence? We would never do that in English. But notice how I knew it was ya that was missing? At no point was I unaware of who the subject was attached to this verb. And that's because Russian verbs already tell us who is doing the action. The information is built into the verb endings. The same thing happens with a phrase like mozesh pamuch. To an English speaker, it sounds like a word is missing. The word may be missing, but the information is not. Russian has already communicated that information within the verb itself. The closest comparison that I can give in English is when we conjugate verbs for pronouns. For example, the word no. There are two ways that you might see that. No, knows. So I, you, and they know. But he and she knows. Why? I have no idea. Now suppose you were out with your friends and they said something and you didn't catch the first word of this sentence. You only heard, knows the doctor. You're missing the information to fully identify who the subject is. But what you do know is that it's not going to be I, it's not going to be you, and it's not going to be they. You know because they said knows the doctor that it must be something in the third person. And unlike English, Russian doesn't have two conjugations, it has six conjugations. And this allows Russian verbs to be a lot more precise. The information of the subject is programmed right into them. So Russian isn't saying less when it uses less words. In fact, sometimes it's saying more. It's just doing so with fewer words. Now, of course, this is not always true. I have certainly put a simple English sentence into the translator and then been shocked when it spit out some horrific, unpronounceable, long gibberish that seems ridiculously overcomplicated. But still, in many ways, I often find Russian can be more precise. Now, the last point that I wanted to get across today is that Russian isn't completely illogical. It's just different than English. The thought process is different. The way of describing things is different. So the better you understand your own language, in this case English, the easier it is going to be for you to transfer your thoughts into another language, such as Russian. You need to truly understand what you're trying to say before you can actually translate it. You need to translate concepts, not the words themselves.