Plenty of contribution already,so I'll just add a personal anecdote. Some years ago I happened to have some beers with a Latvian Russian,who lived here, in London. He tells us that he doesn't get the Brits. He just doesn't understand the reasoning in some situations. I ask to elaborate. He says: last year, I had a pretty serious trauma and ended up in a hospital. It's so bad, pain, lots of tests,etc. And I'm pretty fed up with all of it. Then, one day, a surgeon comes in, says hello and asks me 'how are you?'. And I reply: 'really bad!'. And suddenly surgeon's face changes: his eyes start moving faster,he looks at me and then observes the room,then at me again. Then the surgeon,in a slightly panicky voice ask me again: well what's wrong,is it the food? Is it the nurses? Did they do all the tests? What's going on?' Then the Russian looks at the doctor and says: well look, I'm in a hospital, I'm ill as hell, I'm in pain and you have the audacity to ask how am I? Are you crazy? It should be pretty clear that it's definitely not my day! The surgeon goes on to explain the subtleties of the question and etc. At that point I already lived in the UK long enough to understand the doctor's position but I also found the Russians point to be absolutely hilarious.
From personal experience I find the Russians absolutely hilarious even without much smiling (the young ones smile more).They are somehow similar to Italians,who are also hilarious, but as is the case with the Russians, the funniest things tend to be equally tragic too. Kind of a never ending tragicomedy on full blast.
Even though my favourite professors at Waterloo in Canada were Russian, it wasn't until I learned some basic Russian that I finally got over the typical view of them drilled into people by Hollywood.
Your run of the mill Russian is honest about their feelings. Not honest about the facts, no, they can cheat on an insurance filing just fine. But that coldness that so many of them seem to have is often just an outer shell. Once one of them trusts you and gets to know you they're so warm and intense about their love for you. So excited to show you something dear to them. Even devoted enough to learn a new language just to speak to you, even if they're a senior[0]. It doesn't mean the relationship always survives, because that intensity is still there when they're angry, but the highs are so high.
A few years ago Masha Gessen did an episode of Conversations With Tyler, a podcast hosted by Tyler Cowen, and at one point she said this about Russian friendships [1]:
> ... I think that — and this may answer your question — Russian friendships are much more emotional and intense than American friendships [...] When I moved back to [the USA] five and a half years ago, it was like this sense of whiplash because I had a lot of friends here, but I had been absent for 20 years. I would get together with my friends, and then two hours later, our get-together would be over. I’m like, “Well, what was the point of that? Was that just to let each other know that we still exist?” Because you don’t really get into deep conversation until about four hours in and a number of bottles of alcohol [...] I think that maybe that’s what you’re referring to. Maybe you’re just referring to the emotional intensity of Russian friendship, where it’s hard. It’s like lovers, even in this country, don’t really drift apart usually. You have to break up. You can’t just stop calling, and go from talking every day to talking every few weeks, and then forget about each other’s existence.
I usually take claims about what people from a country are like with a big grain of salt, but it's interesting to see this in your comment, too. Maybe I should pursue some Russian friendships.
That is a great quote, though I have a minor quibble about alcohol being necessary as some of the Russians I befriended were former alcoholics and sober for years. Though others drank beer at dawn.
I found I made deep friendships more easily after speaking even a bit of Russian. If you can say "My name is X" and "awesome" and a couple other small phrases it helps. That said, it wasn't until I had put in around 1000 hours of practice until things really opened up. It's such a hard language and I'm below average in my ability to learn human languages. But I did make steady progress with Verbling and I even met up with my tutor when I was in Ukraine.
One of the things that learning Russian clears up is why they sound so angry to English ears. The language doesn't use tone for emphasis as much as English. It uses word order because the grammar is more flexible so they're able to put the important stuff at the end. Plus the sounds are more constant based. So once your ears get used to the language, you don't really hear Russian (or a Russian accented English) the same anymore. It sounds more human. Plus you learn so many words, you end up finding some of the endearing / superior to the English translation.
When learning Russian these are just a few of the words I found myself saying even when speaking English. Which gives a hint that a good direct translation maybe isn’t quite there.
There's a rule in linguistics, that the more often a word is used, the shorter it will be -- almost like Huffman coding.
In that light, comparing the one-syllable English "Why?" to the three-syllable Russian "почему?" says something about the safety of asking questions in different countries.
It is no surprise that the English word is shorter, as - unlike English - Russian has two words for "why".
"почему" asks - how did things come to be this way?
"зачем" asks - what is the purpose of things being this way?
Note the difference in implication if I ask you "why" you were late for work. "почему" allows room for circumstances beyond your control, while "зачем" places the blame squarely on your shoulders.
English speakers may be completely unconscious of the overloaded nature of "why" - such is the value of learning other languages.
> Unlike English, Russian has two words for "why".
English has at least three in the same space, two of which are in modern use.
> "почему" asks - how did things come to be this way?
In English, that's, unambiguously, “How". Which is kind of why your own translation starts with it.
> "зачем" asks - what is the purpose of things being this way?
In English that is, again unambiguously, though somewhat archaic, “wherefore”.
“Why” can mean either and is usually disambiguated by context (but is usually read modernly as “wherefore” if the context isn’t otherwise unambiguous, though the existence of the archaic phrase “whys and wherefores” which seems to mean the same as the modern “whys and hows” suggest to me that the bias has flipped over time.)
Though I know very little Russian, I know enough to say that "how" and "pochemu" do not map 1:1 -- If I asked, in English, "how is this cardboard box flat?", the natural response would be "it's designed to be flattened" rather than "someone folded it down", but the natural response to "pochemu" would be the second. The full translation that was given would be necessary to disambiguate.
I think you are on the right path, it also explains why Russians are so good at Math because сколько is a 2 syllable word vs. "how many" 3 syllables and two words.
To be serious, Russian morphology restrict the number of short words. A verb or a noun will have a suffix that changes by plurality, case, gender, tense etc. and often a prefix. E.g. a pretty common word such as "come" in "Come to dinner with us" will have four syllables in 'заходите' because its root has a vowel, prefix has a vowel and suffix has two.
Question words are grammatically pronouns in Russian so they have all the morphological features of nouns.
I think that “почему/зачем?” is more of an entertainment question in Russia, because the most popular answer would be “it just so happens”. Like, all by itself. You will generally spend much more than three syllables (and maybe some amount of alcohol) to get your answer even from friends. Another fun observation about “почему” is that “normal” russians mostly deal with consequences of the processes out of their direct control. Snow and cold? Ok, find a shelter. Alien invasion? Ok, burn them down and return to a shelter. New “strange” law? Ok, it can’t be properly enforced, or someone will come up with a countermeasure in a week, no need to even leave a shelter. It’s all weather, you don’t question weather.
> There's a rule in linguistics, that the more often a word is used, the shorter it will be
I’m really interested in linguistics, but I’ve never heard of such a rule. Could you give a source please? I’d be curious to know if this is true.
(A striking counterexample I ran into just yesterday: the Urim word for ‘head’ is tukŋunakŋ, and ‘we (incl.)’ is mentepm-. I don’t think this is because Urim people avoid talking about heads or groups of people. That being said, it’s tricky concluding anything from a sample size of n=1.)
>> One of the things that learning Russian clears up is why they sound so angry to English ears.
Funny. To me (I'm Greek) Russians sound like they're always complaining about something. It's Germans that sound angry.
Edit: I wonder what Greek sounds like to foreign ears. The closes I've come to understanding it is hearing Spanish people talk, who sound a lot like Greek -that I don't understand.
Eh. "Friend" in English just isn't a good translation, it should be something like "BFF". You aren't expected to have 50 friends in Slavic countries because it would be too much of an investment and in English people call others friend after they waited together for 20 minutes at a train station.
But the concept exists, it's just a different word.
I once met a russian person online who had learned portuguese, my native language. I was extremely impressed. To this day I've never seen anyone else learn portuguese as a second language.
On my travels, I have met several people who, after living in Brazil for only a few months, learned to speak Portuguese fluently. This always impressed me hugely, because English speakers normally have a really hard time learning a language that has "gendered" nouns and inflected articles/adjectives/pronouns, for example... but many of them seem to do just fine! But I met enough of them to now think Portuguese must be quite easy to learn (or maybe, due to the fact that they MUST learn Portuguese when living in Brazil, given most people only speak Portuguese there).
Being surrounded by talkative people helps a lot, and then you get to learn the actual constructs, not the theoretical grammar. Not being facetious, I think that's the main thing behind "it's harder to lear a new language as an adult". I think it's less due to ability and more to do with the contexts and opportunities to practice.
(Though yes, by how they learn you notice what they get easily and what confuses them)
I also think Americans have more of a passive awareness of Spanish than even Americans themselves realize (a whole generation watched Dora the Explorer, for example). A lot of that will translate well learning Portuguese
Where were the people you met from? In my city there's a lot of japanese people, they helped create a thriving steel industry here many decades ago. Many of them learned some portuguese, they could communicate but not fluently. Gendered words in particular seemed to be particularly difficult. The russian I met on the other hand spoke it fluently, maybe even better than native speakers.
Hard to remember them all :) but two were Australians who spent a few months backpacking in Brazil... one was a German girl who just blew my mind how well she could speak Portuguese. Another was a Swedish man who just casually started helping a group of Brazilians, in Portuguese, to order something in a restaurant... I think there were many other cases over the years but it's not like a keep track of them all, so I can't give more examples that I remember for sure... but enough, as I said, to convince me that it's not very rare.
What I find interesting (I speak not a word of Portuguese) is the multitude of Portuguese-X creole languages, particularly the ones tha flourished and are some time still spoken in Sout Asia:
I think many originated as trade languages, but I find it interesting that languages with such very different roots would mix and create a new language (a Creole, more so; not just a pidjin).
Portugese is a really nice sounding language. I love it. It's on top of my "to learn" list. Spanish on the other hand no, though I like better how it's spoken in the Americas.
>> Your run of the mill Russian is honest about their feelings. Not honest about the facts, no, they can cheat on an insurance filing just fine. But that coldness that so many of them seem to have is often just an outer shell. Once one of them trusts you and gets to know you they're so warm and intense about their love for you. So excited to show you something dear to them. Even devoted enough to learn a new language just to speak to you, even if they're a senior[0]. It doesn't mean the relationship always survives, because that intensity is still there when they're angry, but the highs are so high.
I'm not a great fan of serious literature, but I've read a bit here and there and I think the above should be blindingly obvious to anyone who's read at least as little as I have (basically, Crime and Punishment, three or four pages from The Idiot and Gorsky's The Flaming heart of Danko). Or, anyone who's listened to the music (hello, Chaikovsky? Black Swan? You wanted feelsies?) or watched the movies (Tarkovsky) etc.
I think in the past the literature and the art in general would have been where Western people learned about Russians (and everyone else not in the West, also, but the Russians have a lot of literature). It's a bit of a shame if this has really been replaced by tinny stereotypes promulgated by Hollywood.
When my wife was dying (she has since passed away) and nobody could figure out her illness, she'd be in the most wretched pain, in the ER again, and she'd be retching awfully and almost uncontrollably.
A doctor would walk in, having heard of all this already and ask "How are you?"
Sometimes she gave them the benefit of the doubt, and sometimes she was a bit less charitable.
My point? Americans (as she was), Russians, Ukrainians, Latvians, Japanese, Kurdish, Bolivians, Icelandians, Koreans, Germans, Chinese, Scottish, Irish, Australians, Austrians, Swiss, South Africans, Egyptians, Mixolydians, Bohemians, and even Canadians all agree one one thing:
Being asked "How are you?" is the LAST thing somebody wants to hear when they are suffering.
But in this you can also see the difference between an American and many others. I find the "how are you greeting" very tiring nomatter how I am. When I am being asked the question I internally go through an assessment of, how am I today, how interested is the person, how much do I want to share of this. It takes significant mental effort.
When I was a teenager I did a one year high school exchange to the US and for a long time I really struggled with the daily "what's up?". I was going through the above internal dialogue more than 10 times a day struggling to come up with an answer. Even, when I learned to just answer "yeah what's up" internally the dialogue would often still be triggered.
Thank you. For the most part she was, but it was a pretty awful thing that happened so there was only so much that could be done. But I appreciate it. The last year of her life saw her getting the best care she'd ever had. Unfortunately, it was hospice care. But it was in home, and my adult daughter and I took care of her til the end.
Indeed. People do not realize how destructive it is. The other one that really irks me is "let me know if you need anything!"
1) You are putting it on me to tell you that I need something, right in the middle of my need.
2) If you're my real friend you don't need to say that, I already know I can call you 24/7/365
3) Your willingness to help is nulled by your lack of initiative.
The best thing anyone ever did was call me and say "I'm at Costco. What do you need? And don't say 'nothing'. I'm going to bring you something, and that's that." That whole pizza and frozen burritos were bad for me, but the last thing I needed on my mind at that time was cooking. And that's what true friends are there for.
So don't say "If you need anything let me know!" It's borderline passive aggressive.
Exactly my thoughts. One thing is to expect some understanding from people (and specially friends) but another thing is to expect them to be mind readers. People have their own lives and if you don't express your needs, unless they are very obvious, you shouldn't blame them for not taking them into consideration.
@geocrasher seems to not realize that the people around he/she could be taking a cautious position to avoid getting into his/her business without it being requested.
I independently had the same thoughts as geocrasher during similar experiences (and haven't told my friends the question annoys me), and I would say your reaction is uncharitable. Just because you can't relate doesn't mean "some people can find a reason to get upset over anything".
I have the same reaction as jwilber. If I think you are in a healthy state of mind, then “let me know if you need (or want) anything” is sufficient initiative. Even if you are my kid/SO/parents/siblings.
I would put it this way - in my way of thinking and cultural assumptions, any given relationship, close or not, one has a sense of whether asking favors is possible, and what sort are reasonable. Or else a sense of uncertainty about it.
The statement "let me know if you need anything" has a different meaning depending on what it was reasonable to ask already.
It adds no information, due to the meaning of "anything" being entirely contextual.
If I know that they know that the relationship is fairly close, affirming it is a nice thing to do, especially if I'm feeling badly.
But if the relationship is not so close and/or I'm uncertain whether it's appropriate to ask a favor, I can imagine feeling antagonized by the form of an offer which is not really an offer or clarification of where we stand.
If there is ambiguity, there remains ambiguity, is how I see it.
> The statement "let me know if you need anything" has a different meaning depending on what it was reasonable to ask already.
That’s the purpose of the statement. The person you’re saying it to should have a vague idea of what is a reasonable ask depending on relationship, and if not, they will just get denied. But it is genuine.
If I’m at a store, and my coworker asks me to grab a pack of gum, I’ll do it. If they ask me to go to a store 15 min away for something, I’m going to say no, but they probably would not ask me that anyway. But if a close family member asks, I would go to the different store.
> Your willingness to help is nulled by your lack of initiative.
I understand your point and i know it's a difficult question to deal with sometimes, especially during depression.
But remember that you're not those people's top priority. That sentence means you are allowed to ask them for stuff, but it doesn't mean they're going to drop everything and take you into their care right now without you taking a few steps on your own. They consider that you have enough of your own agency.
Your willingness to be helped is nulled by that same lack of initiative on your part.
A trick is to find something easy to ask for, as a go-to response to that. For example, the next time someone says that to you, you could answer:
"Actually, life has been tough lately, a beer would be nice".
The problem is that a lot of the time it feels like meaningless platitudes. Like they feel they have to say something out of politeness but don't actually want (or able) to help you.
What would have been better? To just say "I'm sorry you're having a hard time". If you don't mean something, don't say it.
While it may seem like I am being oversensive about the subject, it is understandable because I left out a large part of the context. When you have heard of this phrase hundreds of times over multiple years by people who were not in the position to help you in the least bit, it becomes a meaningless platitude.
Are you assuming/implying that the people who say "let me know if you need anything" don't actually mean it? Because I don't believe that's generally the case, especially if they're actually friends and not just random acquaintances.
I don't personally say that sentence outside of a work context; usually I would say "call me if you need to talk", but I won't take proactive action unless I believe my friend either wants me to or need me to.
At the end of the day, someone makes a choice to interpret this as a platitude. How about taking up the person on their offer?
Let me try to explain - I've had cancer at a relatively young age, so heard that a lot. I wasn't visibly sick, i just knew there's a chance I'm gonna die in the foreseeable future from it.
Unless the person saying it had access to some experimental treatment my doctors don't know about, there really was nothing they could have done to help me. I knew it and they knew it.
So while I didn't get angry at them (because I knew they said it because didn't know how to react differently), it did annoy me as it was basically an empty promise.
Right, i was specifically outlining depression. Taking care of a sick person, i would also err on the side of giving more specifics eg. "Tell me if you want me to get you groceries or something".
But there is a difference between empty platitudes such as "thoughts and prayers" and a genuine albeit abbreviated "I'm your friend and I love you, I don't know how I could help you, but if you know, don't hesitate to ask on account of it being too much."
It's not for you they say it, but for them and or others. Or to put it more directly, you don't say it for them, you say it for you.
It's like forgiveness, if you forgive someone, the main benefit is to you. By forgiving someone you take a load off your own shoulders. It's often meaningless to them if those forgiven know they are.
Different strokes. I just told a friend that they should let me know if there's anything I can do to help, which I've never done before (for this friend). His mother is having surgery this week. I've known this person my whole life and he's a lot like me, so I know that taking your advice wouldn't be the right path for this.
I would like to be told by a friend that they care about me and would like to help in some way if they can. What I wouldn't like is if they said "OK, I'm going to choose a thing that I think I would want in your situation and do it for you, and you have no choice because I'm going to do it anyway." Chances are, what you thought was helpful is NOT what I need in a difficult moment and I don't want to be subjected to another person's choices being superimposed on my situation. Lucky for me I know that my friend feels the same way, and we have different ways of approaching these things with each other because of it.
"I'm at Costco. What do you need? And don't say 'nothing'. I'm going to bring you something, and that's that" seems incredibly aggressive to me, and if I had many friends who behaved that way I would be endlessly frustrated.
I suspect in "American", "how are you" is often a request for actionable information. Your Russian friend took the question as an absolute, was confused why the doctor was asking a question with an obvious answer, and proceeded to give a reply which communicated no new information to the doctor. The doctor meanwhile was expecting an answer relative to the information he had, and hence took the negative reply as a sign of a sudden ill turn of health.
Similar when interacting with customer service. They don't want to know how you are, they want to know why you're talking with them, how they need to approach you. If you're calling about your cable bill and tell them you're not doing well because your aunt died, well, that's not actionable by them. They want to know how you're doing in the context of your cable bill. Even if your answer is "good, but I have a billing issue", it usefully sets the tone for the conversation in a way that "bad, Aunt Gerda passed away" does not.
I think this gets exactly to it, but I don’t agree with the rest of your comment.
In both the provided examples, the fact that there's a request for actionable information is already implicitly understood based on the situation. When a doctor comes into your room, you already know they're checking on your condition. The "How are you?" is just general greeting (to which, in casual situations, the proper response is "Fine, and you?").
And this is the crux of the misunderstanding. The Russian takes it as a request for information when it isn't.
I think the doctor was asking, relative to the situation that you're in, how are you? In other words, given that you're in this shitty situation, do you feel worse or better than you expect?
If he's still in a lot of pain then the doctor would expect the patient to say that. "The nurses are treating me well, the food is fine, but I'm still in a lot of pain. Is there anything you can do about that?"
The doctor was asking a question relative to the situation and the Russian interpreted as an absolute question.
A common Russian greeting "Как дела?" is exactly as same as "How are you?" (it literally means "How are (your) affairs?") and people also do not take it literally. Sometimes people reply with some pun playing off even more literal meaning of the question, e.g. "дела" could also mean "criminal cases" so one might respond "Дела у прокурора, а у нас - делишки" (something like "The DA has cases but we just hustle"). I suspect the hero of the GP post might be making a similar joke in English.
>I suspect in "American", "how are you" is often a request for actionable information. Your Russian friend took the question as an absolute, was confused why the doctor was asking a question with an obvious answer, and proceeded to give a reply which communicated no new information to the doctor.
This situation is a very common standup joke here in Russia since like the 70s or 80s when some of our movie or theater stars were in the US (or some other 'capitalistic' country) and were constantly asked 'how are you' in a hallway.
I always answer "still alive" in either language when I am asked by the people I know. When asked by random person like bank teller I would answer something weird. This would usually throw them out of their sleepy mood and suddenly they become more alive and attentive.
Nice!I haven't used that word since the childhood,when using Russian words without property understanding them was a norm.
You are right, definitely a proper situation is needed to use it.
I once had a similar situation with the question "Is everything OK?", which is slightly different from "How are you?".
I am a German living in Germany and i once caused a car crash that made another car spin into the ditch on the side of the road. That car was driven by a family of Russian heritage.
After getting out of the car i spoke to the other parties wife first and I asked "Is everything OK?" with what i ment: "Is there something very wrong beyond the things that are obviously wrong. Like, is your child bleeding to death or is it only the car damage."
But the woman did not understand it this way at all and was a little bit furious because to her obviously nothing was OK.
Of course she had every reason to be upset, but the likelihood of a German interpreting my question in a rude way would have been way lower.
Have been in a doctors office with near suicidal levels of pain a few times.
Past a certain point Humor doesn’t go over well. Particularly if you have been trying and failing to get help.
That said, doctors see a lot of misery, so anything to lighten the mood should be encouraged.
Had to explain to a doc once that when you've been in extreme pain for long enough your mind starts to regress to survival circuits. This was apparently not obvious. Doctors are fallible.
It’s hard to judge pain.
Some people go to the hysterical quickly.
Others walk in with an arrow in the head, calm.
Even with my own kids. It can initially be difficult to judge how serious an injury a fall of bump is. 99% of time I’m right, but the missed stick with you and the kid.
Russian here (to be precise Russian Canadian of Ukrainian descent :-)
There is a saying in Russian: if a stranger, on your question "how are you?" (ru: как дела?), starts explaining in details what is happening with him/her - please know, you've met complete idiot.
So I am classifying that 'how are you?' as never ending test of my life position :)
Ukraine has a lot of Russian speakers, I would think most of the population can actually speak Russian, or a mix of Ukrainian and Russian (given the similarity between the languages)... on TV, it's common for people to switch languages mid-conversation, for example...
With that said: Ukraine is a big country with a very strong culture that differs from Russian culture in (for us, foreigners) subtle ways. Near the border with Russia, however, Russian culture is stronger, hence some regions even associating themselves more strongly with Russia than with Ukraine (Krimea was one of those regions, by the way, which may explain to people who are unaware of this situation why there was no popular revolt - quite the contrary - against the Russian occupation).
Yes, they're quite different and similar at the same time. More than that, Russians are not all the same (Southern Russians are more like Ukranians, Siberian Russians are not very similar to Moscow Russians and so on). With Ukranians, you have at least two different cultures — east (relatively similar to Russians) and west (these guys were more influenced by Poland etc.). So, yeah, Russians and Ukranians are quite similar (they are two Slavic nations with common background), but there are a lot of differences too.
Countries and identities do not have a 1-1 mapping. This has and is causing a lot of issues I’m the world. Or is used to create a lot of friction by people that wants that.
Rus (as statehood) originated in Novgorod (originally as a republic, btw). Then center was moved to Kiev. Then to Moscow.
At those times there were no such entity (and ethnicity) as Ukraine at all.
Significantly later it was Cossacks republic on part of territory of modern Ukraine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporozhian_Sich#/media/File:0...
At that time it was no Ukrainian ethnicity too. Cossacks (armed settlers) were multiethnic by definition - members were ethnically Rus, Poland, Tatar, etc. from all close and far neighbors as this was area and society of refugees. That mix eventually transformed into separate ethnicity.
Ukraine as an ethnicity is relatively new entity. And needless to say that Ukraine as an entity with definitive borders was a communist invention, Lenin and later Stalin have drawn its borders - Russian Empire had no division on ethnical principles.
From personal experience I find the Russians absolutely hilarious even without much smiling (the young ones smile more).They are somehow similar to Italians,who are also hilarious, but as is the case with the Russians, the funniest things tend to be equally tragic too. Kind of a never ending tragicomedy on full blast.