shminux comments on Rationality Quotes November 2014 - Less Wrong

8 Post author: elharo 07 November 2014 07:07PM

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Comment author: timujin 08 December 2014 08:34:57PM *  5 points [-]

No, it's actually fun. Brief examples:

  • "It depends". I have never been able to get away with just saying "it depends" - Russian version prompts you to either specify what it depends on, or explicitly refuse to, begging the question of why I am being so sneaky.

  • There is no word that means "complexity", but can not be alternatively understood as "difficulty". When I tell someone I want a complex challenge, they ask why I am not carrying heavy things around, as that is quite difficult.

  • In same vein, no word for "challenge" that doesn't also mean "ordeal". The distinction seems to be also missing from Russian brains, a very peculiar phenomenon that Russian culturologists are always upset about.

  • No different words for 'accuracy' and 'precision'.

  • No word for 'awesome' that is both strong enough and can be shown on TV. But, on the other hand, the obscene word for 'awesome' is much more awesome that 'awesome'.

  • English tenses are more flexible and consistent. Russian only has three, plus the standalone "have been"-like form. They don't distinguish between "I do things" and "I am doing things", for instance.

  • In English, you can put an emphasis on 'am' or 'is'. In Russian, to do that, you need to throw in a few extra words.

  • Context-independency. Russian has a small basic vocabulary, and compensates it with insanely complex syntactic structures that makes it harder to pull a couple of words from a sentence and understand what it is about.

To even things a bit, here are some advantages of Russian over Englsh:

  • Phonetics. If you know how to write a word, you automatically and unambiguously (with a single notable exception) know how to pronounce it. It works a little less perfect the other way around, but good enough that Russian spelling bees do not exist and don't even make sense.

  • English has a ridiculously huge amount of words that sound the same or similar, like 'to', 'two' and 'too', or 'bot' and 'bought'. The last one is just horrible - you insert three new letters, doubling word's length, and it still sounds the same. No such thing is possible in Russian.

  • Words "себя" and "авось".

  • Word formation. It is much more flexible than in English. You can easily say things like "недоперепрыгнул", which means "tried, but not succeeded, to jump over something".

  • Distinction between singular and plural "you".

  • Mat. English swearing pales in comparison to this.

Comment author: shminux 09 December 2014 01:16:02AM 1 point [-]

In same vein, no word for "challenge" that doesn't also mean "ordeal". The distinction seems to be also missing from Russian brains, a very peculiar phenomenon that Russian culturologists are always upset about.

This actually seems to be an argument in support of the original quote, to some degree.

Comment author: timujin 09 December 2014 08:16:30AM 0 points [-]

Yes, it is.