Thread: Thinking in English

That's an important idea. I am often involved in language environments and there are linguists among my friends. One of them remembers his days at university when he was studying languages and linguistics, foreigners were among his professors there. So the idea is:
When speaking a foreign lanuage one has to KILL Russian structures in them. So you see Igor. That's basic advice, and that's what professionals say. Just KILL the Russian structures, it's an important step. You may even choose to speak simple English, but just forget about Russian when you do it. It's hard to do without proper training and inner work I suppose, hard to do it on your own. The problem is that Russian structures are so deep in us, they are extremely difficult to destroy. I hope that might help you in your work, good Sir Igor!

Originally Posted by alexsms

...the idea is: When speaking a foreign lanuage one has to KILL Russian structures in them...

One of those forms is the adverbial principle. It was easy for me to start to think in English with the adverbial forms. So it could be that the English structures we use instead of the adverbial forms of Russian might be a working topic/point of departure.

"For me, pleasantly sounding and interestingly constructed Russian language and thought"

That, I think, could be made into a correct grammatical sentence in Russian.

All those niceties of verbal tenses is kind of a major point in English, that isn't a big point in Russian. So it's probably central to 'English thinking'. And English is an 'analytic language' while Russian is a 'synthetic language' and this really affects the thinking processes.