Thread: ''What happened''

I've been always interested in Russian grammar, although many people do not remember even the titles of the cases. Grammar is taught much in Russian schools. We learnt definitions, determined declensions and conjugations, determined members of sentence (subject, predicate, object, atribute, modifier) and parts of speech, determined parts of word (prefix, root, suffix ending) in many words. And how is English grammar studied in American schools?

One thing I have noticed right now. Maybe I am wrong...
When in Russian there is a verb after a question word "что(a question word) случилось (verb)", "кто видел тебя?", "кто сказал тебе об этом?" we don't use the auxiliary verb "did":
что случилось? - what happened?
кто видел тебя? - who saw you?
кто сказал тебе об этом? - who told you about it? (The verbs are just used in past tense)

And if there is a pronoun after a question word "Кому(question word) ты (pronoun) сказал об этом?", "кого ты видел?" we use the auxuliary verb:
кому ты сказал об этом - who did you tell it about?
кого ты видел? - who did you see?

Am I wrong or not?

Lena, you're not wrong, but it's still the same thing: кто is the subject of its sentence, and кого, кому are accusative and dative objects respectively. You would still say что ты видел?, and that's "what did you see?", as что in this sentence is in accusative case and ты is the subject.

Well, sadly, there is a bit of prejudice in Europe (in this case I am talking about the UK) against people from places like Africa, India and the Middle East. They are not given recognition to the same degree, for learning English, as others get.

For example, I worked in a pan-European company a while back, however the software development was done in India. I was travelling a lot on the European continent, often together with my two bosses, an Englishman and an American. They were commenting a lot on peoples' English. In the case of most people that the liked across Europe, the comments were positive. For example when someone who spoke bad English would apologise for it, they would say, "no, no it's fine", or the standard answer "well your English is better than my [insert language]".

I also worked with some guys who were based in England but were originally from various Eastern European countries, Ukraine, Serbia and Russia. They spoke bad-to-passable English but they too were told their English was fine and the communication with them was completely problem-free. (that was around the time decided to take up Russian).

The English skills of the Indians however, were also pretty good, but with regards to them, there were always complaints that it was hard to speak with them, to hear what they were saying, that there were cultural problems etc. They never got any appreciation for the fact that they spoke English as a second language. I agree in a way. It WAS harder to deal with them and I did not always understand the logic of their behaviour. They did not understand me sometimes. I developed a way of communicating with them that worked, but I did not enjoy that way of working and I still was not always able to understand everyone I spoke with. With other Europeans we could joke about the problems and find a way around them, but with the Indians it was always hard work.

The same thing happens when English people complain about immigrants speaking poor English. They are certainly not referring to the millions of Europeans (including even, Polish people) who live in the UK. They are almost guaranteed to be speaking about Pakistanis, Indians and middle eastern people. Somehow it is much worse when such people speak bad English than when a Polish or French person does it.

Probably somebody will now think that I am a racist for saying all this. I am not, I am just explaining the reality as it is.

Marcus, if your language is Russian and you talk and behave like a Russian, then that's what you'd be treated like. Very few people are hung up on the actual race. It's the cultural differences that are causing problems, not the skin colour. There are lots of Indians who have grown up in the UK, with them there are never any problems, speaking with them is just like anyone else, no difference.

Perhaps something similar exists in Russia, with peole from Caucasus and Central Aisa.

I think that grammar and vocabulary can be absorbed from reading in intermediate or advanced level. At the beginning grammar must be studied well. Our school teacher used to talk to us mainly in English. And learnt a lot of words, expressions and some grammar constructions (question tags, complex subject) just because I listened to her. In the university we used grammar-translation method more. And I didn't like it much.

Yes, Hanna you are right. Some people speak Russian well but some speak like Равшан (google )
I think that it's good to speak English even when you have a 'strange' accent and when it's hard to understand but at least you speak it! I remember when I was at the airport (in one of the biggest cities in Russia) there was a woman who was checking the luggage,etc. And then one man came to her to give his luggage. I was behind him. The Russian woman asked him in Russian "Are you flying to Rome and not anywhere else?" The man was keeping silence. Then I saw his passport and could guess that he was Italian and apparently spoke no Russian. The woman was repeating again "Are you flying to Rome and this is you final destination?" The man was keeping silence again and was nervous. The strange thing was that the woman was asking and asking the same qustion in Russian as if repeating the same question would make the Italian man begin speak Russian fluently This was silly to ask when you see the person doesn't understand. I had to translate for him and for the woman what he was saying. So, I think that in such places if you work you should speak at least bad English but speak it, so people who do not know Russian would not feel that way the man did. The other example...I was flying to Kaliningrad and there was a man sitting next to me. When there was the time to serve drinks, etc. a flight attendant came to him and asked in Russian. The man didn't understand the Russian language. She asked in Russian "would you like orange or tomato juice?" and as tomato and tomat sounds a bit similar in English and Russian he could understand the only word and tried to say it even in Russian and said "помАдор" (помидор- tomato) So yes accents are sometimes hard to understand but people try to speak at least

Robin, I understand what you mean. Training makes one's language skills automatical, and learning tables of grammar is useless without much application.
Probably you forgot how you started learning English. But can you speak, read and write in Russian, if you don't know what object and dative case are, it's endings, what prepositions are used with it? I mean if you study the language as an adult. And if you know nothing about declension at all (if you are an English native speaker, for example)?
I don't believe that an adult can study a foreign language without learning grammar.

Originally Posted by Marcus

I don't believe that an adult can study a foreign language without learning grammar.

Its not about not learning grammar but learning the grammar by example and not as terminology and rules. Children learn their native grammar without knowing what an object is. In school you don't learn the "truth" about your language, only the formal rules extracted from observing what the speakers and writers of the language are doing. You could easily do without that. Of course grammar (as in terminology and precisely formulated rules) is useful, but it is not the best means of access to learning the language.

Further to Rockzmom's point: The fact that Americans choose a mixed race person as their president definitely proves her point.

If globalisation continues at the same speed, then, a hundred generations from now, everyone might be mixed race and look a lot more like each other...

Originally Posted by Hanna

Further to Rockzmom's point: The fact that Americans choose a mixed race person as their president definitely proves her point.

I don't think this is entirely accurate.

President Obama definitely appears as a black man, that is to say his skin tone doesn't really appear to be that of a mixed person. The media and people in general during the election and even to this day identify him as the first "black" President, and references to the fact that he's actually mixed are and were few and far between.

Anyway, grammar is less important than vocabulary. I understand most part of articles of Bulgarian wikipedia, although I don't know Bulgarian at all. Bulgarian grammar differs much from Russian, but words are similar.