Thread: Are native Russian speakers 'language snobs' or tolerant?

If you can pronounce the Russian [r], my respect to you, Johanna.

Haha, we have the rolling (Russian-style) R in all of Scandinavia.
So it's completely natural to me! The sounds that are difficult are:

1) Remembering that there is a difference between ш, щ and ж. We have these sounds, but it's "free" and depends on lots of complicated things which one people use and when....

2) o -> a rule...

3) Some Russian vowels that are a bit like a mix of two different vowels (from my perspective).

Something about rolling R: Here is a funny Swedish commercial, in Finnish. Proper Rs!! We all use them. Particularly when really trying to make a point, or swearing. ) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITLmI...eature=related

Awesome moment in the history of Ice hockey with commenting in Swedish: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cHUtlNnO5s Real Rs all the way!

About the stuff from China - Well, maybe you get some of the worst junk from there whereas the stuff that makes it all the way to Europe is slightly better quality. Practically all the European clothes chains have their clothes made in China though- apart from serious designers.

I do not support the extreme globalism/capitalism that has created the China sweatshop boom. I prefer to have less clothes, locally made, than to keep buying cheap clothes from China. Unless we in the West start consuming less, borrowing less and educating ourselves better, we'll all be working for the Chinese 20 years from now. I really don't want that to happen.

Originally Posted by Johanna

If you can pronounce the Russian [r], my respect to you, Johanna.

Haha, we have the rolling (Russian-style) R in all of Scandinavia.
So it's completely natural to me! The sounds that are difficult are:

1) Remembering that there is a difference between ш, щ and ж. We have these sounds, but it's "free" and depends on lots of complicated things which one people use and when....

2) o -> a rule...

3) Some Russian vowels that are a bit like a mix of two different vowels (from my perspective).

personally I'm a little strange... I have no problem pronouncing Russian (or Romanian)... except for 2 exceptions... at first (but not anymore) I had problem with the vowel "Ы" sometimes because in English, I guess we don't go down our throat that far... and also there is one vowel in Romanian that is extremely hard to pronounce. I think something like a "u" but also very guttural sounding. But Romanians back home when they met me sometimes would think maybe I was a Romanian who was just playing with them, and ask their friends is he really not Romanian? lol... I really think it is one of the easiest languages to learn because it is so easy to remember a phrase and they pronounce (like Russian and unlike French) very clearly.

so for me 'r' was never a problem in Russian, when people hear me speak (although my grammar is quite bad apart from anything that is basic), they think either I have a soft acccent (standard Russian accent, not Moscow style) or no accent at all (guess it depends what I'm speaking) and make such comments like he sounds just like a local. note: I did have some exposure to Russian growing, up.. although not a great amount and I never spoke a word, well except for a few. I have always had much better pronunciation than my cousin who actually has 2 Russian speaking parents who would often talk with each other in Russian... so it is strange to realize for people learning the language, even if both parents speak it sometimes the kid still doesn't speak Russian very well and has a problem with not "speaking Russian with a western accent". Also I met a black guy who was actually born in Russia, but moved to US around 8... his mother is Russian.. This guy speaks and understands Russian quite well - much better than me - but also has a western sort of accent, which I thought was very weird.

So at least in my case, I find Russian not difficult to pronounce at all. But languages like Hungarian quite hard to get straight... and I think for me a language like Polish would be more difficult for me to pronounce.... sometimes to my ears Ukrainian sounds a bit more western in that many sounds sound more "flat" to me than in Russian. I personally think Russian is a more beautiful sounding language than Ukrainian but almost every Russian-speaking Ukrainian I've talked to about this seems to think that Ukrainian is one of the most beautiful languages on Earth... and often quote the same thing to me, that it is the 4th? 3rd? most beautiful language for singing.... don't remember the others but I think Italian was #1 in that list. Since it is the same thing everyone is telling me (these are all young people under 30), I'm guessing such things are taught in school.

also I think it is easier to sing in Russian than in English, at least with me I have problems with some songs in English (others I can sing quite well) but in Russian all songs seem "singable" to me

p.s. does anyone in Belarus speak Belorussian anymore? or do they just all speak Russian now?

Originally Posted by Johanna

This is to find out how native Russian speakers feel about people who speak Russian as a foreign language.

Я бы был очень толерантен, растроган до слез, но такие люди куда-то с форума свинтили.

The English language is our best Russian here, right?

Talking about Russian in Ex-USSR. I was born in USSR,5 years before the fall . Before moving to Romania I think that my Russian was like the 2nd mothertongue,now I have some problems when it comes to write it.
For example in Moldova,Russian is wide spoken,especially in Kishinev(the capital),where although Russians are 15% on the streets you hear more Russian than Romanian,I'd say 60-70% Russian and 30-40% Romanian.In the villages ,Romanian is spoken more than Russian. There is a certain language in Kishinev and in big cities that young people use,some hybrid between Russian and Romanian,based on Romanian grammar. For example: Blin am paterit nomerul de mobilnik al tiolchii cu care am bazarit cherez skype .Damn ,I ve lost the mobile number of the girl with whom I talked on skype)
In the villages , there are people who aren't fluent in Russian (believe it or not those are people older than 60 yo). Nowadays many young people in Moldova are fluent in Russian because all the movies they download from internet are translated in Russian,cinemas in Moldova are in Russian so are the books in library,people watch Russian television,especially Comedy Club and shows like that.
Of course some Moldovans make mistakes in Russian, and some sort of Moldovan accent ,although not so strong as the Baltic or Caucasian one ,exists: for example Sofia Rotaru speaks Russian with Moldovan accent.
However,people here are generally positive towards Russian . Another interesing fact : in Molodva 1 Russian and 5-6 Moldovans will always speak Russian.
The problem is that many Moldovans,although they can speak Russian very good,they write it like kids in the 2nd grade. Палатенце instead of полотенце and so on. And this is the case of young people who didn't learn Russian in school,but in family,on the streets,television.

As for other nations of the ex-USSR ,I'd say Ukrainians speak Russian very good,Belarussians,Kazahs and Armenians.Estonians on the other hand speak Russian very bad.

I haven't meet people from outside ex-USSR able to speak Russian very good(except for those who were born in USSR and emigrated ).

This is interesting to hear!
I hardly knew anything at all about Moldova, and what it's like there. I did not know that people there were fond of Russian.

It's nice that there are still places in the world where English is not the first foreign language that people learn.

Someone was asking about how we can recognise a Russian accent, in English.

You can't, really: All that we can hear is that it is a Slavic accent: Russian and Serbian accent sounds absolutely the same in English. I have worked with Serbs, Russians and Ukrainians. Their accents sounded the same to me. Polish and Czech accents sound very similar too. I spoke to a person on the phone for a while a few weeks ago and I assumed he was Polish since there are so many Poles in the UK. But later when I got an email from him, I saw that he had a Russian name.

Well, I'm American and I lived in Russia for two years and I can honestly say that I never, not even once, encountered someone who was rude or impatient with me when I spoke Russian. Everyone was patient, no matter how much I butchered the language. Russians are usually very understanding of foreigners - with the exception of some countries they have been at war with. The situation may have been different for me if I was from the Caucasus for example.

Americans seem a lot less tolerant of foreigners to me than Russians do. I have seen Americans treat foreigners extremely rudely. I would be a lot more afraid of coming to America and not speaking English or speaking poor English, than traveling to Russia and speaking limited Russian. Truly!

You can't, really: All that we can hear is that it is a Slavic accent: Russian and Serbian accent sounds absolutely the same in English.

They do not. For example, Russians devoice final consonants, while Serbs do not. There is vowel reduction in Russian but there isn't in Serbian. Serbs do not palatalize consonants before [i].

Some Russian vowels that are a bit like a mix of two different vowels (from my perspective).

Do you mean they are pronounced like diphtongs? Or what? Could you give some examples?

Originally Posted by Deborski

Russians are usually very understanding of foreigners - with the exception of some countries they have been at war with. The situation may have been different for me if I was from the Caucasus for example.

No. There are many Caucasians in Russia, especially in Moscow. Many of them speak "limited Russian", and everybody understands them. They can learn at schools and institute and get work... One of my friends wanted to get a new work recently. He is a native Russian speaker, he owns a flat in Moscow... And he couldn't get this work because there were Caucasian workers who wanted to get this work too.

Originally Posted by Ramil

That depends on the point of view. If we consider all the former Ex-USSR republic as 'foreign' countries then yes, the situation has deteriorated rather dramatically, but if we only count the countries that were 'foreign' some 20 years ago then I think that the situation is the same.

Of course it became much worse everywhere. Russian stopped being taught in many countries and the number of students of Russian has decreased many times since that.

with the exception of some countries they have been at war with.

No. This doesn't matter at all.

Originally Posted by Marcus

They do not. For example, Russians devoice final consonants, while Serbs do not. There is vowel reduction in Russian but there isn't in Serbian. Serbs do not palatalize consonants before [i].

Do you mean they are pronounced like diphtongs? Or what? Could you give some examples?

For my ear this fake Russian sounds like a Bulgarian or in some phrases even like French. How this does this abracadabra sound for non-native Russian talkers?

Interesting. To me it sounds like a parody to Western Slavic languages - Czech or Polish. I would not guess that it's supposed to be Russian.

Вот, кстати, классная лекция по фонетике русского языка. Очень интересно пародируются иностранные акценты (в частности американский).
Я сам узнал много нового о фонетике русского языка. Не предполагал, что у нас два звука "р", а ведь так и есть.

классная лекция по фонетике русского языка

Серьезно ее воспринимать нельзя. Естественно, что аллофоны не считают разными фонемами. Про благозвучие, неудивительно, что не хотят признавать. В английском, конечно, есть звук гласный как в дядя. Русский язык миллион вещей утратил.

Ну, субъективность тут - часть жанра. Чтобы повосхищаться чем-то, надо обязательно подчеркнуть уникальность - такой художественный прием. И сделал это он не очень красиво - за счет других. Сколько бишь там гласных звуков мог отчетливо произнести профессор Хиггинс? Сто тридцать?

Но в целом идея выступления мне близка. Обкрадывают нас - и фонетически, и лексически, и грамматически, и даже синтаксически. Хотя лингвисты в этом не виноваты. В школе учат сознательно упрощенному варианту, минимуму - просто чтобы до каждого дошло. А потом этот самый каждый решает, что познал истину в высшей инстанции и начинает агрессивно выступать за "грамотность," разумея под этим какой-то уродский выхолощенный канцелярит.

А вот, кстати, в школе канцеляриту не учат. Это уже потом на рабочем месте. Типа занюханные бюрократы - большие начальники, хозяева жизни. Думай как они, говори как они, это - правильно и грамотно.

Despite the fact that the man in the video says nonsense, it's worth listening how he pronounces рррррь - few Russians can do it. Americans, is he imitating your accent correctly?

Originally Posted by Marcus

Despite the fact that the man in the video says nonsense, it's worth listening how he pronounces рррррь - few Russians can do it. Americans, is he imitating your accent correctly?

Whay exactly as you think is nonsense in his lecture? Which ideas concretly?

It DOES sound like a parody of Slavic languages, possibly Russian, but the rolling Rs are missing - that's a very obvious characteristic of Slavic langauges!
I can hear that this is not a genuine language and that they are making it up.

However, I can't tell the difference between ANY Slavic languages other than Russian and Polish (and as of lately, also Ukrainian and Belarussian.)

I couldn't say whether someone was speaking Czech or Slovakian or Serbian, Slovenian or Bulgarian....

I have learnt to recognize Romanian - not hard. But that is not really Slavic language, it just has some slavic words in it.

Can you Russian speakers differentiate between those langauges?

But pretty much all Western European languages are immediately recognizable, even if I don't speak them. A few small minority languages would be unrecognizable, but none of the national languages.

Can you Russian speakers differentiate between those langauges?

I can. Czech and Slovak have very many stressed Rs and Ls - syllabic consonants. Bulgarian sounds similar to Russian (free stress, vowel reduction, palatalized consonats), Serbian I know a little. It depends whether you heard those languages much or not. Most Russians never listen to other Slavic languages, probably can recognize only Ukrainian and Belorussian.