Kazan — summer 2012

I have a new language partner for the summer. He has reinforced the following impressions.

1. They speak at machine gun fire rate. It takes a major effort for them to slow down to talk to foreigners. And if they talk at machine gun rate and are using simple words and you can't understand them, they think you are mentally deficient.
2. They speak softly. They are brought up that way. Talking loudly is considered either gauche or egotistical. So how the hell are we supposed to understand them if they can't speak loudly enough for us to hear their words???
3. They hardly open their mouths when they speak. This makes the problem just mentioned even worse.
4. Entire syllables vanish when they are talking. Tebe becomes te. Govorit becomes grit. Skazat becomes skat. These ones I get nowadays, but they are tough for beginners.
5. They have entire conversations without verbs. Oh, sure, in class we teach our students how to construct Russian sentences so that they all hang together in a sensible way. But then you find out Russians often leave 2/3 of the sentence out completely.
6. When you are walking alongside them, they assume that you can hear their words even if their head is pointed away from you. That's not how it works, Russkis! Pull your heads out!
7. They want to show you places that are interesting to them in Russia, but all those places have ridiculous background noise which makes it much more difficult to hear them.
8. Sometimes Russian just doesn't make sense. For instance, otmena means cancellation, but the adjective otmenny, which would seem to be derived from it, means excellent. Huh? Where'd that come from?
9. Stress usually isn't confusing, but sometimes is. Zdórovo means great, but zdoróvo means ‘hi.’ Vodíchka means water, but vódochka means vodka. Pisál means ‘he was writing,’ but písal means ‘he was pissing.’
10. Word order is often not significant. ‘Anna ljubit Pavla’ means ‘Anna loves Paul.’ ‘Pavla ljubit Anna’ also means ‘Anna loves Paul.’