you know you've been taking Russian too long when...

[quem98.livejournal.com]

I've started dropping random pronouns from my papers in English. I've caught myself writing way too many sentances using passive voice. Ok in Russian... In English, to quote Jon Stewart... Not so much.

Has this happened to anyone else?

Just curious.

Comments

[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

I fucked up my syntax the other day... though I don't remember when/how. I just remember thinking that it was reminicent of my Russian/Latin/Japanese (all 3 of which allow and/or encourage the verb at the end of the sentence, where it should be in the middle in an English one)

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

I have not been learning Russian long, but occasionally cannot remember how a normal English 'N'is written and write it as an 'И' by mistake.

[morgenstern180.livejournal.com]

i do that more often with "R"s myself. then i have to say, "oops, wrong language..." and roll my eyes at myself...

[ars-longa.livejournal.com]

Ummm... what are random pronouns?

As fot passive voice - well, I'm using it quite frequently, but all my native-speaking friends say it's OK.

It would be interesting to compare what are the most difficult things for English speaker in Russian and vice versa. For me it's verb tenses (especially past tenses) and articles. For English people, I imagine, it should be падежи?

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

English verb tenses, oh my, they make me kkkrrrazy :)

[surok75.livejournal.com]

For me, as a native English speaker, it's perfective and imperfective. Cases are not really that hard once you get to grips with them.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_viola/]

How long have you been learning Russian?

[surok75.livejournal.com]

10 years, very on and off.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_viola/]

I've always thought that must be hard for foreigners! There are so many differently-constructed tenses in English. It's much more straight forward in Russian (and French too).

[quem98.livejournal.com]

Pronouns are words such as
I, You, They, He, She i tak dalee

[wolfie-18.livejournal.com]

In speech, I sometimes substitute an English word for a Russian word... and sometimes omit "the" and "a," but nothing serious ;)

[soidisantfille.livejournal.com]

Occasionally I find that, ever since I started learning Russian, I've started consciously thinking a couple of words ahead in English (I find I have to do this in Russian, to make sure that all the words are in agreement) and everything comes out a jumbled mess. I sometimes feel that learning a new language is making me more inarticulate in my native language!

As for confusions with the alphabet, I see tend to see the English 'H' as a Russian 'n' everywhere.

[sashwizzled.livejournal.com]

I've gotten mixed up between Russian and German before - I also called a car a Машина during my German assistant session the other day; the problem with that was that we were all speaking in English at the time and I had no way of using the 'I've mixed up my Russian and German!' excuse. ::eyeroll::

[thedevilishone.livejournal.com]

I have a hard time writing in English cursive now, even though I live in America. Haha. I've been practicing my Russian cursive.