(no subject)

[tackiest.livejournal.com]

I was reading the short story <Слон> by Куприн from my Russian reader, and there is a part of it in which a German is talking, and is making mistakes, such as carrying the indefinite article into Russian (ex. Ещё один вопрос: позволит ли хозяин вашего дома вводить в свой дом один слон?).  This got me to wondering: are any grammitical mistakes that Russians typically associate with English speakers? Or are there any errors that you frequently hear English learners of Russian making? 

Comments

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

English, being a Germanic language, does not differ too much from German in Russia's mass consciousness. There is no idea of "typically German" or "typically English" mistakes - there's an idea of "typically foreign" mistakes instead. For an average Russian, all foreigners are pretty much the same; if our Typical Average Bearer of Russian Mass Consciousness singles out some of them, it's only because they have different accents. It is the heavy American accent with random stresses and Rs that one cannot tell from OOs that our T.A.B. of R.M.C. expects from an English speaker.
And those are the accents that average Russians mock in their jokes about foreigners, not grammar.
The only exception probably is for Turkic languages (and Asians in general) whose speakers, according to Russian Mass Consciousness, tend to use posessive pronouns instead of personal ones and imperatives instead of all other verb forms, like "моя сегодня туда не ходи" instead of "я сегодня туда не ходил" (I didn't go there today.)

P.S.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

As of the "errors that you frequently hear English learners of Russian making," the 1st place holds the trend to translate English sentences word-by-word in a hope that it results in a Russian sentence (which it never does.) A typical example: "любил ты Россию, когда ходил там?" (can you figure out what English phrase is that? ;))) -- while the correct version is somewhere around "понравилось ли тебе в России, когда ты туда ездил?".

[khathi.livejournal.com]

Just to add, if you still want to know typical grammatical errors, then for English-speaking people tne one most common problem would be the noun cases. While Russian case system in not that elaborate like, say, in Japanese, the case usage, wrong inclination and incorrect prepositions makes probably most frequent typer of mistakes. You can see it by youself in the cited phrase (there's German speaking, but the error type is the same), where nominative case is used instead of accusative, which would be correct.

[b0bb.livejournal.com]

"Я люблю знать если ты хочешь идти к ресторану сегодня?"
"Какой это есть время?"
"Я буду счастливый ответить на твои вопросы"
"Скажите, здесь продается славянский шкаф?"

[capa26.livejournal.com]

wolk_off, you mention that speakers of Turkic languages tend to use possesive pronouns instead of personal ones, is that where this comes from:
"моя твоя не понимать" (supposed to be I don't understand you)? From what I know it is poking fun at foreigners, but this might explain where it comes from.

[tackiest.livejournal.com]

Sorry if my cultural ignorance was showcased in adressing my question to the T.A.B. of R.M.C. Perhaps it would have been better if I would have asked: "Are there any grammatical mistakes often made by speakers of English that you, as individual human speakers of the Russian language, with your uniquely individual experiences and uniquely individual recollections of these experiences would care to relate to me?"

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Seriously speaking (sorry I wasn't too serious in my previous reply,) it's mostly the word-by-word translation of English sentences (which never results in an actual Russian sentence: I describe it one comment lower.) I can't think of any mistake more specific for English speakers (though I may be not too attentive.) This one -- applying English grammar and sencence construction to Russian, where it never works -- is quite usual for English speakers (to a different extent, of course.)

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much it, you're right. Normally it's "моя твоя не понимай", (my yours not understand,) which sounds completely Tatar or Uzbek for most Russians. A nice example is that character from the classic Soviet comedy "Джентльмены удачи" (literally, "The Gentlemen Of Fortune") called Vassily Ali-Babayevich (double pun: he has a Russian first name, but his patronymic suggests that his father was called Ali-Baba, after the famous Arabic&Iranian fairy tales' character.) In the episode with the roof cleaning, he shouts:
- Туда не ходи, сюда ходи! А то снег башка попадёт, совсем мёртвый будешь!
(something along the line of "there not walk, here walk! Or snow fall head, very dead will be!")

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

My best example is from my student days. In 1987 our University has been visited by a large group of Amrican students, who called themselves "Slavists". They were told that we were the TV department students, and I was approached by a nice girl who asked me:
- Вы конец изучаю Ти Ви?

Re: P.S.

[stephan-nn.livejournal.com]

And what about "Я имею что-то" instead of "У меня есть что-то"?

For non-Russian: In Russian slang "Я имею" is "I f**k" and we never say it as "I've got"

Re: P.S.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Oh, for heaven's sake. Needless generalizations badly mislead leaners :) Of course "я имею что-либо" instead of "у меня есть что-либо" sounds quite unnatural in Russian, but one must have a quite spoiled mind to suspect "I f**k" in every "я имею" :)))

Reminds me of that old joke:
- О чём думаете, товарищ сержант?
- О бабах, товарищ лейтенант.
- Как, под обстрелом - о бабах?!
- А я о них все время думаю, товарищ лейтенант.

(What are you thinking about, sergeant? -- Women, lieutenant, sir. - How? Thinking about women under the enemy's fire? -- That's what I think about all the time, lieutenant, sir.)