Friendly.

[lovimoment.livejournal.com]

I am trying to find a way to say that the Russian-speaking community in Washington is very friendly, and I'm not sure which word I want - I guess I'm trying to say welcoming and open to friendship. What are the differences between the words below? Are my impressions of them correct?

дружелюбный - This seems to me like a good word to describe a person, like "he's a friendly guy."

дружественный - Maybe this is what I want? I'm worried it sounds a little too abstract, like something that would be between organizations or countries instead of people.

дружеский - This seems like friendly in the sense of being on good terms, like дружеские отношения.

As I understand it дружный means "close" or "tight-knit," as in у нас очень дружная семья (our family is very close).

Comments

[scolar.livejournal.com]

Your impressions about these words are correct. The problem is that none of them can be used to characterize the community ("община") in Russian.

[nodarius.livejournal.com]

Good point. Words, which characterise a community as a whole, tends to be negative. Positive ones usually describe single individual rather than collective individual, so to speak.

[oryx_and_crake]

Words, which characterise a community as a whole, tends to be negative.
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How do you mean? I tend to disagree. There is no such rule. Could you give a few examples please?

[nodarius.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it is me, as positive words usually have negative connotations of some sort, as I explained below

[oryx_and_crake]

It's just you. There is no such rule or tendency. What about "гостеприимное сообщество", for example? Does this bear negative connotations for you as well? Evidently not, as I see that you seconded it below.

[nodarius.livejournal.com]

All right, let it be just me :). The problem with гостеприимное сообщество is that it sounds unnatural, I would never say that, but rather something like они гостеприимные meaning a family or other more or less formally united collective individual, e.g. people at some office or group of very close friends etc.

[lovimoment.livejournal.com]

I don't know...what about a splochyonnyi kollektiv? That sounds very positive to me. (But again, not what I was looking for.:))

[nodarius.livejournal.com]

Yes, сплоченный коллектив does exist, but it is heavily connected with with soviet era mantras, at least to me, so it sounds like an empty shell, a meaningless formula, like many other essentially warm and important words. E.g. товарищ -- a very nice word indeed, but it was terribly overused...