«Осторожно, русский язык!» [Careful, Russian language!] Posted by josefina on Apr 28, 2010 in language, Russian for beginners, Russian life, when in Russia
If only this wasn’t a joke «объявление» [advertisement, announcement; declaration, proclamation; notification] made by some «хитрые филологи» [here: clever philologists], but «правда» [truth, verity, fact] instead! «Перевожу с руского на русский» [(I) translate from Rusian to Russian]. Because sometimes that’s just exactly what we all need, right?
Today one foreign student here in Yekaterinburg asked me: «Есть ли разница между словами обман и обмен?» [Is there any difference between the words ‘fraud’ and ‘exchange’?]. I answered: «Да, и разница довольно большая» [Yes, and the difference is rather big]. Even though these two tiny words might sound and look practically the same – only the last vowel differs between them – they mean far from the same thing. If you use «обман» [fraud, deceit; trickery, deception; delusion, illusion; dishonesty, fraudulence] instead of «обмен» [exchange, conversion; swap, trade] and say to a Russian: «я приехал по обману» [I came here by fraud (or: by deceit)], then there is a big chance that this Russian will get you all wrong. What you meant to say was of course: «я приехал по обмену» [I came here on exchange (or better translated as: I came here as an exchange student)]. This particular foreign student had apparently tried to explain to a Russian friend how he came to study at Ural State University this semester, but said «по обману» instead of «по обмену». This had caused his Russian friend to suddenly become very suspect of him. But haven’t we all been there? Or if not yet, then we’ll all probably end up in the same situation sooner or later. «К русскому языку нужно относиться осторожно» [One has to ‘regard’ the Russian language carefully] – so true!
For the longest time I kept confusing two Russian words with each other that are actually as hard to confuse for a native speaker as «обман» and «обмен» (because if its your native language you don’t make these kinds of silly mistakes). When speaking – note that I always got it right when writing – I would constantly mix up «отчество» [patronymic, family name, made from father’s name] with «Отечество» [native land, fatherland, homeland]. These two words are really too close in the way they’re written, even though their differing pronunciation should help a bit. Well, for many years this didn’t help me. Not the least! Almost everywhere in Russia where people ask to see my passport they always ask me: «А отчество где?» [But where’s the patronymic?] All Russians have a patronymic but no Swedes have one. For years I would try and try to get it right but still I always answered tragically wrong by saying: «у меня нет Отечества» [I don’t have a fatherland/native land]. Of course they didn’t ask me ‘where is your fatherland?’ and thus the correct answer should have been: «у меня нет отчества» [I don’t have a patronymic]. It is alright to say that you don’t have a patronymic – that sort of thing happens, especially if you’re dealing with foreigners in Russia – but to say that you don’t have a native land! Now that’s a bit «печально» [sad]… Even today I have to make an effort to say «отчество» instead of «Отечество» when needed. And I hope that after this blog post – after having gone public about my mistake – it will be cured for all eternity!
Have you ever confused two Russian words – that sound or are spelled very similar – with each other and made a fool of yourself? Share this story with all of us and maybe you’ll save us from making the same mistake!
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Comments:
Seb D:
Derevny and derevyany; ancient vs. wooden.
I spend a lot of time telling people I sing wooden folk songs.
Austin:
I haven’t ever made this mistake yet, but I anticipate that I might one day mix up “образование” (education) with “обрезание” (circumcision)!
Ryan:
Don’t really have any interesting stories; however, I was wondering if you guys (that is to say, Josefina и Елена) would be interesting in doing a post or series of posts on sociolinguistic topics in Russian. Maybe as a starter you could talk about the variant pronunciations of творог? I’ve been told that the standard pronunciation has the stress on the first syllable, but what exactly does it say about you if you make the stress pattern more Russian and put it on the second syllable? Are there other words like this? What are they? Are there certain syntactical constructions that the educated have been told to avoid, but are in common use by everyone else? Or perhaps you could talk about attempts at gender neutrality and their interactions with Russian’s grammatical gender?
Or don’t, I understand this is a blog for language learning, and if you want to keep it that way go for it.
josefina:
Austin: if I had known the word обрезание a few years back then I would surely have said it many times instead of образоавние. Good thing I didn’t know it back then – mixing up those two words as a woman really makes NO sense!
Seb D: I’m feeling you. So many years spent telling people I have no homeland when what I really wanted to inform them of was that I lack a patronymic…
Ryan: I think your ideas are very interesting! Especially the last one (I’m a dedicated feminist). Allow me to do some research first and keep your eyes open for posts on the subject in the future!
Bill:
In class a few weeks ago several of us were tripping over a piece of dialog from the Голоса textbook. Rather than «Вы принимаете кредитные карточки?» (Do you accept credit cards?) the word stress kept getting mangled into «Вы принимаете кредитные картошки?» (Do you accept credit potatoes?)
Bill
Colin:
I know they’re not really that similar, but I often confuse дерево, tree, and деревня, village. Maybe it helps to admit it, as you did, and write it down, so it’ll never be a problem again:-)
Paul:
Ryan: I have been told that кофе is sometimes mistakenly used as neuter word by less educated people, as in oдно кофе, пожалуйста! The way this was explained to me, it sounded almost like a social ‘marker’. Now what to do with капуччино? The dictionary says it is neuter, but it also is a ‘coffee’. Одно или один капуччино, пожалуйста?
Alan:
Josefina Hi,
I had exactly the same problem you experienced with «отчество» [patronymic] and «Отечество» [native land] but it did not show up with my passport, it was in the Russian national anthem. Considering the history of this great country it is the most moving national anthem I have ever heard and I made a point of learning it beginning to end. The first line of the chorus is … Славься, Отечество наше свободное,[ Be glorious, our free Fatherland]. While delivering a rendition at our School Concert, three times I announced …. Be glorious, our free patronymic. I can assure you , with such humiliation the difference is burned so strongly in my memory I will NEVER repeat this mistake. Now I love to sing this anthem correctly. Isn’t that life … our biggest mistakes are our best lessons.
Keep on blogging.
Alan.
josefina:
Alan, that’s such an entertaining and awfully embarrasing story! I laughed out loud while reading it… Maybe you and I should start a club and try to connect with others that have also done the same terrible mistake?
Nazli:
Hi everyone,
I was always confused with \здание/ building and /задание/task. One time our russian teacher asked this in final exam. And I just did it wrong! So I learned this in a very painful way.. 🙁 Like Colin said, I never forget the difference now!
Take care,
Nazli
Minority:
I think a lot of confusion may cause pairs of words like “трава”[grass] – “дрова”[firewood], “счета” [accounts, bills] – “щетка”[brush], “дело”[affair, work, business, occupation] – “тело”[body] – they sound similar 🙂
Doug:
I’m a bit late reading this discussion, but thought I’d share a pair of words that have caused me trouble:
суверенный and суеверный
sovereign and superstitious
I mixed these two words up years ago when writing a paper on the Soviet military-industrial complex. The professor didn’t understand how I could mix those words up!
Maria:
Oh… Well, for me it is a lot harder to remember where to put the accent. So I have a painful experience when I put the wrong accent on ‘писать’. All other words usually just end up sounding plain funny to Russian speakers…
Шарри:
First I want to say that I like this blog, I just found it! It’s great!
Now about messing up words. I have a very good example of that. When I just started to learn Russian, I messed up the words – плакать (to cry) and платить (to pay).
As a result, when I was in a big Russian shop for the first time, I asked everyone ” я хочу плакать! где я могу плакать?” (I want to cry, where can I cry?). This was very funny and the people where I asked this too were almost laughing at me.. ))