As unfortunate as it is to admit, foreign language education in the USSR was of very poor quality. Of course, there were specialized schools, but overall, most of us were taught in a rather sloppy and ineffective manner. I am a typical product of this education system: after seven years in school and then several more years at university, I could barely say anything in English (except for memorized phrases like “London is the capital of Great Britain”). However, I needed the language for work, so I turned to self-study. And I know many people who went through a similar path. Unfortunately, with this approach, people often carry a lot of accumulated problems that either stay with them forever or require careful correction, sometimes with the help of a good teacher.
Year after year, I’ve been actively working on improving my English, but it’s still far from perfect. Moreover, it’s impossible to fully master a foreign language once and for all. It’s a never-ending process—you will always be learning something new. That’s why I am very interested in how to improve language skills, what typical mistakes we might make, and why.
Then, unexpectedly at the end of 2019, a colleague recommended the book What Mean?, subtitled Where Russians Go Wrong in English. The author, Lynn Visson (née Elena Vladimirovna), grew up in the U.S. in a family of Russian-speaking emigrants. Her husband is also an emigrant from Soviet Leningrad. She holds a PhD in Slavic studies and worked for many years as a simultaneous interpreter at the UN from Russian to English. So she has an excellent grasp of the Russian-English language pair.
This book is one of many works by the author, but in this particular one, she focuses on the issues that arise not just between two languages, but more between two cultures—American and Russian.
The book begins with examples of direct translations of Russian phrases into English, which always puzzle native English speakers. The main example is highlighted in the book’s title: What Mean?—a literal translation of the Russian “Что значит… что-нибудь?” (the correct way to translate this into English would be “What does <something> mean?”). According to Lynn, this was a phrase her mother often used, despite speaking English fluently. And Americans would never understand a question phrased like that.
The entire book is built on the analysis of such examples and immediately draws you in from the first pages. The further you read, the more you realize that most mistakes are often caused not by a lack of language knowledge, but by applying Russian logic and cultural norms when trying to speak a foreign language. You can list examples of errors endlessly, but it’s far more important to show where they stem from. By about a third of the way into the book, you realize that it’s not just about the differences between languages, but rather about the differences between the cultures of typical Americans and typical Russians. Language is never just a collection of words—it reflects the culture that nurtured it.
The book makes heavy use of phrases in both languages, as the principles and traditions of one language are constantly compared with the other. In some cases, no direct translation exists, or the direct translation itself becomes the very mistake that should be avoided.
I would recommend this book not only to Russian speakers but also to English speakers, as it explains the cultural reasons behind many of the peculiarities of our speech, which may sometimes come across as negative or rude to Americans, even though no offense was intended by the Russian speaker. At the same time, the book provides enough examples showing the richness and differences of both languages. For some concepts, Russian may seem “poor,” while other Russian words and phrases are nearly impossible to translate directly into English with all their nuances, because the very concepts or traditions don’t exist in American culture.
It’s worth noting, though, that while the book will be useful to both Russian and English speakers, it is written in such a way that the reader should ideally have at least basic knowledge of both languages.
The book was translated into Russian and published in 2005 under the title Русские проблемы в английской речи. Слова и фразы в контексте двух культур (Russian Problems in English Speech: Words and Phrases in the Context of Two Cultures). Overall, the translation is decent—I skimmed through it. However, if you have the chance, I’d recommend reading it in English, as any translation inevitably risks losing some nuances and subtleties.
The final section of the book compiles examples of incorrect usage of specific words. But it’s here where the author seems to speed up, as if in a rush, because if you don’t already instinctively feel the differences in nuances, it’s hard (or even impossible) to understand from the examples what exactly the mistake is and why one option is correct while the other is not.
Overall, though, this is definitely one of the best books I read in 2019.
My rating: 4.5/5
