# Do your thing



## Maroseika

palomnik said:


> I have always felt that Russian has a tendency toward precision that English lacks, at least in spoken English. Sometimes that means you can say things in English that make no sense in Russian. For example, how can you say "do your thing" in Russian?


Занимайся своим делом.
or simply
Не лезь, куда не просят.
(If I got it correct, of course).


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## Brian P

Maroseika said:


> Занимайся своим делом.
> or simply
> Не лезь, куда не просят.
> (If I got it correct, of course).


 
Maroseika, I think that you are confusing "Do your own thing" with "Mind your own business".

"Do your own thing" is an expression that was fashionable in the 60's.  It means to do what you want, even if others disapprove, as long as you do no harm to anyone.  For example, if you have an intimate relationship with somebody who is much older or younger, or who is of a different race or religion, others may disapprove but, since you are not hurting anyone, it's all right for you to "do your own thing".

Have I explained clearly?

Brian


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## Q-cumber

palomnik said:


> I have always felt that Russian has a tendency toward precision that English lacks, at least in spoken English. Sometimes that means you can say things in English that make no sense in Russian. For example, how can you say "do your thing" in Russian?



Something like "действуй без оглядки!"


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## Athaulf

Q-cumber said:


> Something like "действуй без оглядки!"



Just out of curiosity, how would Russians interpret _действуй по-своему_?


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## Maroseika

Brian P said:


> Maroseika, I think that you are confusing "Do your own thing" with "Mind your own business".
> 
> "Do your own thing" is an expression that was fashionable in the 60's. It means to do what you want, even if others disapprove, as long as you do no harm to anyone. For example, if you have an intimate relationship with somebody who is much older or younger, or who is of a different race or religion, others may disapprove but, since you are not hurting anyone, it's all right for you to "do your own thing".
> 
> Have I explained clearly?
> 
> Brian


Yes, thanks.
Then I can offer:
*Ну, (смотри), дело хозяйское.*
or
*Поступай, как знаешь.*
I guess these expressions combine in due proportion disapproval and allowance to proceed like you decided.
*Действуй без оглядки* rather means that the speaker is approving and even encouraging you, which, as far as I understand, is not the case of the English expression.


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## Maroseika

Athaulf said:


> Just out of curiosity, how would Russians interpret _действуй по-своему_?


Do like you want.


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## Q-cumber

Indeed, "Поступай, как знаешь." seems to be a good variant. However, it is normally used as a "give up" expression and impies some passive disapproval. 
For example:
- Mom, I am about to marry this <70-year-old> woman.
- Поступай, как знаешь! (...pretty stupid idea, but what can I do? you are an adult...)
Another option woud be "живи своим умом" (live with your own mind). It's more like a motto.


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## palomnik

I sort of feel like the godfather of this thread, if not the owner!

Actually, when I raised the subject of translating "do your thing" into Russian, I meant it as a rhetorical question.  Yes, it can mean all the things that everybody has described above, and more.  In the spirit of the 60's, it was designed to be deliberately vague, implying that nobody should set limits on what you do, as long as you're happy doing it and it's not harming anybody.

English can get away with being that vague; I don't think that Russian can and still be idiomatic, it's just not part of the nature of Russian.  I often think of languages in terms of having a "center of gravity", and Russian's center is decidedly higher than English's center is.


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## Saluton

Other possible versions for _do your thing_ may include:
_делай (то), что хочешь_
_делай то, чего просит душа_
or even
_гни свою линию_
Out of the versions listed here, I liked _действуй по-своему_ most of all

Palomnik, your idea of a "center of gravity" sounds very interesting, what exactly do you mean by that?


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## palomnik

Saluton said:


> Other possible versions for _do your thing_ may include:
> _делай (то), что хочешь_
> _делай то, чего просит душа_
> or even
> _гни свою линию_
> Out of the versions listed here, I liked _действуй по-своему_ most of all
> 
> Palomnik, your idea of a "center of gravity" sounds very interesting, what exactly do you mean by that?


 
It's difficult to describe in a few words.  In general, it means that languages with a higher "center of gravity" have stricter limitations, generally syntactically, on how you can say things; in general a language with a higher center of gravity favors more precision.

For example, in English you can say "a bird is in the tree".  You can say this in German too, but it's better if you say "Der Vogel _sitzt_ im Baume", i.e., the bird is sitting in the tree.  Of course, obviously you can say "the bird is sitting in the tree" in English too, but you don't have to unless you have a specific reason to say it that way.

In Russian people идут, cars едут, ships плывут; in English they just "go."  Russian texts for foreigners stress reviewing lists of словосочетания, and while the concept is not unknown in English, it gets less attention, since English speakers to some extent avoid pairing words together, unless it's in technical or legal writing.

It's tempting to say that synthetic languages tend to have a higher center of gravity while analytic languages don't, but that's not necessarily true; languages with a "high" center of gravity include Russian, German, Spanish, Swedish (which is relatively analytic), and Japanese.  Languages with a "low" center of gravity include English, Portuguese, Chinese, Swahili (which is relatively synthetic).

I suppose I took the analogy from automobiles; cars with a high center of gravity are very sturdy and can negotiate any terrain, as long as you don't push them to do things they're not designed for, like drive too fast or turn too quickly, in which case they may tip over.  Cars with a low center of gravity can go really fast and turn quickly, as long as the road bed doesn't have too many bumps, in which case they will quickly break down.

In some ways it's a stylistic difference; in some other ways I suspect that it's a reflection of the society that speaks the language.

None of this is very scientific but I have found that in learning a new language, getting a feel for the center of gravity can help considerably in learning how to speak properly.


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## Saluton

Thanks a lot, palomnik. I was surprised to learn myself that cars and ships are also supposed to идти in Russian; едут and плывут is considered colloquial. That's what they taught me at the uni, while hardly anyone knows it anyway... It's people in cars and on ships who ездят, and if they плавают, they are in the water or under water themselves. Weird, I agree. But of course, I understand what you mean about словосочетания (aren't those called word combinations or collocations?).


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## Kolan

Saluton said:


> was surprised to learn myself that cars and ships are also supposed to идти in Russian; едут and плывут is considered colloquial. That's what they taught me at the uni, while hardly anyone knows it anyway... It's people in cars and on ships who ездят, and if they плавают, they are in the water or under water themselves.


Cars can never *идти*, unless it is a huge truck, a road train or a long bus that has poor manoeuvrability, and it still would refer to its load or passengers not car. A *bus идёт* (по маршруту), of course, (as well a ship), but a *car едет*.

I would say, it does not even depend on a kind of vehicle, it more about how the whole thing moves generally. *Едет* is just a faster action, implicitly using wheels OR it can describe a lengthy undetermined transportation using different kinds of vehicles or even animals. E.g., "он едет к нам из Москвы", it could be just anything, including airplane.


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## tram-pam-pam

Здравствуйте 


Kolan said:


> Cars can never *идти*, unless it is a huge truck, a road train or a long bus that has poor manoeuvrability, and it still would refer to its load or passengers not car. A *bus идёт* (по маршруту), of course, (as well a ship), but a *car едет*.



"Скорость позади *идущего* в соседнем ряду автомобиля  больше вашей..." (Автомобильная библиотека)

"При управлении машиной/автомобилем, *идущей/-им *на большой скорости, крайне опасно..."

"Красная Honda *[по]шла* на обгон..."
"Машины *идут *беспрерывным потоком"

What’s wrong with *идти* here? Too colloquial? 

ps
Also, a car can *ползти*. Sometimes.


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## Redisca

tram-pam-pam said:


> Also, a car can *ползти*. Sometimes.



Well, cars can crawl in English too, can't they?  

Cars and ships don't just "go" in English. I know the perpetual joke among former ESL students that if you just learn the verbs "to go" and "to get", you can say virtually anything in English, but the bare minimum of vocabulary does not define the outer limit of how the language is actually used. Cars, ships, and trains sometimes "go", but sometimes they "move", and sometimes they "travel" -- and this, without considering descriptions of _abnormalities _in movement (lurching, crawling, barreling down, ploughing, furrowing the sea, careening, etc.) Ships also "sail", "drift" and "float". It's true that English verbs are not particularly fastidious in distinguishing between different modes of transportation, but there are many other dimensions of meaning that a chosen word conveys. English is ambiguous about _the thing_ that moves, but is very precise about _how_ it moves.  By contrast, notice how, while Russian is precise in distinguishing between cars and ships, it's _*im*_precise when it comes to sailing versus swimming. The movement of a person in water and that of a ship are described by the same verb -- плавать. 

The whole concept of precision in one language versus ambiguity in another is a bit sweeping.  A given language is more precise than another in some aspects, less precise in others.  Sometimes a single Russian word will have many possible equivalents in English; and vice versa.  Perusing a 1950's edition of  *Домоводство* (the cooking section), my husband and I mused on how many words there are in English-language recipes encompassed by the single Russian word мешать and its permutations (помешать, смешать, перемешать): mix, toss, fold (in), stir -- and there were others I just can't recall now.  I heard -- though I don't have any first-hand knowledge of this, so don't shoot me -- that Inuit languages have simply mind-boggling numbers of snow-related words, sometimes as many as 70 words which would translate into English merely as "snowflake"; and if true, this certainly means that Inuit languages tend to be very precise about snow, but I am not sure this alone is evidence that they are more precise than English _in everything_.

Sorry to be so verbose, but my point is that languages just "think" differently.  Why some things are important enough to be meticulously characterized and others are dismissed with a shorthand in a particular language is certainly an intricate historical and cultural question, but it is not as simple as some languages being overall more precise than others.

IMHO, of course.


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## Kolan

tram-pam-pam said:


> "Скорость позади *идущего* в соседнем ряду автомобиля больше вашей..." (Автомобильная библиотека)
> 
> "При управлении машиной/автомобилем, *идущей/-им *на большой скорости, крайне опасно..."
> 
> "Красная Honda *[по]шла* на обгон..."
> "Машины *идут *беспрерывным потоком"
> 
> What’s wrong with *идти* here? Too colloquial?


Except of the Honda example (which describes a different action using a verb of movement), the above sentences are correct but still irrelevant to the discussion. (the examples introduced by palomnik are _simple sentences_).

Just think about a simple sentence _out of context_, like this

_Автомобиль идёт._

You need a context to make it sound naturally. For example, машина идёт (шла) в левом ряду.

If you say 

_Машина едет._

then it can be without context.

However, the following you can say without context and it would sound naturally:

Автобус идёт. (in fact, едет).
Поезда идут.
Русские идут. (in fact, едут на танках).


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## Kolan

redisca said:


> the Movement Of A Person In Water And That Of A Ship Are Described By The Same Verb -- плавать.


*Плыть.* Плавать brings you nowhere.


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## Redisca

Kolan said:


> *Плыть.* Плавать brings you nowhere.



It's still the same root, and it's equally applicable to vessels and people.


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## Kolan

Redisca said:


> It's still the same root, and it's equally applicable to vessels and people.


It is of the same root, but means different things

Корабль плывёт (sails to a destination).
Корабль плавает (does not sink OR moves around more or less indefinitely).


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## tram-pam-pam

> _Машина едет._
> Автобус идёт. (in fact, едет).
> Поезда идут.
> Русские идут. (in Fact, едут на танках).


"Плывут пароходы - привет Мальчишу!
   Пролетают летчики - привет Мальчишу!
   Пробегут паровозы - привет Мальчишу!
   А пройдут пионеры - ..."


Ok.


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## Redisca

Kolan said:


> It is of the same root, but means different things
> 
> Корабль плывёт (sails to a destination).
> Корабль плавает (does not sink OR moves around more or less indefinitely).



Again, in both forms the verb is applicable to _both_ ships and people.  Человек плывет, человек плавает.  Whether one or the other is used, the Russian language does not make a distinction between living things and inanimate objects here; hence it is imprecise in that aspect.  In English, by contrast, only a ship can sail -- and only a person or an animal can swim.


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## Kolan

Redisca said:


> Again, in both forms the verb is applicable to _both_ ships and people. Человек плывет, человек плавает. Whether one or the other is used, the Russian language does not make a distinction between living things and inanimate objects here; hence it is imprecise in that aspect. In English, by contrast, only a ship can sail -- and only a person or an animal can swim.


Well, Russian makes distinction between the movement patterns while in water and offers at least 2 corresponding verbs to describe such a difference.

Let's pretend, scientists invent a sort of artificial frog (inanimate, made of mechanical and electronic parts, including microprocessor-enabled artificial intelligence) capable of setting up targets and of moving autonomously in water. How English would deal with that, sail or swim?


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## Redisca

Kolan said:


> Well, Russian makes distinction between the movement patterns while in water and offers at least 2 corresponding verbs to describe such a difference.


My point is that a language may be "precise" in ONE ASPECT of meaning and "imprecise" in ANOTHER ASPECT.  Do we agree there are a number of distinctions that could be made in a given situation?  Russian may permutate a verb to distinguish between two continuous tenses (I still don't agree these are two separate verbs) -- but it does NOT, in any way, shape or form, assign different verbs based on the qualities of the subject.  That is ALL I am saying -- and it seems like you are trying to dispute my assertion that apples are green (Granny Smith apples, okay?) by proving that oranges are orange.



Kolan said:


> Let's pretend, scientists invent a sort of artificial frog (inanimate, made of mechanical and electronic parts, including microprocessor-enabled artificial intelligence) capable of setting up targets and of moving autonomously in water. How English would deal with that, sail or swim?


  I think English would deal with that by inventing a new verb.


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## Kolan

Redisca said:


> My point is that a language may be "precise" in ONE ASPECT of meaning and "imprecise" in ANOTHER ASPECT. Do we agree there are a number of distinctions that could be made in a given situation? Russian may permutate a verb to distinguish between two continuous tenses (I still don't agree these are two separate verbs) -- but it does NOT, in any way, shape or form, assign different verbs based on the qualities of the subject. That is ALL I am saying -- and it seems like you are trying to dispute my assertion that apples are green (Granny Smith apples, okay?) by proving that oranges are orange.


This deduction reminds me of an advertising (motto) printed on a jar of dill pickles: "Slice it one way or another, the same great taste". However, we are in a different situation.

I am disputing the way you slice the matter of locomotions of floating objects. To me, in English, it is not an animate/inanimate split, it is rather about how the floating object develops the necessary force against resistance. If a ship then she sails, and this is a fairly redundant construction. (In English, a mechanical frog would swim, like its natural prototype does.) However, Russian compared to that offers another degree of freedom.


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## Redisca

Kolan said:


> I am disputing the way you slice the matter of locomotions of floating objects. To me, in English, it is not an animate/inanimate split, it is rather about how the floating object develops the necessary force against resistance. If a ship then she sails, and this is a fairly redundant construction. (In English, a mechanical frog would swim, like its natural prototype does.) However, Russian compared to that offers another degree of freedom.



Okay, so what you are saying is that English offers one degree of "freedom" (a statement that would require, of course, the completely incorrect assumption that only one English verb can describe an object's locomotion in water), whereas Russian offers TWO degrees of "freedom"?  So far, I've seen you point out one.  What's the other?  Or are you saying two verbs equals two degrees of freedom?  Well, then, doesn't English have at least two verbs as well?  Clarify, por favor.


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## Kolan

Redisca said:


> Okay, so what you are saying is that English offers one degree of "freedom" (a statement that would require, of course, the completely incorrect assumption that only one English verb can describe an object's locomotion in water), whereas Russian offers TWO degrees of "freedom"? So far, I've seen you point out one. What's the other? Or are you saying two verbs equals two degrees of freedom? Well, then, doesn't English have at least two verbs as well? Clarify, por favor.


I already explained the issue, _plus haut_. Two similar verbs do not represent necessarily two degrees of freedom. Indeed, one of them (_to sail_) is not "free" compared, if not figuratively used, to another one, _to swim_.

Unlike in English, in Russian the pair _плыть_-_плавать_ represents both equally free degrees (allowing for a wide substition of the subject to any extent, including, for example, _топор_). In English _an axe_ cannot swim nor sail.

Actually, a great deal of Russian verbs demonstrates a similar freedom in pairs, like _волочить-влечь_, _рожать-рождать_, _разворачивать-развращать_, _наживать-наживлять_ и т.д., которые пришли в современный язык большей частью независимо из соответственно древнерусского и церковнославянского и остались в нём, придавая языку то самое внутреннее "второе измерение", которое заключает в себе уникальный, богатейший потенциал смысловых оттенков. Английский, опираясь в целом на далеко отстоящие лексические корни, такого феномена практически не знает (за исключением, может быть, ограниченного числа парных заимствований из латыни и французского, а также древнескандинавского и немецкого), отсюда - его "сухость". Скажем, во французском таких пар гораздо больше, чем в английском (например, _parfaire-perfectionner, écrire-scripter, dire-dicter_) благодаря схожему с русским языком механизмом формирования лексической базы из старофранцузского и латинского, отчего, в какой-то степени, французский гораздо "сочнее" и так приятнее русскому уху по сравнению с английским.


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## Redisca

The idea of a language being "dry" because its variety of expression is derived from a great number of different roots, as opposed to permutating a smaller number of roots, is fundamentally subjective. English may not form the aforementioned pairs too often, but it has a greater number of different words to convey different shades of meaning (which reminds me, I forgot to mention "to cruise" as another equivalent of the Russian continuous tense, "plus haut" as you put it). It's also curious that you note how Russian was rendered "rich" as opposed to "dry" by its ancient history. The English language is at least as old and finds its origins in the Saxon, French, Latin and Norse languages -- and it is these languages that gave _English _its mind-bogglingly vast vocabulary and its spare, elegant, flexible grammar.

Bottom line, to say that achieving variety through a greater number of root words makes a language "dry" is certainly far-fetched, at least for me. It is one thing to describe a language as more synthetic than analytical, quite another to make a sweeping value judgment in the nature of "dry" or "rich". Although I am sure your English is fabulous, the idea of this language being "dry" is usually a function of one's narrow vocabulary, rather than anything being wrong with the language itself. (As an aside, in my experience, every single person I've met who argues that Shakespeare is "better" in Marshak's Russian translation has never read, nor has the ability to comprehend, the English original; for the record, I've read both.) Moreover, I suspect the idea of English being "dry" is at least to some extent a projection of commonly held stereotypes about the British demeanor and culture. I also know French pretty well (I'd better, I have a degree in it, after all), and I am also familiar with Langue d'Oeil. I do know what they sound like to the Russophone ear, Russian being my native language. However, I have the rare luxury of having _two_ native languages (or primary languages, if you want to split hairs), and in my estimation, the vocabulary and grammatical structure of both modern French and old northern French are a lot closer to English than to Russian. 

Latin is beyond my ken, however -- I've had but the most superficial training in it -- and so I'll leave that particular issue to those more competent than I.
---------------------------------------------------------------

A pointless argument is sometimes made by taking a line of Russian poetry and asking a rhetorical question "How can you possibly express so much beauty in a language as dry as English?"  Fine -- but despite Russian supposedly being so superior, the Russian-speaking world is yet to see a decent translation of Dylan Thomas' poetry.  Why is that, I wonder?


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## palomnik

Redisca said:


> The idea of a language being "dry" because its variety of expression is derived from a great number of different roots, as opposed to permutating a smaller number of roots, is fundamentally subjective. English may not form the aforementioned pairs too often, but it has a greater number of different words to convey different shades of meaning (which reminds me, I forgot to mention "to cruise" as another equivalent of the Russian continuous tense, "plus haut" as you put it). It's also curious that you note how Russian was rendered "rich" as opposed to "dry" by its ancient history. The English language is at least as old and finds its origins in the Saxon, French, Latin and Norse languages -- and it is these languages that gave _English _its mind-bogglingly vast vocabulary and its spare, elegant, flexible grammar.


 
Bravo, Redisca! I agree with you, at least as regards Shakespeare.  He's had some valiant translators into Russian, and some good work has been done on him into German, but aside from that he doesn't translate adequately. 

In my opinion, English can be an excellent language for expressing about anything, but it has become debased in the last century as a literary language, partly because it has become so widespread, but also because it has become the language of technology and even worse, because it has become the _language par _excellence of publicity.

When I was in India in 2006 I was dismayed to see the number of advertisements in Hindi, written in the Roman alphabet - or the English alphabet, which amounts to the same thing in India.  The same can be said in Japan.


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## Kolan

Redisca said:


> The idea of a language being "dry" because its variety of expression is derived from a great number of different roots, as opposed to permutating a smaller number of roots, is fundamentally subjective. English may not form the aforementioned pairs too often, but it has a greater number of different words to convey different shades of meaning (which reminds me, I forgot to mention "to cruise" as another equivalent of the Russian continuous tense, "plus haut" as you put it). It's also curious that you note how Russian was rendered "rich" as opposed to "dry" by its ancient history. The English language is at least as old and finds its origins in the Saxon, French, Latin and Norse languages -- and it is these languages that gave _English _its mind-bogglingly vast vocabulary and its spare, elegant, flexible grammar.
> 
> Bottom line, to say that achieving variety through a greater number of root words makes a language "dry" is certainly far-fetched, at least for me. It is one thing to describe a language as more synthetic than analytical, quite another to make a sweeping value judgment in the nature of "dry" or "rich". Although I am sure your English is fabulous, the idea of this language being "dry" is usually a function of one's narrow vocabulary, rather than anything being wrong with the language itself. (As an aside, in my experience, every single person I've met who argues that Shakespeare is "better" in Marshak's Russian translation has never read, nor has the ability to comprehend, the English original; for the record, I've read both.) Moreover, I suspect the idea of English being "dry" is at least to some extent a projection of commonly held stereotypes about the British demeanor and culture. I also know French pretty well (I'd better, I have a degree in it, after all), and I am also familiar with Langue d'Oeil. I do know what they sound like to the Russophone ear, Russian being my native language. However, I have the rare luxury of having _two_ native languages (or primary languages, if you want to split hairs), and in my estimation, the vocabulary and grammatical structure of both modern French and old northern French are a lot closer to English than to Russian.
> 
> Latin is beyond my ken, however -- I've had but the most superficial training in it -- and so I'll leave that particular issue to those more competent than I.
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> A pointless argument is sometimes made by taking a line of Russian poetry and asking a rhetorical question "How can you possibly express so much beauty in a language as dry as English?" Fine -- but despite Russian supposedly being so superior, the Russian-speaking world is yet to see a decent translation of Dylan Thomas' poetry. Why is that, I wonder?


First of all, I would never allow myself to invoke personal issues in the frame of linguistic discussion. If you cannot avoid personal advances, then I'd rather quit the discussion now.

Secondly, you're arguing with yourself. Where did I say that "Russian was rendered "rich" as opposed to "dry" by its ancient history" or anything about "the vocabulary and grammatical structure of both modern French and old northern French are a lot closer to English than to Russian"? Не надо мне приписывать того, что я не говорил.

В-третьих, давайте оставим пока в покое переводы на русский поэзии Dylan Thomas и Shakespeare (мнение palomnikа), иначе мы уедем далеко в сторону. (что из русского такого масштаба адекватно переведено на английский? А вот, кстати, André Markowicz недавно закончил потрясающий и совершенно адекватный перевод "Евгения Онегина", но на французский). Мы продолжили эту часть дискуссии (о глаголах движения, инициированную паломником) со сравнения пар "плыть/плавать" и "sail/swim". Может ли кто-нибудь адекватно перевести на английский простое предложение: "Плывёт топор"? Речь идёт о лингвистическом, а не физическом аспекте. О плавучести топора вскользь упоминалось _plus haut_.


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