Grammatical mistakes

[Anna Finkelstern]

Being born and raised in Moscow, and getting accustomed to hear "Moscovite"
Russian on TV, I was surprised to discover that most people in Russia speak
differently. I am not talking about variations of stress or vocabulary. Many
Russians use different grammar structures. I have spoken to people who live
in Zapadnaya Dvina region and whose syntax is a mixture of Russian,
Belorussian, and Polish. For example, instead of saying "он только-что
пришел из города," they would say "он пришедши из города." Also, while
deviations from the standard Moscovite Russian in morphology or
phonetics could be attributed to provincialism, the differences in syntax is
either attributed to dialects or social position of the speaker. From my
experience, people who live in villages outside of московская область use
different syntax and different morphology ("ходють" instead of "ходят"). The
speech of the peasants in Russian literature is usually poeticized and
rendered legible to the Moscovite (especially by Tolstoy, and even by
Dostoevsky), but when such a Moscovite ventures to the country, she is bound
to discover a different language. It is true, however, that during the
Soviet era, many Russians who aspired to hold certain social/professional
positions used to "work on their language" and learn the standard Moscovite
Russian. My grandfather, who moved in 1930's from Minsk to Moscow, had to
work very hard both on his pronunciation and vocabulary.

Anna Finkelstern

On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 8:07 PM, Charles Mills <bowrudder at gmail.com> wrote:

> Why stop with mistakes in non-standard English?  Why not go the whole nine
> yards and draw attention to mistakes in the standard language itself?  For
> example, think of all the bumpkins who say "Where are you going?", when
> everyone knows it should be "Whither goest thou?"  These self same bumpkins
> don't even distinguish between whither and where!  Fortunately there are
> those who are attempting to redress the oversight with "Where 're you at?"
> vs. "Where 're you going to?"
>
> I'll never forget the day (I was in the Czech Republic) that my
> teacher informed us that Pushkin used "nespisovne formy"!  (Post-positive
> determiners, or some such.)  Nespisovne?!  I thought Pushkin was literary
> by
> definition!
>
> Charles Mills
> Pacific Grove
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>  Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
>  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
>                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------