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Why are many russian words so long ? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| albysky Triglot Senior Member Italy lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4389 days ago 287 posts - 393 votes  Speaks: Italian*, English, German | Message 1 of 7 24 July 2013 at 10:16am | IP Logged | ||
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Is it because they are compound words or because there are suffixes or prefixes or mute consonants or
are they simply long ? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Einarr Tetraglot Senior Member United Kingdom einarrslanguagelog.w Joined 4614 days ago 118 posts - 269 votes Speaks: English, Bulgarian*, French, Russian Studies: Swedish | Message 2 of 7 24 July 2013 at 11:17am | IP Logged | ||
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Which ones would you particularly suggest? Russian words can get a bit on the longer side due to suffixes and prefixes, but I, honestly don't find them any longer than, say, more commonly studied European languages. I did a fast comparison between two articles from a Russian and consequently - a French newspaper (links are below) and I don't seem to find a definitive difference.
Links: RU - http://www.rg.ru/2013/07/24/samolety-site.html FR - http://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2013/07/24/des-parlemen taires-et-ministres-assieges-par-des-manifestants-en-bulgari e_3452639_3214.html That being said, the topic is indeed interesting, and had reminded me of a thing I read that nowadays Swedish tends to simplify words by dividing them into several smaller ones. For a matter of fact, all Scandinavian and Germanic languages do tend to like to "glue" words together, resulting into, sometimes, an intimidating (for the reader) result, unless one manages the patchwork of several words into one. Actually this morning, as I was doing my Norwegian for the day I came across such word: - eftermiddagsnytt - i.e. "afternoon news" (2 words) in English, and "следобедна емисия новини" (3 words) in colloquial Bulgarian. Maybe here is the place to give the long-word credit to Finnish and Hungarian (Turkish for that matter, should also be an honorable mention amongst its European counterparts) Links: HU - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_language#Extremely_lo ng_words 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 7 24 July 2013 at 12:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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There are not many cases of silent letters in the Russian orthography, so the reasons for the length of Russian words compared to for instance English or Italian are 1) compound words, 2) lots of affixes (and 3) endings, though many languages can compete on this parameter). For instance I randomly snagged the following sentence from the Russian Wikipedia:
Различные технические устройства позволяют значительно повысить эффективность и производительность труда. Take for instance the word "технические" (analogous to something like technitcheskye). The derivational element -ческие (or -ческий in its basic dictionary form) is a full syllable longer than the corresponding English or Italian affixes (technical, tecnico). And as "производительность" shows, a Russian word can contain many such elements - but the translations (productivity, produttività) also show that this isn't a purely Russian habit. The English and Italian words are built on the old Latin "prod + ducere" (approx. "lead forth"), and so its the Russian word, but here the basic words are "про + из + водить" (approx. "forth from lead") - i.e. one element more. Besides -ность is undeniably longer than both -ity and -ità. But it doesn't seem than Russian has become a less expressive or efficient langage just because it is somewhat more longwinded. It just needs a bit more space. Edited by Iversen on 24 July 2013 at 12:26pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5600 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 4 of 7 24 July 2013 at 3:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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Because Germanic languages are stem stressed, they keep losing material at the ends of their words. English has also lost much of its inflection, is analytical, use phrasal verbs instead of compounds etc. (just look on the old Finnish loan word kuningas for "king").
I am sure such projects as "Robinson Crusoe — in Words of One Syllable by Lucy Aikin and Daniel Defoe" would not be possible in many languages but English. Edited by Cabaire on 24 July 2013 at 3:39pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 5 of 7 30 July 2013 at 11:31am | IP Logged | ||
If we consider the pronunciation, ность will be much shorter than ità. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 7 31 July 2013 at 11:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Granted. The problem is that it is easier to judge length on the basis of a written text. My own language Danish is remarkably shortwinded if you consider the part of our words we actually pronounce, and the same applies to another of my current projects, Irish. But it is not my impression that the Russians swallow their syllables like we do, and their language doesn't have the same machine gun characteristics as Italian. Edited by Iversen on 31 July 2013 at 12:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 7 of 7 31 July 2013 at 11:36am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, in casual speech we omitt a lot of sounds. That is especially true for the most
common words. For example, сейчас is normally pronounced щас. The suffix нибудь is often shortened to нить or even нть. Человек and говорит are sometimes reduced to чек and грит. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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