The long, the short and the thick

[seltsimees]

Originally published at Крадущийся песец, затаившийся енот. You can comment here or there.

Somehow I find now that it is much easier to express myself in English. As I’ve said to er… virtual world acquaintance that we have a longstanding disagreement on some political values, Russian language often requires Dostoyevsky-style drama to express simple things, and a lot gets caught in during the process. Those subtle innuendos, second-grade allusions, unnecessary (dis)qualifications that are caught in nearly any Russian language half-sentence. English is just much more direct. And at the same time English is just that tiny huge bit more hollow, so that you don’t have to look into deeper meaning, when there is no deeper meaning. All deep meanings are expressed specifically, you don’t have to call shallow writer deep just because you don’t understand what was that crap he tried to bring you under the guise of chocolate chip vanilla sundae.

Addition from my comment elsewhere: The problem may not be entirely linguistic, but linguistic approach makes sense. You see, when writing or speaking or reading another language you suddenly have to make conscious effort to interpret it correctly, what you do not do, while reading, speaking, writing or listening your own tongue. And you know, idiots rarely speak other language but their own, especially with eloquence. Idiots may have high education or even a very broad knowledge regardless of education, they can even know a couple or more foreign languages. But, being automatic in other language is much harder than in your own. And I mean much with a capital M.

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:)