So I used to have a Russian friend who had a pretty thick accent and like a lot of Russians tended to eschew articles. She would say things like “Get in car.” And stuff.
Well one day this asshole who had been kind of tagging along with us asks her why she talks like that because it makes her sound dumb and I still remember her response word for word.
“Me? Dumb? Maybe in America you have to say get in THE car because you are so stupid that people might just get in random car, but in Russia we don’t need to say that. We just fucking know because we are not stupid.”
One time I was proof reading a paper for a Russian student. As I was correcting her paper with her, the many mistakes in her grammar started weighing on her. I asked her what was wrong, and she said, almost sobbing,
“In Russian I am so intelligent and clear. In English I am like [an] idiot”
Respect to anyone trying to master a foreign language. I get so sad thinking about that student.
Full offense but people who make fun of someone else’s accent or belittle their limited vocabulary when they’re speaking a language not native to them are fucking disgusting and are just begging to be punched.
They’re speaking your language because you don’t know theirs. That’s not something they should be made fun of, it’s something that should be commended because learning a language is hard fucking work.
Imagine three brothers whose father just died. Nobody really liked him but he owned a lot of businesses all over town, which he split the ownership of between his three sons.
The first son gets the CEO position of a powerful corporation, including his own private jet
The second son gets the father’s shipping company and his yacht
The last son gets ownership of a small funeral home that isn’t doing very well
The first son becomes a total jerk who sleeps around and cheats on his wife constantly.
The second son adopts the culture of the sailors at the docks and develops an aggressive personality
The third son’s company is more of a reliability than an asset, but through hard work he makes it work. He’s not very comforting to the grieving costumers, but his prices are fair and he treats them with respect. He marries a wife who helps him run the funeral home. The place is a success, despite its dreariness.
