*Ethno linguistics (or cultural linguistics) studies the relationship between language and culture, and the way different ethnic groups perceive the world.
Nothing reflects the deep differences between the Western and Slavic mentalities better than language, particularly the specifics of syntactic structures. Words do not express much outside of a sentence. In contrary, the way we order them and the grammatical forms that we use demonstrate our thinking patterns. I dedicate this essay to my English speaking pupils. They made me think about this matter simply by making the big eyes and asking the question ‘WHY?”…
…Why the Russian syntax has more passive structures compare to the English syntax?
This question is being asked on a regular basis, when an English speaker learns how Russians make a statement of need or possession… but, firstly, let us elaborate a little on the phenomenon of syntax.
Each word plays a certain role in a sentence:
An acting subject and an action / state (the linguistic word is predicate) of the subject are the semantic core of any speech. This applies to the English syntax even more than to Russian. An action/state is performed on an object, which therefore is always a passive component. Then, there may be a condition (time, place etc.), in which the action is happening and, finally, a description of any of the above components of the sentence.
Contemplative Russian language
The first difference between the syntaxes of our two languages: in the English language, a subject, a state and an action cannot exist on their own, while it happens rather often in Russian. For example, in the simple English sentence It is cold, ‘it’ is the subject and ‘is’ is the state of presence and ‘cold’ is the description of the state. The first question that may be asked by a Russian speaker is what’s ‘it’? This is because there is no need in a subject in the equivalent Russian sentence. Just think about it: who is acting here? Who makes it cold: God, Father Frost or nature? So, the Russian sentence has neither subject nor predicate. It consists of one word of description: ‘Холодно’ (‘Cold’). Similarly, the nominative (a subject only) sentences exist in the Russian literary as well as conversational language. For example, the famous line from Alexander Blok:
Ночь. Улица. Фонарь. Аптека. / Night. Street. Light. Pharmacy.
The Russian syntax reflects more contemplative thinking (and therefore less pro-active) in comparison to the English.
Expression of a need
Let us agree that there is always a factual subject in need and an object or action that the subject craves or influences. Compare the following sentences translated word to word (the more typical for each of the languages structures are highlighted in bold):
The ‘active’ structure я нуждаюсь has its rightful place in the Russian syntax, however, it is rather rarely used compare to the more typical structure мне надо. The actual subject in need is grammatically passive, which semantically implies less control over the described situation. Note that in the Ukrainian language, both of these structures are used with fairly equal frequency, which is quite curious fact considering more Western geographic location of Ukraine compare to Russia.
Although the version of a ‘passive’ structure needed by me is technically possible in the English language, it is extremely unlikely to be used by a native English speaker.
Speaking about possessions
Possession has always been the most sensitive subject of the human kind’s thinking. Interestingly, English and Russians relate to the things they own in quite different ways, although nobody seems to recognise this fact.
Compare the following examples:
The differences between the English and Russian syntactic structures described above are not a simple coincidence. They reflect some crucial cultural moments that, possibly, is the cause of global misunderstanding between Europeans and Slavs, the misunderstanding of Slavic fatalism by Western pragmatism.
England is the birth place of capitalism and it is also the oldest survived democracy. Both cannot exist without accepting an active life position by the bearers of the culture. The word have is the centre of many fundamental syntactic structures in the English language. English even own their actions and obligations: I have to work, where a Russian would say either I need to work / Мне надо работать (implying that the action is unavoidable) or I must work / Я должен работать (implying obligation and finally accepting responsibility for it).
One takes charge to create a capital. One performs the action of voting and makes a decision on the country’s government (or, at least, one thinks he does). Actually, pragmatic people do not ask too many questions – they just act and get results.
There are always tricky questions that may pop into a Russian head regarding either of the two activities mentioned above. Say, one works hard making money but what if one lost everything because of some unexpected cataclysm? Then, one’s effort is worth nothing… It is enough to truck the Russian history of the last 200 years in order to understand such a mind-set. And, realistically, the choice of the government is more the result of manipulation of the public opinion than actual conscious choice of the country’s citizens. This is called electoral campaign, which invented in the West rather than in Russia. The ordinary people are supposed to believe those promises on campaigns’ leaflets and TV debates. Then, the first thing that the elected government does is tripling the price of high education for its voters’ kids. Was that the voters’ choice for their children to pay 27K instead of 9K? So did they really know what they voted for? Just be honest… This is the Russian thinking.
Fatalism is the most global sign of Slavic mentality. Russians often are referred as the ‘crazy nation’; this is purely because deep down they believe that, whatever you do, it is not going to change the God’s plan for you or your destiny. Does not matter, what you call it. The law of karma is very close to a Slavic mind that have some common ancient history with India. Numerous similarities between the Russian language and Sanskrit has been pointed out by a number of linguists.
The roulette is also called Russian… Perhaps, the essence of Russian fatalism was the best exposed in Mikhail Lermontov’s novel ‘Fatalist’, the part of his book ‘A Hero of Our Time’ (1840). Here is the plot.
During the conquest of the Caucasus in 1820s, a company of Russian officers gathers at the home of the chief of the garrison frontline. They tie a philosophical debate. Some consider the Muslim belief - "if a man's fate is written in heaven" - existent nonsense, while others are convinced that everyone is assigned over the fatal moment.
Lieutenant Vulich, a native Serb, has a mindset of a fatalist. He offers to the disputants to participate in a mystical experiment. Say, if the hour of his death has not yet struck, then, Providence will not allow the gun, which he, Vulich, will publicly appoint to his forehead, fire. None expressed a wish to participate in the dangerous comedy, apart from Grigoriy Pechorin, the main character of the book ‘A Hero of Our Time’. He not only turned out the contents of his wallet on the game table, but also said to Vulich out loud, looking into his eyes: "You will die today!"
The Serb won the first "round" of the dangerous bet: the gun misfired, though it proved to be quite serviceable on the next shot, when Vulich made a hole in the cap hanging on the wall. However, watching the fatalist shifting the gold off the game table, Pechorin insisted that Vulitch has a sign of approaching death on his face. The Serb, at first embarrassed and, then, flared up, leaves alone, without waiting for the sluggish companions, and he dies before reaching the house: on his way, Vulich was slaughtered with the sword, from the shoulder to the waist, by a drunken Cossack. Now, even non-believers admit predestination of the Lieutenant’s death.
Of course, this is just a fiction created by the famous Russian poet and writer. The novel is a compulsory part of the Russian high school curriculum. As a Russian teacher, I was taught at the university that literature reflects social mentality.
Russia and Russian leaders are constantly blamed by Western media for the lack of democracy. However, bearing in mind that, in order to believe in democracy, one needs an active and quite pragmatic mind-set, how likely is the fatalistic Russian mentality to accept Western pragmatic values? And, if Western society itself did not doubt those pragmatic values, why would such a depressing piece of literature about helpless people as Steinbeck’s ‘Of mice and men’ be a part of British high school GCSE curriculum?..
