How To Write Poor English

[icarus]

For hp_dungeons I'm writing Percy's slavic lover, Niko Molokov niko_molokov. Yes, I left the RPG but I've kept on a bit as a minor player. Or two.

Today sharp_tongue asked for some ideas on rotten English. I had so much fun with this, I thought I'd pass it along.

Here's a sample of Niko's crappy English:

It is done. Anything you need, you ask your brother Niko.

You don't know the Trilliam cube? Ah, I forget your country is so backward in these intrication (good word? Used dictionary, can't ask Percy) of Dark Artist.

This is our secret. Percy, he would not approve.

You send your owls not to me but send to him. Use the Sigeulo Charm and write to Percy a letter over the letter to me. Me, he will be suspect if we write to-fro. Percy's long nose dips into every pool. But you are his innocent baby brother. Innocent blue eyes, that are so smiling. (Good Auror. Mad-Eye Moody no good, easy to spot. You, maybe you work in Quidditch store? Too nice to be a Auror. You listen to Niko, fructify - that okay word? - 'little boy' face, these happy eyes. Practice stupid looks. Others miscalculate? This is best.)

Tell me what you need and why. I give simple advice but, maybe we find a better way if I know what you want?

There is Imperius and Imperius and Imperius, nothing is better and is very fun. Dance, dance. Yes, there are others, charms and potions. But, they have easy counter-charm and these potions they wear off. Veritaserum, tscha, that's easy, I have some I'll send. Egypt has no laws and makes the best. There's a trick. Use a weak serum and quick questions, ten minutes. This breaks down and is gone quick. No one can prove it. Others, they are in the pee for days.

Legal is no problem: just do not get caught.

Don't use memory charm -- memory is connected, Percy say before… hmm… assissiative. I think. Is okay. One blank on picture of Ron makes other blanks on name Ron. Easy to see who cast. But if they don't see you or recognise, then okay, use it.

For more, I need more explain. - Your brother, Niko

Niko's poor English comes from my own lousy Tibetan and teaching English as a second language.

To write a foreigner, here's what you want to screw up -

Word order and missing words: Russians tend to leave out articles and prepositions or use them incorrectly. Prepositional phrases are tough for most foreign speakers. Germans on the other hand tend to throw the verb at the end of the sentence.

Tenses: Nouns are easy. Verbs on the other hand... When it's a word they had to look up in a dictionary, they will use the infinitive because they won't know how to conjugate it and won't try. This is because most languages have more than three main tenses. Often they will use the infinitive without the article 'to.' Otherwise, they will often just mess their tenses up (unless they know the phrase from the phrasebook -- that will be note perfect), and say, use present tense and infinitive for everything.

Obscure words: When they look up a word in the dictionary, they will look up the exact counterpart to their word in their language. This often lead them to a very obscure and strange-sounding word in our language. Use a Thesaurus to find words that are strange that have a similar meaning to what you want. Today Niko came up with effusion for 'spit.'

Idiomatic speech: English has idioms that make little sense if taken literally. "He was a bad ass!" ('Bad ass?' huh?). Yet the Russians in particular love idioms because it's closer to their colourful way of speaking. They will often not quite get the idioms right (i.e. "He was a bad butt.") The other thing they will do is translate their own idioms into English. These often get the meaning across in a very colourful, if bizarre sort of way. (Niko said once, "A poison tree must be cut at the root. This root is her tricky venom-emmission snakes.")

Misheard phrases: Contractions in particular are hard to hear, so a foreigner will hear 'you'll go to jail' as 'you go to jail.' They'll also drop words that aren't stressed.

Get it right... sometimes: Be sure to throw in the random absolutely correct phrase, usually in areas where they've had to actually use their English.

Travellers will say, "Where is the train station?" beautifully, and often be able to dicker. Niko will be pretty good when the topic turns to violence and discussing details of a 'job.' Society people will have a few cocktail party phrases they can pull off smoothly, as well talk about some basic information about themselves. (Straight out of the textbook you see.)A Quidditch Player will become surprisingly fluent when it comes to discussing Quidditch scores and standings.


Happy gibberish!

Comments

[everythingisaid.livejournal.com]

How amusing!

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

*g* Hee. This was a lot of fun.

Icarus

[noblerot.livejournal.com]

Having grown up listening to the linguistic acrobatics of my Lithuanian mama and Siberian papa, I can only nod.

[ragnhildholm.livejournal.com]

SO true. My mother (god bless her) once translated a Norwegian idiom and told someone "... so he ended up with his beard in the mail box." Priceless.

[ellensmithee.livejournal.com]

Most of my experience has been with German native speakers, both as an ESL teacher and as a translator/copy editor, so I'm not sure about Russian. The biggest problem that many non-native speakers of English has is the progressive. They'll use the normal indicative form instead - "I go to the store now" as opposed to "I'm going to the store now." When it comes to Russian, the progressive form is actually very close to their aspect concept - I'd think progressive might be a concept that Russians could at the very least get their brains around, at least theoretically. Also, the speech patterns that non-native speakers use and the mistakes they make will depend on their particular native language, of course.

[tboy.livejournal.com]

An old boyfriend worked in customs, once upon a time; patrolling the harbour in a boat, apparently. The culture within this work group encouraged high grade cursing as normal speech, similar to the military and other services when talking amongst themselves. So, lots of 'pass the fucking salt, you prick', etc.

I don't know where this bloke Mark worked with was from originally, but his idiomatic English was pretty entertaining. An enquiry on the whereabouts of a fellow co-worker came out as "Where is other cunt fucking?"

Thinking of it never fails to make me laugh.

My favorite came from the UN

[rfachir.livejournal.com]

My favorite real life mistranslations:
1) Someone translated "out of sight, out of mind" as "blind and insane". To embrace another idiom, close but no cigar (the diplomatic tone was somewhat coloured.)
2) Another one came from "Snow Falling on Cedars" - someone who knows less Japanese than I do (and that's impressive) translated "now I know the meaning of true beauty" (gasped as the man and his lover are doing the nasty) into "Now I know the meaning of true pity" (right word, wrong aethetic concept). Anyway, one heck of a mood-changer. I laughed my a$$ off, until a gentleman aquaintance told me that it only changed the meaning for the girl. To the speaker, it's all good, pity F's included.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Excellent! Yes. But I didn't want to scare people off and tell them that they needed to know some of the native language of speaker. Ideally you do, but there are certain things that are fairly universal.

Icarus

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

*nods* wildernessguru is an ex-wilderness firefighter and those guys... sometimes I ask for a break from the profanity, please? "My ears hurt, sweetheart." ;)

Icarus

[painless-j.livejournal.com]

pj is Russian. pj agrees: articles are the most difficult thing in English.
Re idioms: ha-ha-ha :) Yes, right like this :)

Some other typical Russian mistakes. We use *long* sentences with many clauses.
We omit subjects, as we do it in Russian, when it's clear from the context who the person in question is. For ex., "Came home. Turned on TV."

Feel free to use my journal when you write Russians, I suppose, I'm rather typical in my bad English.

Re: My favorite came from the UN

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

'Blind and insane' - that's wonderful!

I had a German friend who very proudly announced at a MacDonald's: "I will become a sausage." Alas, the verb bekommen in German means 'to have.'

I laughed my a$$ off, until a gentleman aquaintance told me that it only changed the meaning for the girl. To the speaker, it's all good, pity F's included.

Er. Unless the woman slaps him with a pillow and tells him to sleep on the couch. Yeesh.

Icarus

Re: My favorite came from the UN

[mad_maudlin]

Another great one, tho' it may be apocryphal:

An American diplomat working in Russia was sent a telegram informing him that his daughter had been "suspended for truancy." The Russia censors intercepted it and picked it over for possible coded secrets...however, somewhere along the line it got translated into Russian, then back into English from the Russian.

The diplomat recieved a telegram saying that his daughter had been "hung for juvenile crimes."

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, that's very common for a lot of languages for the subject to inferred from context. Tibetan's the same way. :)

What's also very common is to write better than you speak. There seem to be two different types of students: writers and talkers.

The talkers won't know exactly how it's supposed to be, but they'll barrel ahead regardless. They come across as relatively fluent and pick up the spoken language very quickly, but develop a lot of bad habits that are difficult to break them of later (my grandmother's Spanish was atrocious, but she'd talk and nobody minded).

The writers won't open their mouths until they have it note-perfect, so people assume they know a lot less English than they really do. Often they have larger vocabularies than the talkers, and their written assignments (where they can check their work) will be excellet. But their grasp of the spoken language progresses slooooow-ly.

When you finally get them to open their mouths, it's surprising how refined their English (though as soon as they make a mistake, they clam up again *sigh*). They are so self-correcting that by the time they have some real fluency their English is music to anyone's ears, with only a few errors.

But they still insist their English is terrible. *Icarus looks suspiciously at painless_j.

Icarus

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Oh, that is too wonderful. I had a friend who was one of the former princesses of Lithuania (who became a communist in the 1950's in the US - during the McCarthy era), and so I get to pick up some of her habits which still peek through. But I bet you'd write a better Niko Molokov.

Apparently back before the takeover Lithuania was considered 'low-class' and most of the upper classes spoke Russian (a throwback to czarist times).

Icarus

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

*mouth hangs open.* You know, sometimes you can tell what they're supposed to mean. But then there are these....

??

Icarus

Re: My favorite came from the UN

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Aaaaaack!

Icarus

Re: My favorite came from the UN

[mad_maudlin]

Which, I suppose, provides a quick and dirty way for someone to fake bad English...go to Babelfish or a similar site and translate the text English to X, then X to English. Repeat as necessary.

[painless-j.livejournal.com]

He-he. Yes, pj is a 'writer' in your classification. I'm not that self-conscious, so I speak - when necessary :) I know I speak well enough *but* my accent is really terrible.

Addition to the previous post: Russians also tend to skip 'to be' in Present Tense 'cos we have it only in Future and Past Tenses. It's very difficult to make students say "I *am* a student" instead of "I student" :)

NB: the last name you use for your character 'Molokov' isn't Russian :) Maybe it can be Bulgarian? Hmm, I don't know. I've never come across it and even don't know where to put stress. We don't derive names from 'milk'/'moloko' or 'hleb'/'bread'. But we do it from 'maslo'/'butter'! Oh my, logic, where are you? 'Molokov' has this air of the name invented by a foreign screen-writer for a Russian KGB officer in an action film, like James Bond series.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Actually, Molokov is a rendering of an English word:

Molotov.

As in Molotov cocktails, a bottle filled up with gasoline and sealed with a flaming rag, commonly used by terrorists.

This tells you a great deal about this particular character. He's an unrepentant Death Eater who really believed in Voldemort's cause (but hp_dungeons takes place long after the defeat of Voldemort so his side has lost). He's sort of a pureblood wizarding 'Maoist' (at least in mindset) who started with a theoretical belief in rebellion - being rebellious in temprament - and moved on to a life of violence.

And Niko like 'nicked' (with a blade). That one's less obvious.

The background is complex, so I tried to communicate some of it with his name. The reference is deliberate. It's a Harry Potter tradition.

The names in Harry Potter are not intended to be realistic, or else JKR would have thought of something more realistic than 'Severus Snape' for a teacher who is Severe and Snipes at everyone, and 'Remus Lupin' who is Lupine or a werewolf, and 'Dolores Umbridge' for someone Deadly (dolores meaning death-like) who takes Umbrage.

:D

Icarus

[ragnhildholm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, tell me about it. I'm not quite sure what it applies to, and I'm supposed to be a native speaker...

[goseaward.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, that's very common for a lot of languages for the subject to inferred from context.

It happens in spoken English, too, but mostly for questions in the second person; "Want to go to the store?" is much more common than "Do you want to go to the store?" We will also leave out subjects in responses to questions: "What did you do today?" "Went to the store, bought some groceries, drove over a pedestrian." Not really enough to make a difference...er, I guess we sometimes leave out "it's" too. This is more linguistic than helpful to writing non-native speakers, though.

Another common thing I didn't see mentioned is that in English we don't repeat subjects. We say "Mary and I went to the store," not "Mary and I, we went to the store," as many foreign speakers do. I know the second is correct syntax in French, and it may be so in other languages as well. *is not very well educated*

[hagia-sophia.livejournal.com]

Hi,

Another native Russian speaker joining the discussion... :)

Actually, Molotov is a Russian name. That was the name of the Soviet Foreign Minister at the time of WWII. Molotov cocktail is named after him. The name itself is derived from "molot", which means "hammer". Molokov, on the other hand, may be interpreted by a Russian speaker as having something to do with milk ("moloko") - rather tame, isn't it? :)
I agree with painless_j that it sounds more Bulgarian than Russian. Did you specify what country your terrorist is coming from?

By the way, as for the major difficulties that Russian speakers may have with English - I agree that articles and tenses are the two major problems. I taught English for a while, and trying to explain the difference between "I did", "I have done", "I was doing" and "I had done" was a torture.

Re: My favorite came from the UN

[hagia-sophia.livejournal.com]

I've heard another wonderful mistranslation: invisible idiot. :)

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Molotov and Molokov. I see, but the reason is to not have it be quite so obvious, you know? Or else JKR would have called Snape: 'Severe Snipe.'

Molotov is currently an English word and appears in the Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary.

You must understand, my point remains the same: I'm not trying to recreate a Muggle Russian name.

First off - it's Muggle.

Second - I'm writing in English, for an English-speaking audience.

Third - I'm writing in a mythological context. I could have called him Pandora Featherbopper if I wanted. Historical accuracy is completely and totally irrelevant.

Authenticity is less important than the effect I want. No doubt the effect of 'Molokov' in Chinese is probably very different too. This is written for an English audience. I could go nuts trying to figure out the connotations for word-sounds in other languages than my own. In Tibetan, Mol refers to "speak" or "command." How many languages must I consider in this? One. English.

If my goal was to at all authentic, I would have looked up real Lithuanian names instead giving something the flavour (in English) of this character.

In fact, I would have had Niko's posts translated into Lithuanian.

Don't think I wouldn't if authenticity were at all my goal. I looked up Percy's signature in OotP to get his handwriting correct on some artwork.

Icarus

Re: My favorite came from the UN

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

LOL! I like that one. If only there were all invisible.

I liked the Indian English translation of 'No Loitering' -- no sitting idly.

Icarus

[maelwaedd.livejournal.com]

Whee! This is lovely. I'm learning Russian, so I now have a terrible amount of fun every time I wrote Dolohov (who in my little world is Russian. Please don't mock me). I keep wanting to throw the three and a half Russian phrases that I know, as well as this one, which I think is interesting:

No is nyet.
Not is nye.

Since I mix them up, Russians may very probably mix up the reverse. I really need to write that, at some point.

[sine-que-non767.livejournal.com]

That's so helpful. :) An original and useful article, thank you.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Sync! Hi, heeeey, it's been a while. How's it goin'?

Icarus

[sine-que-non767.livejournal.com]

Good good! :) Very, very busy for the entirety of November, which sucks cos I wanted to do NaNo...but paid work comes first cos it doesn't come often. *browses your LJ* Looks like you have my life, too. I managed to crank out a little fic in an illegally-snatched couple of days and realised that it was my first for five months. Major writing withdrawal.

Sorry, going to stop whining. *g*

How's it going? Good day? How's the cat?

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know how you feel. I wanted to NaNoWriMo sooooooo badly this year, and I *sniff, sniff, kicks rocks* couldn't, due to school schedule, work, etc. I'm scratching out enough time for a few notes or pages of fic here and there, but nothing, oh, satisfying, ya'know?

You may join me in twitching on the floor with withdrawal. *shudder, twitch-twitch*

Icarus

P.S. The kitty's doing better. I need to do an update on that -- he was allergic to Frontline. He was wiped out for days, but Thursday started to act normally again.

[sine-que-non767.livejournal.com]

It's nice to know at least one person's suffering in this boat along with me.

You know what I mean. :)

*curses all who are able to write tons of fics all the time, dfbnetbhbdfnpojrg!*

*pets your kitty with an old oven glove on*
*from a distance*

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm green with envy, I admit. goseaward it's been suggested that she send her original fics out to publishers and I had to --

-- grabs green-eyed monster, beats it to death with a shovel -- stuffs into garbage can.

-- give one of those really "gosh-I'm-so-happy-for-you-or-I-would-be-if-I-had-one-gracious-bone-in-my-body" smiles.

"Wow, congratulations," Icarus says between gritted teeth that look suspiciously like they're grinding.

Y'know, if the kitty were back to normal, he'd probably bite. Just to reinforce his personal space. (It's all a bluff though. Go ahead and pet him -- he did this when he was the size of my boot.)

Icarus

[sine-que-non767.livejournal.com]

HAHAHA! Oh, that makes me feel better about my wish to, er, beat people to death for telling me how much they've written. Everyone keeps doing it, and NO IT'S NOT HELPING, people! But now I can be jealous in this little corner of LJ where no-one can see. *evil cackling commences*

Of course, when I'm finally allowed to get my writing groove on, I'm sure I'll be swanning and smug. (But I will *not* post numbers of words, OMG why? It seems like a trend at the moment, and it's never going to do any good to anyone else. It's just makes everyone compare themselves to one another, and there's quite enough of that already.)

I was thinking, to get off the subject of my fragile ego *g* - you're a translator? Or have done some translation? Or something? Cos I'm translating a financial report from German (it's soooo long and OMFG I'm bored), and wondered if you knew of any net resources, like free dictionaries or spellcheckers, or something...? (German/English both ways, and French/English) I haven't the money to invest as yet and am trawling through using the old-fashioned method of paper dictionaries. It's killing me... Also financial/educational German would be a big plus. Just thought I'd check.

*attacks kitty before he can attack me*