Polyglots à la Romanov

[Greenowl]

Thanks!!! I had no idea, but it is many, many years since I last saw Star Trek!!!

[Превед]

I think among the few persons who know all "the Romanov languages", Russian, English, French and English, are Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna and NII's lookalike Prince Michael of Kent. Here (starting at minute 9:00) you can hear him speak in Russian at a Russo-British cultural function. Is his Russian a bit scarce with regard to palatalisation?

[Kalafrana]

I do try to learn a few greetings and useful phrases when I go abroad, so while in Lesotho I learned hello etc in Basuto. I can also greet people in Arabic, Spanish, Italian, Russian and Maltese. On my various travels I have found that a few words and a big smile act as quite an ice-breaker. In Italy I also found that a few phrases from operas got me quite a long way - until my last 10 euro note got stuck in a ticket machine at the station!

Being a natural blonde is also useful in  Southern Europe, and being called Ann is handy in Catholic countries. InItaly they don,t say to a woman, 'What's your name?' But 'Is your name Maria?' St Anne is the mother of the Virgin, so the next best thing!

Ann

[Превед]

Is his Russian a bit scarce with regard to palatalisation?

Interesting fact: Seems like this typical foreign trait is known as Татарский акцент, Tatar accent, in Russian, from the Russian spoken by the Volga (and Crimean?) Tatars.

[Rodney_G.]

I'm lost...what is Klingon? I've never heard of it before.

English is my native language but nowadays I speak more German than English, although I try to avoid writing in German (too lazy I suppose). I used to speak French too, but I have not done so for about 20 years, so my French has become a bit "rusty", although my passive understanding of both written and spoken French has remained fairly intact. The same applies to some extent to Swedish, although more to text than the spoken word and my knowledge of Swedish was never as strong as my French (I only lived for a short time in Sweden, while I spent several years as a young girl in France and Belgium). I tried to learn Czech but gave up after a year or two as I found it extremely difficult and also lacked the time to devote myself to the tricky grammar. I have a few words of Irish (Gaelic) and Hebrew. I often have the impression that Italian would be an easy language to learn, but perhaps no language is "easy".

Cheers,


GREENOWL
(Monika)

Italian is fairly easy in my opinion, especially if you have a knowledge of any of the other Romance languages , or of its progenitor , Latin, of which I retain a pretty fair amount from four years of it in high school..

[Sara Araújo]

I am a native Portuguese speaker and also speak English and Spanish. As I am a translator, I also work with these last two languages every single day. I learnt Russian for a year when I was in college. I was VERY excited about it when I first started, but unfortunately I was very unlucky with the teacher. On the first class, he asked each of us why had we decided to learn Russian and my answer was very simple: "I am passionate about the Romanovs and would like to learn the language they spoke". From the teacher's expression, I realized right away that he was not too pleased about that!

Later on, I discovered that he was one of those old-fashioned Bolsheviks who didn't didn't care one bit for the imperial family! He used to say things like "Oh, the Bolsheviks did great things for Russia, if it wasn't for them we would still be backward religious fanatics!" or "I don't care much for Vladimir Putin. He is too imperialist." So, in the end, he kind of made my life a living hell at his classes because he probably thought I was an "imperialist". It was a small class, so everybody got to have his particular help except for me! xD So, I simply did not follow up the next year and haven't gave it a try again yet, but someday I will.  

[amelia]

I am also a native Portuguese speaker, although now I speak more English than anything else. My husband is from Scotland and we live in USA. If you have a chance, continue with Russian - it is a beautiful language, although difficult.I was born in Madeira island.....many many years ago.

Amelia (Eva McDonald)

[TimM]

Later on, I discovered that he was one of those old-fashioned Bolsheviks who didn't didn't care one bit for the imperial family! He used to say things like "Oh, the Bolsheviks did great things for Russia,

The Bolsheviks did great things for Russia!?  What is this guy smoking?  What is he going to say next?  "The Nazis did great things for Germany"!?

This clown should have his teachers licence revoked.

[Превед]

Sigh yes, people defending the Bolsheviks really are as outdated as people defending the Romanovs and autocracy. It makes much more sense to regard Nicholas II and Lenin as contemporaries with many similar traits (I had never quite realized this angle - funny how they were the same age and e.g. both had Scandinavian-German maternal ancestry), both of them dangerously obstinate in their worldviews and solutions to the challenges facing Russia. They both reluctantly initiated genocidal mass murder (WW1 and Stalinist Terror).

[Kalafrana]

Well, pre-1939 there was scope for argument that the Nazis had done great things for Germany. 6 million unemployed when they came to power, converted to full employment. One of the books I was given by an uncle, who got them as school prizes in the period 1938-40, is the 1940 edition of John Gunther's 'Inside Europe'. This sets out a contemporary view of each European country's government, and is very interesting in that it gives pre-war perspectives on the Nazis, Mussolini, Stalin etc.

However, I cannot fathom how anyone could ignore either Nazi or Bolshevik wrongdoings once they knew about them. And, let's face it, Stalin's purges were well-publicised in the west as they happened - my fath, born in 1928, remembers news items about them.

Ann

[edubs31]

Sigh yes, people defending the Bolsheviks really are as outdated as people defending the Romanovs and autocracy. It makes much more sense to regard Nicholas II and Lenin as contemporaries with many similar traits (I had never quite realized this angle - funny how they were the same age and e.g. both had Scandinavian-German maternal ancestry), both of them dangerously obstinate in their worldviews and solutions to the challenges facing Russia. They both reluctantly initiated genocidal mass murder (WW1 and Stalinist Terror).

Not really the place to argue this, but only by muddying up those waters to an extreme do I think it's fair to compare the actions and personalities of Lenin and Nicholas. Of course the easiest differentiator is whereas Nicholas was handed power and thrust into a role of leadership and responsibility, Lenin "took" power and was willing to wage the political equivalent of a scorched earth campaign to secure victory.

A better comparison between "contemporaries" would be Lenin and Kerensky. Both were leftists with many similar social & political views who also happened to be born and raised in the same hometown! Kerensky like Lenin, and unlike Nicholas, was a complicated and largely unlikeable character (from a personal standpoint), but their political outlook and the means they were willing to use to achieve their ends differed significantly.

Back on topic. I wish I knew more than a few phrases of any language besides English. I can understand a bit of Spanish but languages were never really my strong suit...

[Превед]

Not really the place to argue this, but only by muddying up those waters to an extreme do I think it's fair to compare the actions and personalities of Lenin and Nicholas. Of course the easiest differentiator is whereas Nicholas was handed power and thrust into a role of leadership and responsibility, Lenin "took" power and was willing to wage the political equivalent of a scorched earth campaign to secure victory.

A better comparison between "contemporaries" would be Lenin and Kerensky. Both were leftists with many similar social & political views who also happened to be born and raised in the same hometown! Kerensky like Lenin, and unlike Nicholas, was a complicated and largely unlikeable character (from a personal standpoint), but their political outlook and the means they were willing to use to achieve their ends differed significantly.

I quite agree that it's more productive to compare Lenin and Kerensky, but I think it's important to keep in mind that Lenin was not a figure that emerged after the exit of the Romanovs from history and Leninism not something wholly detached from Tsarism. Lenin and NII were actually contemporaries and shaped by some of the same events, most notably the murders / killings / executions of Alexander II and Alexander Ulyanov and the attempts on Alexander III's life. Both Lenin and NII neglected opportunities to really get to know the Russian peasantry, but based their worldview on their own ideological ideas about the peasantry. Both of them seemed to live in some kind of bubble, waiting for the disaster. Whereas Kerensky was both idealistic and pragmatic?

[TimM]

Also, Nicholas II was not a mass murderer like the Bolsheviks were.  Stalin probably killed more people in his thirty year reign than the Romanovs did in the previous three hundred years.

[Превед]

Also, Nicholas II was not a mass murderer like the Bolsheviks were.  Stalin probably killed more people in his thirty year reign than the Romanovs did in the previous three hundred years.

Yes, Stalin did his best to kill off the population growth that the great post-Tsarist, Soviet improvement in social infrastructure resulted in.

BTW I am quite sure you and that Bolshevik professor would understand each other perfectly, when it comes to disregarding most nuances in history and not letting details getting in the way for the big picture of the evils of this or that -ism.

Me, I'm just interested in that part of Russian history that produced Nicholas II AND Lenin.

[Превед]

This clown should have his teachers licence revoked.

Agreed, not for being a Bolshevik, but a bad teacher. It would be a strange Slavist student who didn't get a more nuanced view of both the Romanovs and the Soviet Union through the study of Russian. He or she could even end up as a Communist, like so many intellectuals before!
My guess is that some of a non-Russian speaker's Romanov fascination might fade as he or she learns Russian, reads Russian literature and Russian sources and thus is able to put the Romanovs more in context, as a few, golden drops in the mighty, tragic and fascinating river of Russian history.