Još!
I inadvertently learned the Serbian equivalent of еще (esche -meaning "another, an additional," which in Russian is distinct from другой/drugoj, meaning "another, a different one") today. I was ordering a second glass of milk for Alex today while we were at lunch, and I said, "Molim vas, druge mljeko za bebu." (Forgive me if the grammar's incorrect - my grammar is essentially all over the place and I'm just using Russian endings if I don't know the Serbian ones.) The waiter responded with something that sounded like, "Eshche jedno?" And I was thinking, "Wait, I thought Serbian didn't have a word for еще/eshche and they just use drugij/druge/drugo for both еще/eshche and другой/drugoj." But I just said "da" and while he was gone to get the milk, I wrote down what I thought I'd heard. I showed it to him, and he said, more slowly, "Još jedno." So, "yosh" instead of "eshyo" - basically all the same sounds, just in a slightly different order.
This has been happening a lot - I understand what people are saying, because it's close enough to the Russian that it makes sense, but because it's all run together I can't make out some of the vowels, and some other sounds get transposed in my head, so I can't even repeat back what they're saying. When I do try to repeat it back, they think I haven't understood and switch to English. (Which is understandable - they assume I'm trying to communicate, not to learn the language. :))
I've been getting along by looking up some words on Google Translate, trying Russian or English words, and often using the ASL sign along with whatever actual word I'm saying. I'm only doing this with the more mimetic signs, but it's surpisingly useful and much more effective than just miming. Like, today at the market I wanted to smell one of the spices because I couldn't tell what it was from the label, and I used the ASL sign for SMELL. And yesterday I said, "Ovde ili..." ("Here or...") and used the ASL sign for FAR when asking a shopgirl where the dry cleaner was, and she nodded and said, "Dolje," which sounds a lot like the Russian for "far," далеко (daleko). I'm trying to avoid just using Russian words, because some of them sound very similar but mean something totally different. An example is vrednost, which means "usefulness/value" in Serbian and "danger" in Russian. But there are other ones, like the prefix y- at the beginning of a verb in Serbian means "motion into," but in Russian it means "motion away from" and they use v- for "motion into."
Another thing that really is a tongue tangler is the vs-/sv- words. "Vse" in Russians becomes "sve" in Serbian (they both mean "all"). "Vsjaki" becomes "svjaki" ("any, whichever"). Etc. It feels like I'm saying everything backwards.
At times I feel like I'm speaking some idiosyncratic Slovio, or more likely I'm like that crazy monk in The Name of the Rose who's made up his own Esperanto. But I think if I get a Russian-Serbian/Serbian-Russian dictionary, it will be easier to figure this stuff out, since they're more similar to each other than they are to English, and there are more direct equivalents.
Also, a professional translator/interpreter told me one time that that's the best way to avoid mixing two languages, because if you're translating from one to the other, you're practicing separating the two in your head. (We were talking at the time about how I always mixed up Russian and Spanish, even though they're nothing alike - which happens because the human brain is wired in such a way that we essentially store our native language in one place, and all foreign languages get dumped into one area, the "not my native language" bin - whereas he can keep over five languages straight in his head and interpret or translate between many of them on a professional level.)
This has been happening a lot - I understand what people are saying, because it's close enough to the Russian that it makes sense, but because it's all run together I can't make out some of the vowels, and some other sounds get transposed in my head, so I can't even repeat back what they're saying. When I do try to repeat it back, they think I haven't understood and switch to English. (Which is understandable - they assume I'm trying to communicate, not to learn the language. :))
I've been getting along by looking up some words on Google Translate, trying Russian or English words, and often using the ASL sign along with whatever actual word I'm saying. I'm only doing this with the more mimetic signs, but it's surpisingly useful and much more effective than just miming. Like, today at the market I wanted to smell one of the spices because I couldn't tell what it was from the label, and I used the ASL sign for SMELL. And yesterday I said, "Ovde ili..." ("Here or...") and used the ASL sign for FAR when asking a shopgirl where the dry cleaner was, and she nodded and said, "Dolje," which sounds a lot like the Russian for "far," далеко (daleko). I'm trying to avoid just using Russian words, because some of them sound very similar but mean something totally different. An example is vrednost, which means "usefulness/value" in Serbian and "danger" in Russian. But there are other ones, like the prefix y- at the beginning of a verb in Serbian means "motion into," but in Russian it means "motion away from" and they use v- for "motion into."
Another thing that really is a tongue tangler is the vs-/sv- words. "Vse" in Russians becomes "sve" in Serbian (they both mean "all"). "Vsjaki" becomes "svjaki" ("any, whichever"). Etc. It feels like I'm saying everything backwards.
At times I feel like I'm speaking some idiosyncratic Slovio, or more likely I'm like that crazy monk in The Name of the Rose who's made up his own Esperanto. But I think if I get a Russian-Serbian/Serbian-Russian dictionary, it will be easier to figure this stuff out, since they're more similar to each other than they are to English, and there are more direct equivalents.
Also, a professional translator/interpreter told me one time that that's the best way to avoid mixing two languages, because if you're translating from one to the other, you're practicing separating the two in your head. (We were talking at the time about how I always mixed up Russian and Spanish, even though they're nothing alike - which happens because the human brain is wired in such a way that we essentially store our native language in one place, and all foreign languages get dumped into one area, the "not my native language" bin - whereas he can keep over five languages straight in his head and interpret or translate between many of them on a professional level.)