weird differences

[ratcreature]

I've been making Anki flashcards to learn vocabulary and grammar and such, and because visual cues help with memorization I do google image searches in the language I'm learning for stuff to put on the cards

Comments

[__marcelo]

Wow, that's definitely weird. I wonder if it reflects a (much larger than I assumed) role of "meme mills" (i.e., para-official versions of 4chan) in Russia. Being statistically speaking a single-country language, local political usage of the Internet should have a larger impact than, say, any particular Spanish-speaking country's.

[ratcreature]

Yeah, such meme mills sound definitely like they could cause this. It's a lot of gross stuff (as far as I can tell from the pictures). I certainly did not expect to run into this kind of stuff for googling basic 101 verbs. And it does seem like a reasonable assumption that it is more of a uniform internet culture than with Spanish, because Russian as colonial language spread more in a single, if large, block with the post-Soviet states. Though it is a fairly useful language in Germany too. There are an estimated three million Russian speakers living here.

[__marcelo]

Though it is a fairly useful language in Germany too. There are an estimated three million Russian speakers living here.

This surprised me for about half a second, and then I facepalmed. How quickly do things recede from immediate memory... (for us foreigners; I assume in Germany it's still a pivotal fact).

[ratcreature]

The biggest group of the native Russian speakers are ethnic Germans from Russia who have the right to German citizenship based on ancestry (though they tightened the eligibility rules eventually, because it turned out quite a lot of people suddenly found some German grandparent somewhere...) and settled in largish numbers in Germany when the economy in Russia tanked in the 1990s. I think in total about 2.8 million came after 1989. Many didn't speak German well anymore -- for obvious reasons on top of atrophy over time from ancestors who moved to Russia over a century ago, emphasizing German ancestry and nurturing German language skills in the Soviet Union was not very advisable after two world wars. And plenty were mixed families of ethnic Germans and Russians. (Incidentally the usual "integration" panic ensued about violent, unemployed young men etc. and took over a decade to subside, though of course by now we have the next one