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Philosophical insight from comparison
I found this insight in one of the Russian articles about impressions of English speaking students about difficulties of learning and understanding Russians and their language:
"Одна штука в различиях между нашими языками показалось мне интересной: в английском мы говорим «I have» («я имею»), а в русском — «у меня есть», что дословно будет означать в моем языке «at me there is». Русские не используют выражение «я имею», ну или в каких-то очень редких случаях, и я думаю, это как-то отражает наши взгляды на категорию обладания. Может быть, через выражение «у меня есть» передается ощущение, что обладать чем-то по-настоящему невозможно, и предмет просто существует рядом, у тебя, но никогда не принадлежит тебе полностью." ["One thing about the differences between our languages seemed interesting to me: in English we say “I have”, and in Russian - “у пеня есть,” which literally means “at me there is” in English. The Russians do not use the expression "I have," or only in some very rare cases, and I think this somehow reflects our views on the category of ownership. Perhaps, through the expression “у меня есть” the feeling is conveyed that it is really impossible to possess something, and the object simply exists nearby, with you, but it never belongs to you completely."]
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Language pair: Russian; English
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| 238044 |
Re: Philosophical insight from comparison
Hi Olena,
an interesting coincidence is that Irish uses a similar idiom for possession to that used in Russian, e.g. English “I have a book” = Russian «У меня есть книга» (literally “At mine is book”) = Irish “Tá leabhar agam” (literally “Is book at-me”). Irish uses a different idiom for ownership, though, e.g. English “I own a book” = Irish “Is liom leabhar” (literally “Is to-me book” — like many Romance languages, Irish has two different “be” verbs). Which Russian verb would be used for the verb “own” — «владеть»? «обладать»? Since Russian has verbs that correspond to “own”, wouldn’t that indicate that it would be possible for something to completely belong to a Russian-speaking person?
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Language pair: Russian; English
This is a reply to message # 237415
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