An American tries to write in Russian

I am going to start writing posts on this bjournal in Russian. The parallel Russian posts will be called Американец старается писать по-русски (“An American Tries to Write in Russian”).

There are a few reasons to do this:

First, I think it will give me good grammar practice, build my vocabulary, and help me get more familiar with the Russian keyboard. (I already know my way around it pretty well, but still have to look at the keys to type fast).

Why do it publicly? My written Russian will be quite stylistically poor, and will not improve much without years of experience or close supervision by a native speaker/good writer.

But that will make it all the more fun for my students to read if they find it. And I hope it will encourage them if they see that I have a sense of justice; I am willing to display my own imperfect command of my second language publicly, like they do for me, and they shouldn’t refrain from trying their English for fear of making mistakes. It will also be more interesting for my Russian colleagues and friends (esp. philologists, linguists, and English teachers) interested in how Russian (at least, their Russian) and English (at least, my English) differ in idiom.

If nothing else, my Russian will make them laugh.

Finally, I’m going to welcome comments and criticisms. If someone can tell me where I’m using a wrong or archaic word, if they can correct my syntax, if they can say, “It would be better to say it like this…” it might help my Russian (especially my written style) improve.

Most of the Russian I write here will probably be translations of what I write in English, so if my Russian is completely incomprehensible, my readers can go back and see what I meant in the original.

If this works, I’ll start doing it in Spanish too. All this translating might end up shortening the original posts… but I should learn to write more concisely anyway, right? This is already too long.