I was browsing here on the WLF. I chanced upon the Andrey Kurkov thread, started by Stewart. So I looked him up on the net.
That's where this thread becomes relevant.
I found an interview with Kurkov entitled
"I'm an ethnic Russian and a political Ukrainian".
This may sound slightly vague and boring, but is crucial to the understanding of languages.
The interviewer says:
Quote:
Interviewer: You speak Ukrainian fluently. Why do you write your works in Russian?
Kurkov: Because, my command of Ukrainian is limited to conversation and journalistic speech. Literary language, in principle, demands a genetic knowledge of the Ukrainian language. (...) ...I grew up in the Russian-speaking part of Kiev. I learnt Ukrainian as a foreign and standard language which did not carry within it the genetic cultural meanings, details, synonyms, homonyms, etc.
|
This is a vital piece of knowledge which is the same as people in Belgium, Finland, Spain and other bi- or tri-lingual countries experience.
The very fact I can translate this short excerpt of the interview, albeit imperfectly, from the
Ukrainian, a language that I have never learnt, shows that languages come in families. With a Ukrainian-English dictionary and my knowledge of Polish and Russian, I can get 95% of the interview. This is not magic, mysticism or genius, it depends on cold facts: linguistically and geographically, Ukrainian is halfway between Russian and Polish and, secondly, dictionaries are available.
I hope this demonstrates the complexity of knowing a language at various levels - but the logical simplicity of translating from them, if the right factors are in place.