Russian Verbal Tics?

I was doing a quick look through the troper tales and the trope page but don't notice anything specific to Russian or Slavic speakers, can anyone enlighten me? I have an idea for a Russian character but want to "Show Not Tell" to make her seem more Russian.

So is there anything specific to Slavs/Slavic language that could be observed of "Hey, she must be Russian because she said this like this at that time" in the same way "desu" is specifically Japanese or the way say German speakers in the US speak English the same way they'ld word for word translate German.

Well, the trick commonly used is the lack of "the", "a", "an", and this sort of thing. Also there may be some use of weird sentence structure, like, dunno, "X I am" being just as good as "I am X"... I guess there's more, but here I'm like that fish having no word for water.

Dunno about speech patterns, but I've noticed that Russian books tend to be written in a certain way. It's hard to describe, but it is noticeable if you read some books translated from Russian. One thing is that everybody is nearly always referred by their full name. Not sure if that also happpens in spoke Russian tho.

As lord Gacek said, sentence structure is interchangeable. Also, there is singular and plural "you" - the latter is more formal and more commonly used.

Oh, and whatever you do, please don't use my writing pattern as an example. It is my personal weirdness, not Russian standard=)

Or a thing I haven't yet seen, but as English language calls almost anything not a man or woman "it", you may have your Slavic speaker slip hes and shes where they don't belong.

So like "Okay/hungry I am" instead of "I am okay/hungry"?

Well, if he's bad enough that he's not using articles, then he'd probably be saying "I hungry" or something, seeing as Russian doesn't use the verb "to be" in the present tense.

Also, Nomic, I'm pretty sure no one ever constantly refers to someone by their full name. :P Usually in older Russian books (like stuff by Dostoevsky or Tolstoy), they're referred to by their first name and patronym, which is the respectful way of addressing people. I suppose someone unfamiliar with the convention might mistake the patronyms for family names; I know my American friends all made this mistake when we read A Hero of Our Time in AP Literature.

It's a she, as I figure it would be more moe if she had some sort of tic.

True. First name+patronymic is a normal form of address between people in most circumstances. First name without anything else is used mostly between buddies in informal circumstances, family, children, or in some cases by a superior towards subordinate (although in this case the difference should be huge, as it is not considered respectful). Actual full name - first name+patronym+family name - is not used in conversation. Only in most formal forms of address, when signing documents, upon first introduction and so on.

edited 2nd Jan '11 9:48:09 AM by Beholderess

Talking to some Russian speakers in EVE Online, an interesting conversations, one of them was even an anime fan though neither were tropers, and yeah, tvtropes ruins your vocabulary!!

Seems another good candidate is "sir" at the end of sentences, as apparantly a nearly obsolete Tsarist era quirk but it's something, "Wait" seems like a good one as I think one of the guys I was speaking with had troubling following me so he'ld say it fairly often.

What I'ld hope for though is finding something not quite in the "Could be mistaken for bad grammar" camp though and more of the "desu" omg-tourrets camp.

Dropping articles is fairly common, but don't drop the 'to be' verbs. The Russians I know drop the articles with people they're comfortable with but have almost overly formal English otherwise, and they have a tendency to avoid contractions, so it's always did not and never didn't.

Other than that, most follow the norm in the English speakers around them when it comes to names, but my closest friend always had a habit of changing names he recognized into their Russian variant (Nicholas to Nikolai, Alexander/Alex to Aleksander) and giving out nicknames (I get called Elya a lot, another friend of mine gets Goga). Russians that I know are actually very, very fond of giving out nicknames, but they usually stick to other Russians for that.

I don't have any clue if that helps at all, but it's pretty much all I could think of.

edit: WAIT! I have one friend who always, always tacks 'verny' (верный), meaning correct to the end of his questions/answers, for instance "you do not like pineapple on your pizza, verny?" or if someone asked him that "I do not, verny". I've never heard any other Russians I know do anything similar, occasionally they'll use 'da' (да) instead of 'yes' but that's similar to me saying yes instead of oui when in a French area, instinctive and more of a slip than a tick.

edit for horrible typos of doom.

edited 3rd Jan '11 6:54:59 PM by AwayLaughing

YES! I'll use that one, ((hugs))!!