I was reading an article on lenta.ru discussing “unified textbooks” proposal in Russian schools and came across this interesting tidbit at the end of it expressed by Alexander Adamsky, supposedly the head of Institute of Educational Politics Problems (whatever that is). He claims that there is a “sharp” language problem in Russia - learning the correct, literary Russian in school prevents “successful socialization”.
Quote: “If you want to build your career, be successful and earn a lot - you have to communicate with people that make the decisions, in their language, and that language is not the language that you are taught in school.”
Now, granted, I have not lived in Russia for 30 years (visited it a few times), but I never remember or heard of the problem when speaking the correct, “literary” Russian would hinder your career. Neither have I heard of this kind of problem in any other language (except maybe Arabic, where AFAIU the “literary” version is just very different and it would be weird to see anyone speaking it).
So - question to everyone - have you ever encountered this situation, where speaking the “correct” or “proper” version of the language would hinder your success/career?
I know substantially nothing about this problem, but I wonder if I may speculate that a slightly different question might be more relevant: I would suspect that anyone speaking strictly formal “Queen’s English” in everyday life (as opposed to more colloquial) English might be seen as a little bit strange, and might therefore be at a career disadvantage in the job-hunting game.
But the real question perhaps should be: If a student is taught only strictly formal English (or any other language) in school, does anything prevent such a student from learning the usual colloquial speech as well, at home, on the street, and in most social activities? As far as I know, students who learn formal “academic” speech in school tend to use that in school or in academic publications, but they all still speak perfectly fluent street speech otherwise.
Well, there are some people who speak/write Russian whom I find it hard to understand nowadays. There is, for example, a “dialect” (if it can be called that) called “fenya”, which came from the criminal circles, and has a very different dictionary from Russian (but shares the grammar/syntax). It used to be either an indicator of very low class or an affectation for some “bohemian” circles to speak it. There are also today a bunch of “street” neologisms that are frankly quite incomprehensible the first time you hear them and I only get them after seeing them several times in context.
I am not surprised that the “street speech” in Russia differs from the “proper” Russian - it does. What I am surprised at is that assertion that the “people who decide” utilize the street speech in their dealings to the extent that speaking the proper language would hinder someone’s career. I am not aware of that kind of thing in any other country.
On the contrary, I would expect that knowing “formal” literary English is a big career boost in most fields. It won’t get you a trusted position in the drug-trafficking underworld, but it’ll be of immense help if you want to be an engineer, academic, soldier, doctor, etc. Pretty much any well-respected profession.
Is there a big difference between Russia and the English-speaking world as to how one gets a career? Do Russians generally get careers by schmoozing with politicians, rich donors, mob bosses, etc. who disdain formal speech?
I would see it being more a problem for a non-native learning the language than for natives. For example, an American speaking Spanish but not knowing colloquial Spanish would be at a significant disadvantage, in my opinion, since the main reason your Spanish would be helpful to your career would be the ability to converse with other Spanish speaking people.
But native speakers don’t generally acquire their main language from school. So I don’t see why they would have a problem. As long as they can understand the “street Russian,” I don’t see any reason choosing to mostly use a higher dialect would be a problem.
The only problem I can see is if literary Russian is not the same as proper Russian. In other words, if written language was just completely different from spoken langauge, ala the difference between Vulgar and Classical Latin. But that would just seem rather odd for a language to do that these days.
You know, last time I visited Russia was about 14 years ago. Maybe it changed since then, and the best way to the top is to speak some kind of dialect instead of proper Russian. But that just seems too weird to me. Any other country where that is true?
I’ve seen where it definitely hindered social acceptance with people that learned English as their second language. Their ‘proper’ English was often taken as ‘snooty’ buy the ‘normal’ English speakers. No idea if it hindered their careers.
I don’t think “literary language” is the correct term though, as that means ‘the written voice’. I opened this thread because I have a problem with that.
Reading became an escape mechanism for me quite early. From that, I have a prolific vocabulary. From that, I have a ‘high class’ writing ‘voice’, and I prefer to communicate in writing.
But I learned (the hard way) not to talk like that. I’ve been accused multiple times of plagiarizing, because my speaking and literary voices are so different, starting with a Jr High English teacher. Most recently I met someone after Emailing a fair bit and was told I’m not the guy she’d been talking with online…
There are lots of areas in life where you have to learn to talk differently to different people.
If you’re trying to boost your career as a salesman of farm equipment in Texas, you don’t want to speak the Queen’s English.
If you are the chief engineer managing a large construction site, you need to know how to adjust your language, depending on your audience. You put on your hard hat and speak gruffly when you tell the workers that they had better get that concrete poured on time, or else their asses are on the line. And then you take your hard hat off and speak politely when you greet the bankers who own the property, and explain to them why the concrete is slightly delayed but the project is well within parameters formulated in the original paradigm.