Here are a couple of tips on how to spot Russian trolls who are not 100% fluent in English
1.) Articles--Russian doesn't have them
No "a" or "the." They just don't exist in Slavic languages. Russians have an extremely difficult time learning when to use them, and when not to, because in their own language, they never experienced them. That is probably why "The Donald" came to be so iconic an expression. Czech, like Russian, has no articles, so Ivana Trump at first didn't grasp that that was not how we referred to the first names of our spouses.
2.) Present tense of the verb "to be"
Russian doesn't have that, either. In Russian, if you want to say "Republicans are idiots," you just say the equivalent of "Republicans--idiots." Russian DOES have the verb "to be" in the future and past tenses, so they leave it out less often than articles, which are totally foreign to them, but they sometimes forget.
3.) Russian is a declined language
That means that many things that we express with prepositions (Republican trolls--I'll explain what they are some other time), Russian expresses by changing or adding on the ends of nouns, including names. Where an English-speaking person would say "basket full of goodies," a Russian would say "basket full goodies," and change the ending of "goodies." Where we would say "the name of Vladimir Putin," a Russian would say "name Vladimira Putina." Where we would say "the streets of Moskva (Moscow)," A Russian would say "streets Moskvy (no 'the,' remember)."
Russian does have its own prepositions, but since their language is declined with six different cases, there are many instances where we would use them and they would not.
These are the main things to look for when trying to spot Russian trolls. It isn't foolproof because Republicanese is full of oddball grammar not seen in English, too, and most Republicans are no more fluent in Russian than they are in quantum physics. But Russian does have its (Republicanese: it's) particular quirks, and since far from all of their hired trolls have a PhD in English, they do often make the errors cited above. So watch for them, and then tell the next one you spot either Иди домой (go home) or Иди к чёрту (go to hell) and you don't really care which.
= new reply since forum marked as read
