I've noticed, say, that in Poland, where the native tongue lacks articles, people regularly mess up "the" and "a," or miss them altogether. I've never met a French person with the same issue, for obvious reasons.
When I started looking into people's mistakes with tenses in English - dear god, so much about my native tongue that I had no idea about, and yet made particular nationality error combinations really stand out. It's crazy fun.
Edit: and I love my eldest's progress with English. While she's basically a bilingual preschooler, she tends to speak English with polish word order: I like cars red. Her natural instinct is to also use the polish rules for nouns when choosing he/she/it. It's an absolutely fascinating process I feel privileged to observe.
Interestingly, that word order is also valid English, though it has a slightly different meaning than "I like red cars".
Example: "I like [my] soup warm".
"I like soup warm, but you can eat it cold and left over if you want."
"I like having soup warm"
"I like my cookies freshly baked"
"I like men muscular and toned"
"I like my women blonde, so you can go for the brunette"
"I like cars red" doesn't quite work as well but doesn't seem wrong. Add a little context and it seems more normal. "As a buyer of many sports cars, I like my cars red, even despite the speeding tickets I get".
Perhaps a linguist could explain how this phrasing works.
(That said, of course I advocate teaching her to speak fluently and to use that word order only when she intends its subtlety of meaning.)
What do you want? - I want tea. How do you want your tea? - I want my tea hot with sugar.
Perhaps, besides the fun of imagining someone having to explain to McCain what a "double dutch rudder" is, the language serves a higher purpose of increasing virality and impact.
They could be haven trying to disguise themselves, maybe fearing a grammatical analysis or somehow exposing some fingerprint in how they construct sentences.
And as throwaway claimed, if you speak both English and Russian (I do), and have heard many others who speak both English and Russian for a many years you start to pick up patterns and understand when someone is speaking with a fake-make-it-sound-Russian style.
It would vary depending on the meaning in English, too.
The kind of caucus that nominates candidates would be "выборный съезд".
Congressional caucus is actually trickier, just because there's usually no close equivalent in other parliamentary systems (including the Russian one). It's like a political faction, but 1) its platform is not all-encompassing, and 2) its membership is not exclusive (i.e. people can, and normally do, belong to several different caucuses). For that, I don't think there's any good word other than loaning the English word directly.
>since they can't just say "I work for Russia and we're reminding America that they're not invulnerable."
But the person who replied is saying how the grammatical obfuscation doesn't look like something that's done by a Russian but by an English speaker who is trying to sound like a Russian with bad English. Because a Russian with bad English wouldn't make those mistakes.
does not imply it was done by a Russian.
It's weird to me that you're trying to push this to blame another group so quickly, especially with an 8 day old account.
that's not exactly hard for anyone that payed even a little attention during the very controversial US political season in 2016. Same with Brexit. The terminologies and crux issues have been widely debated on the social web. I would say it has actually been very difficult to escape
What a weird thing to say. Even the most native of idioms can be learned, and there are plenty of fully bi-tri lingual people in the world.
Mining the text for cultural clues is a fool's errand.
the parent's point though was that there's a mismatch between the level of idioms used and the broken grammar used (which is, imo, pretty obviously intentionally obfuscated; it's just… not how a non-native speaker would write it, esp russian)
Whatever's written in that blog post, and how it's written, is neither enough to convict nor exonerate.
Are you saying there's some letter written in broken english that's being used as proof of Russian involvement in the DNC hacks?
No, but since you're obviously confused let me explain which thread we're in. The common topic, stretching back to the top comment, is armchair linguistic "analysis" :
>> (throwaway71958) Well, there's no Russian first-language bias in that text for sure. Another argument in favor of the opinion that this was written by an American: the author seems to be well versed in the memes of the US political discourse. Someone from outside the US is unlikely to even know or care about Trump's "movement", or who "Bannon" is, or "drain the swamp", or "white privilege" etc. They're also unlikely to abbreviate "New York Times" as "NYT". The telltale signs are all over the text.
>> (atemerev) Yes, exactly. While those are still somewhat plausible (I am Russian, and I might have occasionally used all of these ironically), it was "POTUS" and "SCOTUS" that made me 99% sure that this text was written by an American (or at least a US insider). You guys love your acronyms.
>> (doktrin) I honestly don't know why you guys are trying to divine identity based on textual clues like this. It's safe to assume every stylistic and linguistic choice is deliberate.
>> (throwaway71958) Sure. But if that's what you really think, then you don't get to assume that the DNC was hacked "by the Russians". Agreed?
>> (doktrin) Are you saying there's some letter written in broken english that's being used as proof of Russian involvement in the DNC hacks?
>> (jessaustin) Now that we know the "tools used" "proof" is worthless because CIA uses those tools too, is there anything else?
>> (doktrin) What does that have to do with my point about inferring identity based on textual clues in this blog post?
Which brings us back to the present - as you can see, it's you and throwaway who are trying to derail the thread at the last minute with red herrings about the DNC hacks. I'm not sure why you feel like it's super relevant here.
> Bonus points: you've used the phrase "paid shills" twice!
Again : you're confused. I used the phrase once (the other "use" you're thinking of was obviously a citation)
But when the Shadowbrokers leak appeared, the community response was more like "wat."
2017 in a nutshell right there.
The BS one hears today (against Russia, etc) are the "WMD"s of 2017.
There's a single superpower the last 2+ decades (Russia is no USSR) and it has a long history of pushing for its "interests" all over the world, starting wars, grabbing resources, overthrowing governments, supporting all kinds of lunatics and dictators.
And covering the whole damage they do with holier than though finger pointing, made up stories, and generally BS they serve a docile and mostly ignorant on anything happening outside their home state, much less worldwide, population. Or, actually, worse than ignorant: mostly informed from mainstream tv news presenting them the "enemy du jour", but with a complete lack of context and history, and with any nuance and details jumbled up in their minds (in a "Go to Austria, see the kangaroos" fashion).
Whether its a Joe Sixpack or a college educated person, in the majority of cases they equally lack context and perspective, and have no real reason to even try to get one, since they have no skin in the game: some other poor suckers will go and fight (e.g. literally poor whites, blacks and latinos going into service) and some remote countries will pay the toll, so no big deal.
Also it's remarkably unfair for you to cherry pick our foreign policy misdeeds while leaving out all of the good we've done over that same time frame.
I wish we cultivated a better interest in world news and culture here. Our natural borders play some (small) role in our isolation. But, yes, the population at large also ignores much of the global news.
Considering the US government and it's MSM propaganda machine tell only one side of the story, I'd think you'd be comfortable with someone telling the other side of that story, if it's fairness you're seeking of course.
Do not trust the people telling you Russia is behind all of these problems for the US. Even if it's true, it's a fraction of Russians that are guilty, and if you judge the whole population by what they've done Americans are guilty of a whole hell of a lot too.
The problem with trying to unravel the truth about Russian hacking is that both sides have similar incentives to play up the drama: For the West to paint Russia as a threat plays straight into an agenda of making Russia seem relevant and powerful. Because of that, there's no reason for Putin to try particularly hard to squash allegations whether they're true or false.
Sure, but at the level Russia can afford, and "puppeteering the US president" is a BS claim way above that, tailor-made for a nation spoon-fed with shows like 24 and Homeland and endless claims about how all the world "plots against it" while itself does exactly that globally (and nobody bats an eyelid).
And while Russia/Putin will use such tactics for their country's (and/or his own) immediate interests/survival (e.g. in Crimea, a place with a huge majority of ethnic Russians, or the middle east), they don't have neither the means or the history of meddling and plundering all over the world.
The claims are mostly a way to invent a present-day Bond villain, an easily identifiable target, like it has been played out tons of times in the past. Russia has too many natural resources and wants to control its periphery, something that goes against the general "interests" and plundering intentions of outside players, hence the pressure, combined with the constant post-Cold-War expansion of Nato to suffocate them.
If instead of Putin there was some friendly dolt selling Russia wholesale to foreign corporate interests (instead to national players that the country can somewhat control -- something which is labeled "cronyism"), like e.g. Yeltsin, it would be all love and hugs with EU and the US, even if they did ten times worse in freedom internally. You know, like those lovable Saudis.
It really harkens back to much of the Republicans' desire for anti-scientific thoughts, and lack of critical thought. It also explains the overly simplistic thought of "Well, the weather is nice, this climate change must be bullshit".
Don't get me wrong, I think the Democrats have significant problems of their own. For example, they're not able to properly convey scientific thought to the masses, and instead rely on shaming and insulting. That's not exactly a way to engender people to your view.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detai...
Or it is Russian and they intentionally formulated this as cartoonesque Russian, so that everyone says "this can't possibly be Russian, it's someone who tries to put the blame on Russia".
The problem is that if this comes from a government power, it is likely that they have the resources to use some professional translators and/or linguists to make it look whatever they want it to look like.
Anything here that is not backed by other data is just pure speculation.
"TheShadowBrokers is having special trick or treat for Amerikanskis tonight."
https://medium.com/@shadowbrokerss/message-5-trick-or-treat-...
I suppose though, that "Amerikanski" might be used outside Russia. Serbia, Bulgaria? Misdirection seems more likely though.
Sounds like a villian from a 60's Bond flick.
A much more common mistake you will find is not knowing when to use "the" or "a".
Edit: unless it is a Russian pretending to be an American who is pretending to be Russian which, who the hell knows, anything is possible.
"Let us be speaking regarding corruption"
That sounds like a common phrasing I hear from Indians who aren't native English speakers.
So maybe Indian pretending to be an American pretending to be Russian? Heh.
But the correct use of definite and indefinite articles indicates someone with a more than competent knowledge of English (whatever their nationality may be).
Implausible, I guess. It feels more like somebody faking a russian person writing in english for obfuscation rather than deception purposes.
In English, the noun describing the nationality is also an adjective describing belonging to, or affiliation with, that nationality. E.g. "An American is driving an American car".
In Russian, this is not the case - they are different words, sharing the same root. Some examples (noun - adjective):
US: Amerikanets - Amerikanskiy EN: Anglichanin - Angliyskiy DE: Nemets - Nemetskiy AR: Arab - Arabskiy CN: Kitaets - Kitayskiy
There's one and only one exception, and that, ironically, is the word for "Russian": "russkiy". It's the same for both the noun and the adjective, and, as you can see by comparing it with the list above, morphologically it looks like an adjective. The historic explanation for that is that it originated from the time of the Varangian conquest of Eastern Slavic lands, when the population was referred as "the people of [belonging to] Rus" - "Russkie lyudi" - where Rus was the name of the Varangian tribe in question.
Anyway, what this means is that no native Russian speaker would use the word "Amerikanskiy" to refer to Americans. It only makes sense as an adjective in "American something". However, the addition of "-s" at the end to indicate plural unambiguously tells us that whoever wrote this, treated it as a noun. Which would make perfect sense for a native English speaker, for whom the two are naturally conflated.
And the most obvious explanation for that is that if you put the word "American" by itself into Google Translate, for example, it can't decide whether it's a noun or an adjective without context, so it has to assume one or the other. And it seems to be assuming adjective by default, so you get "Amerikanskiy" back.
Oh, and by the way, writing at as "Amerikanski", without the final "y", is also something that hints strongly that it's not a native speaker. A native speaker would likely transliterate it letter by letter, starting from Russian "Американский", yielding "Amerikanskiy". However, that final "y" is really short when spoken, which is why native English speakers often miss it entirely when transcribing.
On top of that, Polish uses "-ski" for the same words: "polski", "rosyjski", "angielski", "arabski" etc. In Polish, it's also a very common (and ethymologically related - think "of ...") ending for last names - e.g. Piłsudski. There are a lot more Poles, or at least families with Polish ancestry, in US in particular than there are Russians. As a result, Polish last names are pretty common and well-known, as is their spelling. So, that spelling is often applied to vaguely similarly looking and sounding Russian loanwords and transliterations, which also leads to dropping of that final "-y" in "-skiy".
So, definitely not Russian, and overall slightly more probable to be a native English speaker from US.
That's, of course, assuming that the wording wasn't deliberately mangled to look like fake Russian, in a double misdirection...
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/us/shadow-brokers-leak-ra...
"This is probably some Russian mind game, down to the bogus accent"
I thought the folks who were acting concerned about the young throwaway accounts were just being paranoid. Until the next sequential throwaway account showed up and piled on. What gives? Is HN influential enough to deserve astroturfing / propaganda from state intelligence services?
And here's some Russian perspective on "draining the swamp": that's actually one thing Putin did when he came to power. Under Yeltsin, the government was basically run by oligarchs, and they could do whatever the hell they wanted. Putin and Russia's security/intelligence community that installed him laid down the ground rules, and made it clear that from there on out orders would be coming down from the Kremlin, not the other way around. One oligarch rebelled (Khodorkovsky) and was put in prison for a decade. Which, by the way, was entirely deserved. Most Russians were disappointed that other oligarchs didn't follow.
The issue with "draining the swamp" is that this creates voids that other people fill. Which they did under Putin. So even though oligarchs are pretty obedient now, there's a much stronger swamp sub-structure of Putin's pals under the covers which is darn near impossible to remove until he dies, and they're all under his control.
So armed with this perspective, I like two features of the US political system that many other Americans (native and naturalized) intensely dislike: the divided congress and the constant Mexican standoff between the executive and the legislative branch. If those guys could agree on anything, that's when we'd really be in trouble. Case in point is once again Russia, where the executive branch can request whatever laws it wants and be 100% sure they'll pass the Duma. The result is predictable: harebrained laws protecting the incumbent regime.
For a well documented case: http://www.stratcomcoe.org/internet-trolling-hybrid-warfare-...
Human rights violations in the U.S. are also well documented by China:
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2015/06/26/china-issues-r...
Likewise, Russia has a well documented history of sponsoring online propaganda campaigns, and most people who aren't delusional or paid shills would agree.
Two negative things about two different countries can in fact both be based in truth. Weird.
But hey, if you already wrote off anyone who disagrees as "delusional or paid shills" then you're too far gone to reason with. Literally nothing anybody ever says can make you think twice.
Uh huh
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolls_from_Olgino
https://themoscowtimes.com/news/st-petersburg-troll-factory-...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-...
https://www.inopressa.ru/article/03Jun2014/buzzfeed/web_rus....
https://globalvoices.org/2015/04/02/analyzing-kremlin-twitte...
> if you already wrote off anyone who disagrees as "delusional or paid shills" then you're too far gone to reason with. Literally nothing anybody ever says can make you think twice.
Not true, but it would definitely take more than that hand-wavy uncertainty yarn you're trying to spin
And as was already pointed out, you stated that "Russia sponsors" but even the first article states that the alleged project is the work of one guy who apparently has money to burn - not the government.
So why do we say "the Russians" and "the Chinese" as though they each form a political whole.
I mean, we know the CIA gets up to some pretty nefarious shenanigans, quite possibly without the express approval of The Administration.
It just seems like a lot of pots sitting around talking about how black the kettles are. Sure, some kettles are blacker than some pots.
What?
gamergate, /pol, /b, alt-right, the_donald, antifa use online trolling. In context, saying a state actor uses online trolling is an extremely conservative claim. I'm sure there's online trolling in favor of and sponsored by US, Chinese and Macedonian interests (to name a few) too - but Russia's actions are much better documented.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/05/fillin...
Disagree. There's no such thing as perfect certainty, but the only real question about Russian troll sponsorship is one of scale.
https://globalvoices.org/2015/04/02/analyzing-kremlin-twitte...
> US's sponsorship is objectively less probable: English being lingua franca hampers American wannabe "hybrid trolls"
This is an interesting observation, but I think you either underestimate American resources, or overestimate the logistics of online influence manipulation campaigns.
For illustration : there are about 1m fluent Russian speakers in the US, and about 4m fluent English speakers in Russia. Sure, it's a bigger talent pool : but both countries could rope in bilingual cyber propagandists by the thousands if they felt so inclined.
I very much doubt they're competent enough to pull something like this convincingly here in the US and avoid early detection and counter-intelligence response. Thus far no evidence whatsoever was presented that any of this was Russian, let alone state sponsored. That's either some truly elite level GRU work, to the standard we have not ever seen before, or there is, in fact, no "paid Russian trolls" on The_Donald. My opinion: there's no way in hell they could pull this off without getting noticed _well before_ the anointed Democratic candidate lost the election.
Christ, even the Canadian government does this, and we're about as unsophisticated as it gets.
The naivete of people getting their panties in a bunch over the revelation that The Evil Russians participate in hacking and propaganda, how can you be so unaware of how the world works?
So does JTRIG[1][2], and probably many other groups as well. Russia isn't the only suspect for this kind trolling.
Is that not the comment you were calling correct?
That's what "the person [you] replied to" was talking about, that use of the word prejudice.
That is what the person I replied to actually said, and the comment I was clearly referring to; the point being of course, that a discussion of the Russian government has no more to do with the Russian people than the Russian government does.
1. When you made https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14069152 you may have thought it "clearly" referred to the sentence by burkaman, but multiple people thought you were refuting burkaman and referring to snowpanda's comment.
2. Even though you were referring to burkaman's comment, he was directly talking about the sentence that used the word prejudice, and arguing that it was not prejudice. Your claim in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14069723 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14071992 that burkaman was not saying anything about prejudice is untrue. He was directly refuting a claim of prejudice.
Slightly tongue in cheek, but only slightly.
Then again, I'm sure that there are enough people and intelligence services in play to make everything confusing.
Anyway, while their nationality isn't obvious, their childishness is. I think that's the only detail that can really be gleaned from the text itself.