It’s not so easy for Norwegians who speak Russian to express the nuances of the language. They do not have a total grasp on adverbs.

— As a linguist I am interested in how the meaning is expressed in different languages. The Russian adverb structure is particularly interesting to investigate, says Maria Filiouchkina Krave at the Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages (ILOS) at the University of Oslo.

An adverb is a grammatical construction that is used to tell how, when or why an action is performed in relation to other actions.

The Russian adverb corresponds to the English participle -ing, as in talking, running, smiling. But the Norwegian adverb is used only to describe certain movements and bodily expressions as standing, sitting and smiling.

Adverbs can express many different meanings depending on the context in which it is used and multiple meanings within the same context.

Norwegians’ Russian

— A sentence with an adverb is slightly shorter but also more expressive, says Krave.

In her thesis, she studied the language used by Norwegians who speak Russian at a high level. The conclusion is that the Norwegians use adverbs much less than Russian native speakers.

Norwegians speak in such a way because of the meaning of Russian adverbs, it’s hard to grasp the more nuanced meanings depending on the context.

— The findings are an important contribution to the knowledge on how the adverb is interpreted and understood in different languages, says Krave.

More literary

Operation is the same in later Russian writers of the ancient classics. It is not like adverbs should disappear in modern Russian.

The use of adverbs requires high linguistic awareness – even for those who have Russian as their mother tongue, as required.

Maria Filiouchkina Krave have found that our knowledge of logical connections between actions is important for the interpretation of adverbs.

— If you ask a Norwegian who can speak Russian or a Russian who speaks Norwegian how to translate a Russian adverb to Norwegian, most suggest the instrumental structure “of doing something.”

Literary Translation at AventA Translation & Interpreting Agency — http://aventa.com.ua/en/lit.html