Great if you know that just happened, but if you don’t, good luck. Typing in “hello” will give you the formal version, Здравствуйте (zdrastvootya). If you type in “hi” or “hey,” you’ll get the informal Привет (privyet). Russian goes so far as to do this with words like “hello” and “goodbye.” The word you use for “hello” to a friend is completely different from the word you use with someone you don’t know. The problem is that if you use that phrase with someone you are supposed to treat formally, you may offend them. If you go to Google Translate and ask it to change

(In linguistics we call this ‘register.’) Growing up speaking English, you learned that some phrases are more casual than others (is ain’t a word? yes, and has been for a long time), but English doesn’t really show familiarity in the way words are put together, the way many languages do.įor example, this formality difference shows up mainly in verbs in languages like Spanish.

This means that the language you use with a particular person changes depending on your relationship with that person. Google Translate makes you too friendly.Įnglish doesn’t have a whole lot of formality rules, but other languages do. (Don’t get me started on the funky translations Alexa gives my kids, or how I have to pronounce Spanish song names in order for Alexa to actually play them.)ġ. Here are a few reasons why- and you can replace “Google Translate” with “Alexa” or any other AI translator throughout. However, make no mistake: if connecting well with people is the point of your language learning journey (and how can it not be?), Google Translate will fail you and actually learning a language is still a whole lot better. There’s no doubt- computers are better all the time, and Google Translate does work, often. And every year, the beginning of the school year triggers a slew of language teachers trying to share how “bad” Google Translate is by running a text through several languages and then back into English (because we would do that… when?). Thinking Google Translate means you (or your child) won’t need a language learning experience? To be sure, Google Translate has helped us in a lot of ways like enabling language access to local government info, radically improving world travel, and even disseminating COVID-19 information.

I love you in russian google translate