Mdthbs

@Neith recently said the following in his comment on my question about extinct phonemes:

Ivan Turgenev once called Russian language “great, mighty, truthful and free” («великий, могучий, правдивый и свободный», see turgenev.org.ru/e-book/russki_yazyk.htm ), and schoolchildren are made to memorize this “prose poem”. Shortened to “great and mighty”, this idiom entered everyday Russian speech, to the point that if you hear «великий и могучий» without any noun then it’s surely means just Russian language.

Great and mighty are relative things, so I got very much curious as to what objective evidence is there to support the idea that the Russian language is greater and mightier than other languages, at least in some aspects.

My question is this: What are some examples of things present in Russian and absent in all or almost all other languages, or what are some objective parameters on which the Russian language beats all or almost all other languages?

My question is not meant to be broad, because I just want a few nice examples rather than a broad comparative analysis or a full list of all special things about Russian. An answer that provides 1-3 nice examples would be a great acceptable answer. I just want a few specific examples with which I could make other people impressed by the might of the Russian language. I want a few objective examples to which non-Russian speakers would react, "Wow!"

What I am looking for is things like:

• unique grammatical constructions, like the future passive participle in Latin,




• examples of frequently used words or constructions that have no equivalent in any other language, like Schadenfreude in German,




• examples of how a Russian sentence can convey its idea so precisely and succinctly that it would require much more words in any other language,




• data comparing Russian to other languages on any meaningful objective parameter like the number of words, number of prepositions, etc.,




• and other objective(!) things that can cause a wow reaction.

The criterion is very simple: the stronger the wow effect the better. I humbly hope that this criterion is intuitively understandable to any user of this SE. Please just kindly use your common sense.

I like the Russian language and want to find some facts with which I can impress other people about Russian, and I humbly hope that native speakers can kindly help me find such facts.

In the style of "Love is ..."

• Russian is so mighty that it can express any idea by мат alone. There's a joke about a foreman shouting to workers loading a truck, "Нахуя дохуя нахуярили?! Расхуяривайте!"



• Russian is so mighty that it can have six (6) consonants in a row in the word onset (Anlaut): взбзднуть.




• Russian is so mighty that it has a word that can hardly be translated into other languages: полуночничать — "to stay awake until late at night, not going to bed being occupied with something."

If I recall any other special features of Russian, I'll add them here, but as for now that's all.

Russian is often said to have a rich morphology, i.e. many ways to build words and tweak existing words to convey different nuances of meaning. Although not quite a unique thing by itlsef, it often comes as a surprise to learners of Russian how names of people and objects can be inflected to show the speaker’s relationship to them. E.g. calling a person Василий Петрович, Петрович, Василий, Вася, Васька or Васенька would imply your relationship to that person to be a student, friend. lover, etc.

Someone using the word Ленинка would be immediately recognised as a frequenter of the Lenin Library. Similarly, if you refer to the Trafalgar Square as Трафальгарка, you would be claiming to have lived in London for a while.

Dimunitive suffixes are quite a thing in Russian. If you are asked: поешь колбаски, then you are loved and cared for; but if you are told: Ешь колбасу! then you’re better be quick about it, or else…

The word совесть is quite unique to Russian. It denotes a virtue of having a moral judge sitting inside you and nagging you for doing any wrong.