[rebelde]

DarkSide's English is incredibly good for some supposed Russians. It even has the correct use of the apostrophe in "clients'". I know nothing, but my hunch is that this was written by a well-educated person who grew up in the US or Canada.

[culturestate]

I can’t decide if it’s worse to imply that Russians can’t learn English or to think that the anglosphere only exists in North America.

[rebelde]

I am just saying that it is idiomatic North American English. I, for instance, could not write in idiomatic British English if I tried. For instance, your use of "state" in your username and "anglosphere" in your one sentence strongly hints to me that your English is not purely North American. (I see your profile, too.) The vast majority of Americans would use different terms.

[culturestate]

Looking only at the parts quoted in krebs’s post, it doesn’t really stick out to me as either American or British English. They use double quotation marks, for example - American - but leave the trailing comma outside, which is British.

Other than that, there are no giveaway spellings or idioms. It could just as easily be someone whose exposure to English is dominated by technical documentation, which tends to use mostly American style.

[rebelde]

You have a good point about the comma. I am not sure what the use of the word "funds" tells me. I think in the US, only the highly-educated or those in the financial industry would use that term instead of "money" (bitcoin?). It very well could be much more common in other parts of the, umm, anglosphere.

[culturestate]

I think anyone who’s worked in any kind of corporate environment would distinguish “funds” from “money” when writing formally, but maybe that’s just me.

I grew up in the US but lived most of my adult life abroad, and the only thing I can tell you for sure is that you should never stereotype anyone based on the way they use their second or third language.

[whatshisface]

The lack of thick accents, hammer and sickle symbols, and hardbass leaves me seriously questioning the plausibility of this "Russian" theory.

[baobabKoodaa]

I also took note of the apparent lack of tracksuits, vodka, AK-47s, and bears.

[mywittyname]

I've noticed that central Europeans have pretty stellar grammar in general. I was doing some work on an open source project created by a Polish team and was surprised by how many obscure grammar rules they obeyed.

Might have something to do with many of these rules being derived from Latin and their native language is probably closer in structure to Latin than English is.

[andreygrehov]

As a native Russian speaker living in New York, I concur. I work in Ad Tech and deal with clients from Eastern Europe quite often. Russians' English is _always_ recognizable.

[dkarp]

Is this sarcastic? Because you’re a native Russian speaker and yet your English isn’t recognizably Russian…

[andreygrehov]

Nope, it's not. I always try to polish my English as much as I can, but after more than 8 years living in US, I still occasionally get messages from co-workers saying like, "hey dude, not to be pedantic, but ..."

If I were to write a long piece, you'd almost certainly notice that I'm not a native speaker. I'm subscribed to a few Telegram channels led by Russian speaking people and I always spot minor mistakes in their messages. Even when the text is grammatically correct, the way sentences are structured is what usually reveals them. I observe similar pattern with the partners I work with. Heck, even my English teacher's English (she is my friend on FB) is different from a typical writing style of a native speaker.

It obviously doesn't mean that Russians cannot learn a more "traditional" English, but when it comes to Russian hackers...meh, the chances are low, imho.

[baobabKoodaa]

> I observe similar pattern

I think a native English speaker would have written either "I observe a similar pattern" or "I observe similar patterns". Your choice of words in that sentence feels russian to me (although I may be influenced knowing what you told earlier).

[intricatedetail]

Or they used something like Grammarly...