[friendzis]

> Russian has a lot of ways you can write "compactly" with fewer words than english and have a much more precise meaning of the sentence. (I always likened russian to type-safe haskell and english to dynamic python)

The difference is in fusionality. English does not use inflection and relies heavily on auxiliaries (pre-, post-positions, particles, other modifiers) while Russian (and other Slavic, Baltic languages) rely rather heavily on inflection.

For English speakers, probably the closest is the gerund. A simple suffix transforms a verb into a noun-compatible form, denoting process. In highly fusional languages a root can be combined with multiple modifying pre-, a-, suf-fixes, and inflected on top. This does unlock some subtlety.