There is a small benefit to being torn out of your linguistic environment. You begin to recognize when writers use vocabulary that was created much later in their period literature. I’m noticing such blips both in Bykov and Shamil Idiatullin, a new Russian writer I’m exploring. (Obviously, Shamil Idiatullin is Russian not in any ethnic sense but in the language he writes).
Bykov’s characters who live in the 1930s use the expression “вот это вот всё”, which is a very recent verbal tic that arose way after I emigrated. Idiatullin’s character intersperses his speech with “как бы” in 1983, which is impossible because this particular tick was born in the 2000s. It has the same effect on me as if characters said “go, Brandon!” to mock the authorities in 2008. I notice these things because I wasn’t there when they were born and they aren’t natural to me.
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