English

Please go to sleep. Also, paragraphs.

Haha I have the same thing. Even though I was raised bilingual I still feel more inclined to the russian language, as I perceive it as way more emotional and personal than any other language I speak. There are quite a few times when I feel like there are words missing in other languages to describe properly what I mean/feel. But, pretty sure you just feel about English that way because it's not your native language.

Use double spaces at the end of each sentence to start a new paragraph.

As someone who also speaks 2 (well 4 languages but only serbian and english fluently, my russian is meh and my german is quite bad), I can tell you that indeed, it feels like english is like that and if you don't specifically emphasise those words, it sounds like you're reading a book.

It's well made puzzle for sure. I liked it. Too hard for me though.

edit: Hahahahaha, wrong tab. Sorry.

Yes it´s hard . But we all suffer .As a someone from Bavaria , sometimes I understand english much better than some regional German dialogue-technic. You ask them some thing like "yes or no?" and they answer always with "nü"(yes) that sounds very similar to "nö"(no) :-)

Because there is no emotion, there is peace.
I know, i know, someone watched Star Wars too much...

English is an imperfect mishy-mashy porridge of a language that's never going to be just right :|
I think it's okay to not feel completely comfortable while speaking English as a non-native speaker honestly. As long as you are able to communicate your message, I am sure no one would think less of you and neither should you :)

First of all, I think you just don't know English that well (compared to your mother tongues). I'm sure you can imitate formal/informal/mid-century and whatnot way of speaking in Latvian/Russian, but can you do that in English?

Just speak/watch/read more in English and with time you'll be better at saying what you want to say, not what you can :) (Sometimes it can be difficult to do that even in your native language :D)

On the other hand, it might be the case of the grammar, yes. English has no cases, so it's bound to a certain grammar structure, while languages with cases (Latin, Russian, German) can mess up with the word order any way they like.

In Latin (from wiki):

Romulus condiderat urbem. ["Romulus had founded the city."]
Romulus urbem condiderat. ["Romulus the city had founded."]
Condiderat Romulus urbem. ["He had founded Romulus city."]
Condiderat urbem Romulus. ["He had founded city Romulus."]
Urbem Romulus condiderat. ["The city Romulus he had founded."]
Urbem condiderat Romulus. ["The city he had founded Romulus."]

Like that you can emphasize words without intonation. I guess that might be the case English seems stiff to you. Also, both Russian and Latvian have grammatical genders, so that may also be the case.

I can only advise you to watch English language television and movies and learn what to emphasise. English does make use of emphasis, sometimes things can mean entirely different things with different intonation.

The way you emphasize things is based on how YOU talk. Some people are very expressive, some people are more monotone. It isn't the language, it is how each person speaks it.

Oh my, it's like that King's Bounty kerfuffle on RPS all over again. 'The translation is stilted like butler's doo-doo!' - 'But you just can't translate humour!' - 'Yeah, you can't mangle up English phrases the same way as Russian ones!'

I've never played King's Bounty in Russian, but I don't think it's anything like Joyce's Finnegans Wake in terms of density of cultural connotations and wordplay - which indeed would render it almost untranslatable. So the problem probably was that the localisation team just wasn't good enough. I'd guess that if your original intention is to deliver an emotion, or a specific (e.g. playful) tone, rather than a particular titbit of information, you ought to start by looking at the means of expressing the same emotion in the target language, rather than the means of conveying the same message. Think of English phrases that made you feel the same way, and figure out why they did. As soon as you start pondering the 'proper' way of expressing duration in English - 'Do I use "for"? Should I put "only" before the verb, or the numeral? Shall I go with the exact numeral or a loose one?' etc. - the original tone is lost. Take your suggested phrase: even without venturing into the expansive wasteland of profanity, you could easily muster something like this: 'Check this out: barely an hour's wink and I'm not even sleepy, like at all.' Would that emphasise the things you want to emphasise?

In English, we emphasize our speech and give it color through various means:

• vocalized stress ("I'm really tired.")
• repetition ("I'm really, really, really tired.")
• sentence construction ("I'm not just tired, I'm really tired.")
• specific word choice ("I'm completely exhausted.")
• expletives ("I'm frigging tired.")
• poetic license ("If I was any more tired, the Coroner's Office would be calling you in to identify my body.")

The only reason English doesn't seem expressive to you is because you do not spend enough time with people who speak it well. Using the phrase you mentioned in the OP, it might be translated into English as follows:

"Check this out: I slept one hour, last night, and haven't even the slightest desire to go to bed."

If you think english is straightforward you should never ever learn finnish for that matter. Can't think of any language more straightforward and stripped of emotion than that.

im not a native english speaker, but i also notice that when i hear slavic/baltic people speak english. its like heartless robots speaking."ivan, you idiot", "you suka", "kill the enemy ivan" sorry for the stereotyping im not lacist

I am a native English speaker and I speak some Spanish. Sometimes I make weird faces while speaking Spanish. So anyways, good luck.

Interesting, because I also have Russian as my first language, and whenever I speak in English I feel the same way as you

But Russian or CIS country natives (thank Steam for CIS) always have their own mother language dialect ... perhaps thats whats keeping you.

latvieši nemāk runāt angliski..

i was born in ukraine and i grew up in the states.. so i actually feel the same way you do, but about russian.. in english i can express myself fully, and i'm comfortable with it.. in russian i'm always struggling... i speak hebrew too and always have trouble expressing myself in both russian and hebrew

I'm originally from South Korea but and learned English as my second language but now I find English more comfortable. But I can see what you mean when I compare English to Korean. Korean stresses in expression are much stronger and noticeable than English. I think it's kind of why when people watch animes and hear Japanese voice actors (because their stresses are similar to Korean) it sounds so expressive while if you go to English dubbed, sometimes it doesn't sound so emotionally diverse. Of course this isn't the ONLY reason (bad voice actors in some cases) but it could be a factor.

Native Vietnamese speaker here. I actually prefer to write in english because i think Vietnamese is somewhat melodramatic.