Is it the same thing in different languages?

At present the personal attitude of many people to solid knowledges in a field is too rare, but the fact is it is still important as it was, say, a dozen years ago. When I went to school, something like 25 years ago, it was necessary to learn and use the Russian grammar, and then it was natural and none was questioning that; few ‘phylologists’, as we called them, were dealing with foreign language grammars; and too few people I knew were able to explain one language grammar notion or rule, using another, different language (non-native, for instance).

Now it’s getting more and more important, because the language barriers are seen in a different light, and this means that the wish to overcome those is aggravating. The era of hi-speed communications requires ability to skip from one language onto another and vice versa, seamlessly! To be the fact, there must be an understanding of many things a language may consists, a sort of pressing for quick-and-now notion definition and instant lookup in another language (dictionary, etc); the grammar comes very handy here as it is the most important constituent of any language, all over the world.

The chances are very few readers may allow themselves go into numerous details of a language grammar; nevertheless, I’d like to offer you, my dear reader, to take a try and explain to an imaginary counterpart (speaking some different language, i.e. not your native) what a particular part of speech in your native language is, while using not your own native language. To give some hits below is the table showing parts of speech in Russian, Chinese and English.

Русский	中文	English
предлог	前置词	preposition
междометие	感叹词	interjection
союз	连接词	conjunction
прилагательное	形容词	adjective
глагол	动词	verb
числительное	数词	numeral
местоимение	代词	pronoun
существительное	名词	noun
наречие	副词	adverb
частица	助词	particle
артикль	冠词	article
транслитерация	音译	transliteration
деепричастие	福动词	adverbial participle
причастие	形动词	participle
счетное слово	量词	measure word

I do hope you can do it!

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