Russian speakers and "I feel myself to be ..."

Question

I was told that it is a typical mistake for Russian speakers to say I feel myself badly instead of I feel ill.

I wonder to what extent such constructs sound wrong to native speakers?

1. I feel myself badly

2. I feel myself well

3. I feel myself to be a hero

4. I feel myself to be an astronaut

5. I feel myself to be suppressed (I feel myself suppressed)

6. I feel myself sleeping (I feel myself to be sleeping)

Are they always wrong or just convey a different meaning? Are there examples of native English speakers using such constructs?

UPDATE

Some comments said that there is a erotic connotation in this usage. I would like this to be explained as well.

Answer 1

All of these sentences are grammatically valid, but for some of them the intended meaning is not at all clear, and they are not the way that most English speakers would express these ideas.

In general, "I feel myself" is generally understood to mean touching yourself for autoerotic pleasure, which is probably not what you mean in any of these examples.

"I feel myself badly." Sounds like you mean that you are unskilled at autoeroticism. If what you mean is that you are sick or unhappy, you should say simply "I feel bad."

"I feel myself well." Similar to badly but in the opposite direction. You probably mean "I feel good."

"I feel myself to be a hero/astronaut/suppressed." Valid. These would be understood to mean that you think you "qualify" as one of these things, but by using the word "feel" rather than simply stating that you "are", you imply that the classification might be debatable. Like, someone who has flown very high-altitude airplanes might say, "I feel myself to be an astrounaut", knowing that others will challenge the claim. I think most Enlgish speakers would be more likely to say, "I consider myself to be an astrounaut" or "I think of myself as an astronaut" or "I think I am an astronaut." But the sentence as written is valid if that's what you mean. Note this is different from saying, "I feel like a [whatever]". In that case, you are not claiming to actually be whatever, just that you have some similar experience. Like, "After an hour in the Space Shuttle simulator, I feel like an astronaut."

"I feel myself sleeping." I'm not sure what you're trying to say. If you're sleeping, you're not really feeling anything. Maybe "I feel myself falling asleep"?

Answer 2

Warning: [jaɲɛpɔɲɛmajuparuski]

English does not have a Dative case (I have a strong feeling those Russian reflexives are usually Dative, not Accusative; please correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what I'd expect in German, for instance), and English reflexive pronouns are cumbersome Rube Goldberg constructions (viz, myself, ourselves, yourself, yourselves, himself, herself, itself, themselves, including the only 2nd person plural inflection in the language) which demonstrate that English does not use reflexives much at all for grammatical purposes.

Consequently, most of the sentences above are either ungrammatical (1 & 2; though they're understandable, and such unnecessary reflexives are easily ignored); an example of a wrong lexical choice (6; you can't feel yourself doing anything when you're sleeping - the word for that is dream); or part of a different construction that probably doesn't carry the same meanings as the Russian construction.

3, 4, & 5, however, are grammatical examples of the construction called B-Raising. Not to go into details, these reflexives are required after the verb feel (which means 'believe, perceive' in this construction) when it takes an infinitive complement clause with to that represents a belief or perception about oneself.

I.e,

• I believe/perceive [I be a hero] ==> I feel myself to be a hero.
• I believe/perceive [I be an astronaut] ==> I feel myself to be an astronaut.
• I believe/perceive [I be suppressed] ==> I feel myself to be suppressed.

The reflexive is required only because the subject of an infinitive can't be deleted by Equi after like, so it gets Raised up to become the direct object of like, and then it has to become reflexive because it's identical to the subject of like. It's a very complex rule.

Answer 3

I feel myself [to be] XXX is an idiomatic metaphorical usage. It's normally associated with considered assessment. So if you said...

"I felt myself to be dying"

...this would most likely mean that taking all circumstances into account, you genuinely believed that you were actually dying and would soon be dead. On the other hand,...

"I felt like I was dying"

...primarily emphasises how bad you felt (you may not really have believed you were about to die).

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OP's examples 1, 2, 6 all strike me as non-standard, in that none of the states being referenced are anything that would require careful assessment.

We do also use the "reflexive" form in contexts where "feel" has the meaning intuitively sense, rather than think, judge - for example, "I felt myself to be unwanted and unloved". But again, examples 1, 2, 6 don't fit that meaning.

Example 4 also seems rather odd. Without context, it could mean "My current circumstances and reactions are similar to what I imagine an astronaut would experience", or it could mean "In my opinion I am an astronaut". Both seem slightly weird sentiments to me.

Examples 3, 5 seem unexceptional to me. Personally, I'd normally include "to be" (as extensively explored in this earlier question). I should point out that "I feel myself guilty" is far more common than "I feel myself to be guilty". But they're both eclipsed by the standard "I feel guilty" anyway.

Answer 4

I feel myself, when not used in a tactile sense, means soemthing like I consider myself. It follows that examples 3, 4 and 5 are grammatical, and all three may be used without to be. 6 is grammatical, with or without to be, but, for semantic reasons, would be unlikely to be said by a native speaker. 1 and 2 are ungrammatical in the 'consider' sense.

Answer 5

In general, feelings can be felt in an internal mental sense, but physical objects like people aren't felt, except in a physcial sense. Generally with your hands.

If you say any of those phrases with "I feel myself" to a fluent English speaker, you are liable to receive a snicker at best. It sounds too much like a cross between "I play with myself" (a phrase implying masturbation), and the phrase "X felt up Y" (a phrase implying X used his/her hands on the body of Y for the purposes of sexual exploration). The ones with "to be" aren't so bad, because again "feel" is now talking about a state of existance rather than a literal person.

Answer 6

My opinion on American English usage is that there is no auto-erotic meaning to the clause "I feel myself" except among those who spend a disproportionate amount of time thinking in those terms. (This is illustrated in the popular cartoon series "Beavis and Butthead", which frequently exemplifies a juvenile obsession with anything erotic.)

The sentence "I feel myself" may require some further explanation, as it does seem to assert that something extraordinary is happening. This is simply because we all (or most of us, anyway) can physically feel or sense ourselves.

tchrist gave a link to some excellent examples of how "I feel myself..." can be used. Each of these cases appear to be self-consistent and not requiring additional explanation beyond the context that each one is in. (I didn't actually look at all of the nearly 2 million results.)

Most of your example sentences are not common in everyday usage, but I would not find them to be unusual in a first-person narrative story, for example. I that case, I would also expect plenty of context to give it clearer meaning.

"I feel myself badly" is a little difficult to imagine, but even that sentence could find a place in the right context. As for the others, you could just as easily substitute "I imagine myself..." if you want to know how "I feel myself..." might be used and interpreted.