Alexander Anichkin, who comments here as Sashura, is my go-to guy for the realia of Soviet life, and I wrote him as follows (I’ve excised most of the Russian quote):
I’m reading Nikolai Klimontovich’s Дорога в Рим [The Road to Rome, published in 1994] and I’ve gotten to a part where he’s reminiscing about the early ’60s (he was my age, born in 1951):
Бог мой, как много было хорошего: а напиток «Чудесница», а летка-енка, […] и отцовские норвежки, и дача на Сходне […]…
[My God, how many good things there were: the beverage “Chudesnitsa,” the letka-jenkka [a Finnish dance: see this LH comment from nine years ago], […] and my father’s norvezhki, and the dacha at Skhodnya […]…
I know or can google most of this, but I can’t find anything for норвежки but ‘Norwegian women.’ Do you know what he’s talking about? (Skis?)
His response was so enlightening I couldn’t resist sharing it here:
oh, this brings back so many memories!
Norvezhki were a type of skates. The point here is that they were more expensive and rare, only for grown-ups. Children hardly ever got a chance to have them or even to try skating on them.
In my memory, they are the ones with long straight thinnish blades, designed for speed skating on good clear ice. As opposed to ‘kanadki’ (Canadian skates) with shorter wider blades curved and angled at tips, designed for quick turning and dribbling when playing hockey. There were also ‘figurki’ for figure skating with serrated tips and, for smaller children, ‘snegurki’ (Snowmaidens) with still wider blades and straps to attach to valenki. I had a pair of skates that I sometimes used to go to school. There was one road to cross on tiptoes, and the rest of the way were alleys with packed snow and ice. […] And, for Languagehat purposes, also note the etymology of the word коньки [‘skates’] – little horses! (cf. sea horse – морской конёк) […] And here’s an image for you. Look at this painting from 1952: the skates in the boy’s school bag are probably those very norvezhki –PS. Skis are near enough. We had Soviet-made long narrow skis made in Estonia. They were called estonki [‘female Estonians’].
It’s really hard to find that kind of information without the help of knowledgeable people, and I’m grateful for them.
Also in Dutch, these are called noren (“Norwegians”).
Meanwhile, educated old Russians keep complaining about the proliferating morphological formation with -ka/-ki (eg. koshachka – koshachiy korm – cat food).
For those of you wondering about American girls, there is an Amerikanka – a type of billiard/pool game.
Thanks, Steve! I’ve enjoyed looking back at all this.
I wondered about the etymology for the English footwear, and also the fish.
Wikt:
OED:
The fish:
Wikit:
OED:
Heh. A Norwegian skate means a fish.
No hint of why the skate was called that, though.
Serendipitously, I noted that “skate” (etymology unknown) meant “a worn-out horse”, and thus also, a “mean and/or contemptible person”; the “skate” in “cheapskate”.
OED:
I remember my shock (at around 6 years old) at the fact that the Russian word for “horse” was not “конь”, but rather лошадь, seen in a Bulgarian-Russian dictionary. It was apparently borrowed from Turkic?
According to:
http://www.historicalstatistics.org/Currencyconverter.html
100 USD in 1904 was between 2600-5600 USD in 2015 (based on “goods and services”, silver, and gold). Or possibly as much as 29,500 USD (that’s based on labor, which strikes me as being particularly difficult to convert meaningfully).
Either the currency was not USD in 1904, or the character has a vastly overinflated sense of his own value. Or something else is going on.
It’s not the character (a simple fishing-boat captain), it’s the suspicious stranger in the silk hat who’s overestimating his value, or trying to lure him into nefarious deeds, I’m not sure which — I only read the page the quote is on.
Ah, I see. It’s literally too much money; an almost certain sign of a scam. Presumably, if the captain had taken him up on the offer, there would be all these mysterious delays and problems in him getting paid anything at all, and when revenue dried up, the scammer would simply disappear and leave the captain stuck with all the debts the scammer had run up.
I suspect the modern equivalent would be an offer of TWENTY MILLION US DOLLARS blah blah blah.
Exactly.
So it’s not automatically Боже мой anymore?
Yes, and конь remains in use for the chess figure.
Compare Ross in German, the cognate of horse without metathesis; it’s poetic and Bavarian now, otherwise replaced by Pferd of late-imperial Latin origin.
bertil: Also in Dutch, these are called noren (“Norwegians”).
Meanwhile, Eng. skate “footwear for sliding on ice” was borrowed into Norwegian in two forms, Bokmål skøyte f. (possibly contaminated by skøyte f. “type of fishing boat” < Dutch schuit) and Nynorsk skeise f. (< pl. skates).
Memories.,,
Back in the day when all-round speedskating was the big radio sport, Norway, the Soviet Union and the Netherlands were in a class of their own, Other nations would occasionally come up with a world class skater, but only these three regularly participated in the European and World Championships with the maximum of four skaters.
There were three type of skates. Lengdeløpsskøyter for speed skating. These were the ones with the straight edge. They were a national emblem on par with skis but the only one who owned a pair was a boy called Sverre in my sister’s class. Hockeyskøyter for the boys. These were black with bright-coloured ornaments and a rounded edge. Kunstløpskøyter for the girls. These were white with shiny details, The edge was straight but the front end was rounded with a spike to thrust into the ice and make pirouettes. When I got skates for Christmas, I for some reason deciced to go for the fourth option, bandyskøyter, with form and function between lengdeløp and hockey.
So I got skates, but I didn’t like skating at all. For control of movement the skates had to be tied extremely tight around the foot and ankle, the toes and toenails were crushed against each other inside the hard tip of the skate, and the squashed soles and socks hardly insulated at all. The only thing I could think about was the nailbite* I would have when (if ever) my feet would be warm again,.
Is that the English word? The pain in the fingers and toes when the blood returns to the frozen limbs.
So it’s not automatically Боже мой anymore?
It’s never been automatically Боже мой — you can see hundreds of examples of Бог мой in the National Corpus, e.g. here from the 1920s (Bunin, Gorky, Tynyanov, A.N. Tolstoy, etc.) and here from a century earlier (Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, Zagoskin, etc.).
about the proliferating morphological formation with -ka/-ki
Previously on LH (I immediately thought of that joke when I saw your “American girls” comment).
Russian word for “horse” was not “конь”, but rather лошадь
I don’t think it’s so clear cut. Horse breeding is коневодство, horse meat is конина, cavalry is конница. I think, конь and лошадь are about equal as far as an unmarked word for Equus caballus is required. Google n-gram (I am losing my touch, should have been the first check) shows конь/лошадь = 0.5. So yes, if absolutely pressed to give a single word without any context, I would go with лошадь. But imagining Richard III crying “пол-царства за лошадь!” …
I think, конь and лошадь are about equal as far as an unmarked word for Equus caballus is required.
My impression is that конь is slightly (but noticeably) higher register than лошадь, but they’re both fairly unmarked otherwise. The same applies for пёс vs. собака for Canis familiaris. (Google Ngram says that one’s about 0.5 too.)
But imagining Richard III crying “пол-царства за лошадь!”
How come it’s пол-царства anyway? It should logically be всё королевство or something to that effect. There was no half in the original.
(I know it’s a stock phrase but I don’t quite understand how it ended up in this particular context.)
пол-царства
Isn’t it what a czar promisses to the hero (together with his daughter, of course) for slaying a dragon? Or is this move came about after the translation? A quick search shows that it is from 1833 translation by Bryansky (never heard about him! And his biowiki doesn’t even mention any translation). There is apparently a whole paper (oops, lost the link) on the subject.
Highlights from the paper. Bryansky translated notionally from a prose French translation, but in reality from crib notes by Didelot (whose ballets, as one remembers, wore out Eugene Onegin). But from other sources Didelot didn’t know enough Russian to make the crib notes. Wow.
There are lots of princesses endowed with half the kingdom in Danish (versions of) fairy tales, enough that it’s a trope. We probably got it from Grimm, but I haven’t checked. (Also the spoof ending “they finally got each other in the end” which is a bit naughty).
/January First-of-May/
конь и лошадь – /My impression is that конь is slightly (but noticeably) higher register than лошадь,/
you are right, apart from the obvious difference in gender (kon – male, loshad – female), a конь is what a warrior, a cossack, a knight would ride, a лошадь is for a peasant to plough.
In my first year at the University, at the first seminar on Russian, the professor asked us to tell the difference between a конь and a лошадь. We all giggled, but the professor, Tamara Shanskaya, went on to show us that the difference is also stylistic, not just mares and stallions.
“skate” (etymology unknown)
Online dictionaries sv “blatherskite”:-
MW Scots, alteration of blather skate, from blather, blether blather + skate a contemptible person
Lexico 17th century from blather + skite, a Scots derogatory term adopted into American colloquial speech during the War of Independence from the Scottish song ‘Maggie Lauder’, by F. Semphill, which was popular with American troops.
AHD BLATHER + dialectal skite, a contemptible person (from Middle English skite, diarrhea, from Old Norse skītr, excrement, from skīta, to defecate; see skei- in the Appendix of Indo-European roots).
Regarding Trond’s query above: In my idiolect, there’s no such term, likely because my feet have never gotten that cold, despite my being not particularly resistant to really cold temperatures. Until this past March, during our winters I took very early morning runs, my feet were clothed in moderately thick woolen socks beneath my running shoes. [A case of COVID knocked me out of my running regimen.] My self-imposed limit had me not running with the temperature or windchill less than 20*F.
Maybe others could better respond to Trond’s interesting query?
8F
@Trond
I think what you are referring to is ‘chilblains’.
Isn’t it what a czar promisses to the hero (together with his daughter, of course) for slaying a dragon?
Indeed! Though I’m not sure how old it is as a phrase.
I’ve actually found a version where it was supposed to be a nod to Pushkin, but if the 1833 date is correct, that can’t be right, because the appearance of similar phrasing in Pushkin’s works is in Tale of the Golden Cockerel (written 1834, published 1835).
Perhaps it was indeed just a well-known phrase that sounded appropriate.
Chilblains (aka pernio) are a different thing.
For what you want, the Oxford Historical Thesaurus (the world > health and disease > ill health > pain > pain in specific parts > [noun] > in hands) finds hot ache. The dictionary says:
I don’t see that it shouldn’t be used for feet as well.
OK, here’s a much more embarrassingly basic Russian question: in the passage quoted, it looks like “a” (usually signifying “but”, at least to us tyros) is doing the work of a definite article, something I’ve not seen before. Is that common in Russian prose, or a stylistic device?
Thanks!
In Esther 5:3, Esther asks to ask a wish, and King Ahasuerus tells her she can have anything up to half the kingdom. In the Synodal Russian translation it’s “Даже до полуцарства будет дано тебе.”
The hero being rewarded by the king with the princess and half the kingdom is SAE, so almost certainly dates back to Grimm’s sources (though perhaps not much further).
in the passage quoted, it looks like “a” (usually signifying “but”, at least to us tyros) is doing the work of a definite article
No, here it means ‘and’ — or rather would be translated that way. It’s a connective particle that’s neither as colorless as and nor as contrastive as but.
/David Marjanović/ – Бог vs Боже
Боже (bozhe) is an archaic vocative clause, now used in set expressions like боже мой, на тебе, Боже, что нам не гоже etc. Compare Отче (in the Lord’s Prayer – Отче наш, иже еси на небеси…), старче, человече.
So, Боже мой and Бог мой are practically identical, like Oh, Lord and Oh, my Lord.
I understand vocative forms are still current in some Slavic languages, for example Bozhe in Bulgarian?
And my dear Welsh ‘mutate’ the opening consonant in vocative constructions.
“Бог мой” would sound strange in Bulgarian; it would have to serve some stylistic or religious purpose. The unmarked form would be the vocative, “боже мой”. EDIT: As in, it would not occur to a Bulgarian speaker to say “Бог мой” unless they have something very specific they want to convey, and they assume their interlocutor would understands what that thing is. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered it EDIT2: maybe in the context of a intense sexual relationship?
Aha! A skate is a skite is a shit! And that would also make sense as a derogatory term for a “poor, worn-out, decrepit horse”.
And now I think on it, I wonder if it might have been the reason the fish was called that — especially in the context of diarrhea. Like a puddle of diarrhea on the ground, a skate is brownish and flattish…
(Sorry if I’ve put anyone off their lunch)
> in the passage quoted, it looks like “a” (usually signifying “but”, at least to us tyros) is doing the work of a definite article
>> No, here it means ‘and’ — or rather would be translated that way. It’s a connective particle that’s neither as colorless as and nor as contrastive as but.
While the Bulgarian connective particle “, a” (probably related to the Russian one) I would translate as “, while ” with a hint of “, but “. You can also invert the clauses with “A (and) [second referent], докато (while) [first referent]”.
An ulcerated chilblain (esp. on the heel) is a kibe, of undecided etymology, perhaps a Welsh borrowing. “The age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe.” (Hamlet 5, 1).
Yes, most of them. I knew it’s limited to a few lexical relicts in Russian, but didn’t know what the status of their ongoing loss was – especially given that Russian has managed to innovate a new vocative: мам, пап, and apparently a few personal names that likewise lose their final -а…
a few personal names that likewise lose their final -а
Most of the common ones, I think.
Most of the common ones, I think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l06gWtLP5T4
Re a, what Hat said. In the particular passage I imagine the speaker looking back on his younger days and confronting an interlocutor who is of the opinion that everything was worse then. So “Ah, but we had…”.
@Trond Engen: I am reasonably sure there is no standard English word for that feeling. It is something that my extremities are particularly susceptible to, and despite my fairly wide vocabulary, I know of no term for it. The OED knows of no relevant compounds that include “nail.”
Ah, yeah, that video is a good example.
No German word either that I’m aware of.
Is that the English word? The pain in the fingers and toes when the blood returns to the frozen limbs
I’d say “pins and needles”, though that is not limited to that particular aetiological factor: any return of feeling after temporary cutting-off of circulation (and also what you get when you accidentally bang the ulnar nerve at your elbow.)
In Welsh you say pinnau bach “little pins.”
That has a German name I’m used to: “my foot has fallen asleep” (…where “foot” means “leg”, so this may not be widespread at all). The tingling sensation at the end of this, which is usually what makes you aware it happened in the first place, does not have a name.
@David Eddyshaw: I can’t speak for Trond, but “pins and needles” pain is different from what I experience when rewarming my hands or feet.
Interesting that there are no words for a basic concept like “stinging pain in toes or fingertips after frost”. Norwegian dialects have at least two: Neglesprett “nail burst” is the closest there is to a modern standard collquial form. Neglebit “nail bite” is common in western dialects, the only form official in Nynorskordboka, and also the main entry in Bokmålsordboka.. Hence, probably, my expectation to find it in English.
The feeling after circulation in a limb is cut off by pressure is different in important ways. It’s prickling, it gets milder as circulation improves, and it’s done with in a few seconds. We say beinet mitt sover “my leg is sleeping”* both for the numbness & limpness and for the prickling when sensation returns,
The bang to the ulnar nerve is et albuestøt or just et støt. The latter is also used for an electric shock.
* (in reply to David M.) Or foten min sover, if our dialect doesn’t make that distinction,
Thinking of it, there was a fine distinction on the girls’ side of the rink as well. Most would have true kunstløpsskøyter “figure skating skates” but the coolest thing to show off were danseskøyter “dancing skates”, which I think were both more elegant and allowed even easier turns and twists. It’s similar to the difference between my sensible bandy skates and the cooler hockey skates.
(But I’m talking about the late seventies, not the early sixties.)
any return of feeling after temporary cutting-off of circulation (and also what you get when you accidentally bang the ulnar nerve at your elbow)
Also what I at least feel all the time in my feet due to diabetic neuropathy. It’s not pain exactly, fortunately for me.
@Trond Engen: Despite growing up around figure skating, I don’t think I ever heard of a difference between figure skates and the ice dancing skates. And while lots of people had hockey skates, the default ice skates in America were always figure skates. Having speed skates was virtually unknown.
Interesting that there are no words for a basic concept like “stinging pain in toes or fingertips after frost”. Norwegian dialects have at least two
Eskimo words for snow!
Incidentally, my children do not know what “chilblain” means, but then they are also unfamiliar with the Ding an sich. ‘Course, we ‘ad it ‘ard …
Never mind chilblains. Do they know cibi / cibwst, which the OED gives as the possible Welsh source for kibe?
No, they have lost their heritage of uniquely Cymric chilblains (the best kind.)
GPC says cibi and cibwst are loanwords from English. These dictionary-makers need to get together with one another and get their stories straight. (It might be a closed time loop. But where did all these zombie words come from?)
“my foot has fallen asleep” (…where “foot” means “leg”, so this may not be widespread at all).
No, that’s the usual thing to say in the North, too, where we distinguish Fuß and Bein. It makes sense, as its normally the most extreme parts of the extremities where you have that feeling.
@Sashura:
and the particle that does more or less vocative things in yiddish is זשע /ʒə/, which seems related.
to me, “pins and needles” isn’t really what i’d call pain, though it can be very uncomfortable – it’s like the difference between szechwan pepper and capsicum pepper. and i know the sensation of re-warming, but i don’t have a word for it besides “thawing [out]”, which isn’t about the sensation.
Is it? For me, the cutting off of blood flow usually happens in the thighs somewhere, when I’ve been sitting in a stupid position.
Interesting, because that looks like the Slavic emphatic particle.
To me as well. And to Wiktionary: “From a Slavic language. Compare Russian же (že) and Polish że / -że).”
My mother (1912-2007) called it ‘hot-ache’. Chilblains are what your toes are likely to suffer from as a result of having been cold and compressed. They itch when the affected extremities are warmed!
Weinreich (2:527) lists these Slavic-originated grammatical particles in Yiddish: abi(le) (as long as), i-i (both … and), boday (if only), vedlik (according), to (then), te-te-te (well, well), yak (so), yakosh (somehow), yakbe (as it were), khotsh(be) (although), khibe (also akhibe) (unless), khay (also nekhay) (would that), tsi (whether) azh (as much as), ot (there), het (way), zhe (then), take (indeed), male(vos) (there is no telling), na (here), same (very).
i’ll have to look at the weinreich – i’m not sure i’ve ever run into “zhe” in a context where “then” would make sense as a gloss, or outside of direct address. its most common appearance is in phrases like “zayt-zhe mir gezunt”, which usually gets translated as something like “be so good as to stay healthy (for me)”, but where the “zhe” is expresing or emphasizing warmth/respect towards the addressee. but i’m perfectly happy to think of it as an emphatic particle (with a vocative tinge)!
That’s interesting. German has a particle for that – a question tag that gets spelled gell(e)? (though in Bavarian dialects it has a diphthong that implies a instead of e, and it can optionally take the 2pl verb ending when addressed to several people). It goes at the beginning or end of questions that expect the answer is “yes”, and at the end of wishes like this. It looks like the Slavic particle in its Slavic position was used to calque that…
Y: “i-i” (both … and) — that’s also used in Bulgarian, as in Yiddish.
I can interpret some words on that list as Ukrainian, but not all
abi(le) = аби (Rus. абы) (something, no matter what, only for)
i-i = i .. i (both … and)
boday = бодай from God give, means “let” like in “let his cow died”
vedlik — no idea,
to — it’s a bit like zhe
te-te-te Те-те-те, вознепщеваху!
yak = як (how, when)
yakosh — a form of yak
yakbe = якби (if/as if)
khotsh(be) = хоч(би) (if only)
khibe = хiба (whether)
khay (also nekhay) = хай/нехай (let)
tsi = чи (or)
azh = аж (“as much as” in the meaning that it is unexpectedly large),
ot = от (вот) (see, here it is),
het = ?
zhe — already discussed
take = такi (discourse particle, “indeed” sort of works),
male(vos) = ?
na = на (take it)
same = саме (precisely)
@Y, rozele
Re male(vos) does “there is no telling” (also) mean “it is of no account” (it makes little difference)? Then male could be the usual Slavic malo “little”. Can you give a phrase or anecdote to clarify this?
“a” (usually signifying “but”, at least to us tyros) is doing the work of a definite article,
I think—not 100 percent sure—it’s a development of an interrogative а:
А ты помнишь, как мы ездили на дачу?
А ты не забыл, как мы встречали Новый год?
That is, the word is used to remind the interlocutor of something.
That’s not interrogative “а”. Interrogative “а” goes like this
А?
I think the unifying theory of “а” is that it introduces a note of surprise.
Interrogative, eh?
So Canadians are secretly Russians, eh?
Interrogative “а” goes like this
А?
Do you never say something like, “А ты его знаешь?” “А Маша/Света/и т.д. придёт?”
Here both can be seen:
А признавайтесь-ка, даром что у нас, так сказать, затишье, ведь недурно и у нас, ась? Тургенев, Затишье.
А компот?
I think—not 100 percent sure—it’s a development of an interrogative а
No, it’s clearly the other way around — “interrogative а” is simply a special use of the connective particle. (“And you know him?”) It’s pretty marginal, whereas the connective is basic and goes all the way back.
juha, as LH said, it’s all examples of connecting “a” (which happens to connect with vacuum) in interrogative sentences. Except Turgenev’s quote, of course.
vedlik — no idea
That looks like Polish według, which also means “according”. Etymologically, that’s w(e) “in(to)” + “long / debt”. A lot of the other particles listed by Weinreich exist in Polish as well, so it would be hard to determine for many of them whether Polish, Ukrainian or Belarussian is the donor language.
a конь is what a warrior, a cossack, a knight would ride, a лошадь is for a peasant to plough.
Except the old конь who would never ruin a furrow. Perhaps he traded his sword for a ploughshare.
For the record: I’m suffering from neglesprett right now, coming in from a couple of hours of mostly standing outdoors in -10°C.