I finally finished Makanin’s 1998 novel Андеграунд, или Герой нашего времени [Underground, or A hero of our time], about a Brezhnev-era “underground writer” who stopped writing and in the early 1990s is spending his time drinking and walking the corridors of the large, run-down apartment building where he makes a semi-legal living watching people’s apartments while they’re away; it took me three weeks, but I’m not going to make a post of it, because I’m not sure what to say about it other than that it’s long, dense, complex, and worth the reading, and also because it hasn’t been translated, so what’s the point of recommending it? At any rate, I moved on to Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s (much shorter) novel Весёлые похороны [The cheerful funeral, translated as The Funeral Party], which is set — very unusually for a Russian novel! — in New York, and near the start of chapter 2 I read:
Тетка села на самый край сиденья, растопырив розовые ноги в подследниках, которые на этом континенте не водились.
Her aunt sat at the very edge of the seat, spreading her pink legs/feet in podsledniki, which are not found on this continent.
Well, of course I turned to my dictionaries for the unknown-to-me podsledniki, only to find that it wasn’t in any of them, even the huge three-volume one. Fortunately, Google came to the rescue, providing descriptions like “Чулочно носочное изделие женское и для девочек, покрывающее ступни ног частично или полностью” [Women’s and girls’ hosiery, covering the feet in part or in full] and “это своего рода хитрость, которая позволяет даже самую неудобную обувь носить с комфортом и удобством” [it’s a kind of trick that allows even the most uncomfortable shoes to be worn with comfort and convenience]. So I had a decent idea of what it was, but no clue as to what it was called in English. I turned to my wife, who after hearing the description said “Oh, you mean Peds.” I had heard that term, but didn’t know what it was, so now I knew — but that word isn’t in dictionaries either! It’s a trade name that’s become the usual term, like Kleenex, but while the latter is in the OED (“The proprietary name of an absorbent disposable cleansing paper tissue,” first citation 1925), Peds isn’t, nor is it in any other reference book available to me. I thought at least Wikipedia would help, but the article PEDS Legwear is entirely useless, providing reams of corporate-history trivia but saying nothing whatever about the origin of the name or how long it’s been in use. A Google Books search turned up evidence of its existence in 1936, if the metadata for Broadcasting are to be believed, so that’s something, but it is, frankly, shocking that I can’t find out anything more in this twenty-second year of the twenty-first century. And I can’t help suspecting that the fact that the terms and what they represent are used largely by women has more than a little to do with their absence from lexica. (Another curious fact: a Russian Language Corpus search on подследник* gets zero results, so this novel is apparently not included in the corpus, even though other books of Ulitskaya’s are.) As always, any information is welcome.
I’ve heard “footsies” and “no-shows”. Never heard of “Peds”.
“ because it hasn’t been translated, so what’s the point of recommending it?”
I think a lot of us here read Russian. I appreciate the recommendations. Plus it is fairly common for Russian novels to be translated into German and/or French well before English.
There seems to be an inexhaustible variety of types of dance tights. The term for those with full foot coverage is, not surprisingly, footed tights. However, I think the full-footed versions have become quite a bit less common than they once were, having been replaced in most contexts with transition or convertible tights—which are designed so that they can either cover the whole foot, except for a small hole in the center of the sole, or be pulled up so that they terminate around the bottom of the ankle without looking baggy and without sacrificing comfort in either configuration.
I think a lot of us here read Russian. I appreciate the recommendations. Plus it is fairly common for Russian novels to be translated into German and/or French well before English.
All good points, and it’s good to be reminded. So I hereby recommend it! (Warning: not cheerful reading. But you knew that.)
And this one seems to be as well. 🙂
That tickles me just from reading about it. What is the purpose of such torture?
The term for those with full foot coverage is, not surprisingly, footed tights.
Oh. Like molly, I was picturing the things which *only* cover your feet – although I feel like I know a name for them which hasn’t been mentioned yet, and can’t think what it is.
The Russian word does mean the things which only cover your feet — at least that’s what it sounds like, and what I see when I google подследники and look at the images. They are not dance tights.
I thought hosier only referred to something that covers the legs (at least partially), but when I search for peds online I only get footsies or ankle socks. (I’m not sure if there is a difference between footsies and ankle socks, they look the same to me.)
As for the hole in the sole of dance tights, the purpose is to reach the foot without having to undress the whole thing, for example when changing shoes when you have the type of shoes and tights where the tights are supposed to be outside the shoes… I hope I’m making sense here…
It may be that “footsies” is the English equivalent of the Russian word. I am ill-informed in these matters.
Ankle socks, for me, are ordinary socks – the ones which come up just above the bumps of your ankle onto the very start of your leg. (Ordinary for women, anyway – when I think about it, are men’s socks more usually the mid-calf ones?)
The ones which finish just below the bumps, around the top of laced up shoes, are trainer socks.
Footsies, under whatever name, are more the shape of ballet flats – they cover the heel at the back, the toes at the front, and the sides of the foot in between, but not the top of the foot, so you can wear them with court shoes and similar.
(Trainers==sneakers, I believe – wikipedia says that court shoes are called pumps in America, although pumps are something slightly different for me.)
Ah, yes. I’ve watched some Holiday on Ice.
@David Marjanović: The holes in the soles of transition tights are a topological necessity; if they weren’t there, you couldn’t pull them up so that they terminated at the ankle! Moreover, as Moa says, they provide easy access to the feet as well. I admit that they look uncomfortable, but my daughter once assured me that they felt just fine—although it may just be that compared with the general discomfort of wearing pointe shoes, the holes were hardly noticeable.
@Jen in Edinburgh: Trainers are only one type of what we call “sneakers” in North America. Trainers are low-topped shoes, suited for jogging—hence the name, I believe. However, there are also high-top sneakers, including those known as “basketball shoes” and the famous Converse Chuck Taylors. (Actually, typical basketball shoes have actually gotten quite a bit lower over the past couple decades; the ones I had in high school, which were typical of the time, came all the way up to my lower calf.)
Here’s a paragraph from the Ulitskaya novel illustrating the mishmosh language used by Russian emigrés in New York (she’s complaining about some Latino musicians playing on the sidewalk below):
I’ve italicized the Yiddish and English words with which her speech is larded. I fear “sneered” isn’t a good equivalent for “ёрничала” ‘spoke or acted like a rogue, provocatively,’ but it’s the best I could do at the moment. I don’t understand how “чем” works here so I didn’t try to render it. Anyway, it’s fun to read.
Chem = other than?
Good suggestion; I’ve adopted it.
Ulitzkaya is some kind of prophet
На майке была нарисована электрическая лампочка и люминесцентная надпись на неизвестно каком языке: «ПIZДЕЦ!»
The key word is something I cannot get out of my head for a month.
On her T-shirt there was a picture of electric bulb and a glowing inscription in unknown language: “ПIZДЕЦ!”.
My wife immediately found three words for them in Norwegian: minisokker (when sold at H&M), ballerinasokker, and båtsokker (probably from the shape).
Dunno what the kids say, but in my youth we had “basketball boots”: they cover the ankle, unlike football boots, which retain the designation “boots” decades after they shrank. I sometimes call them “soccer shoes” just to annoy people.
Ulitzkaya is some kind of prophet
Yes, I thought the same thing when I got to that point.
хедик
Without your translation I would have thought that this also is a yiddish word…
I assume it’s Yiddishized English imported into Russian.
хедик Without your translation I would have thought that this also is a yiddish word…
I assume it’s Yiddishized English imported into Russian.
——-
Yidish offers no possible etymon.
Rather, it’s either an anglicism (if used in American Russian) or an anglicism imagined by the author, who wanted to add local color to the dialog but overdid it in this case.
In general, non-Russian h is replaced by г in written borrowings (as in German Heinrich Heine > Russian Генрих Гейне) and /h/ is replaced by /x/ in oral ones (as in English hooligan > Russian xулиган). Consequently, English headache > American Russian хедик.
Yidish offers no possible etymon.
I didn’t say it was Yiddish, I said it was Yiddishized English. Of course “hedik” isn’t a Yiddish word, it’s the kind of alteration Yiddish speakers have long used when borrowing English; see the collected works of Leo Rosten for many examples, or just listen to Yiddish speakers. If it was borrowed straight into Russian, it would have been хедейк; no English speaker reduces the final vowel. And Ulitskaya herself is not only Jewish, she’s worked with the Hebrew Theatre of Moscow and her son went to Columbia University — she knows all this stuff well and doesn’t need to imagine her anglicisms.
the mishmosh language
I’m curious about that spelling — for me it’s always been mishmash. Regional variation of some sort?
As John Cowan (when the subject arose back in 2010) quoted Rosten as saying:
JC also quotes the OED entry, which includes this:
Having spent many years in NYC, which is culturally a Jewish city (among many other affiliations, of course), I use the local pronunciation (as well as standing on, rather than in, line).
When Mother was about to wear open-heeled shoes, she would put on podsledniki so as to cover only the toes and adjacent area. I guess she thought it would look better that way.
Ah, I see. I will continue with mishmash, tho, as befits my gentile heritage (not to mention that I have never lived in NYC).
The form I’m familiar with is footie, which the OED glosses as ‘A short sock that covers only the foot and is typically designed to be hidden when worn with a shoe’, but footsie is also recorded.
@ Jen in Edinburgh
Thanks for the description of footsies and ankle socks, now I can see the difference. Trainer socks I’ll have to think about… For me, normal women’s socks are those that go up a little bit of the calf (maybe a fourth of the distance to the knee?), but I’m sure there are varying definitions on what’s normal.
I know of ballet flats (Swedish: ballerinaskor) so ballet socks makes sense to me. (That being said, it’s very confusing in a way since it’s not what you would wear if you actually were dancing ballet.)
You are describing what is called in Bulgarian маратонки, or marathon shoes.
To me (Mid-Atlantic US, late forties), “bobby socks” definitely cover the ankle, may have a pom-pom at the back or some other decorative trim, and are a term I associate with my parents’ generation. “Ankle socks,” on the other hand, can mean either the kind that cover your ankles or the kind that stop below your ankle but are still visible with sneakers. “Peds” are smaller and tend to be completely invisible under sneakers, which is why in Italian they’re “fantasmini,” little ghosts. The Italian word sprang to mind instantly, whereas peds is recognizable to me but feels more obscure. They may be a little more popular here in Italy, with men as well as women. (It’s hot, and the average person is perhaps more fashion-conscious.)
In places like France and Germany, my impression is that women haven’t been allowed to wear visible socks since January 2010. Yes, January. Freezing is fashionable and somehow not going out of style.
It’s called burqa ban.
Улицкая: о пятой колонне, коллективной ответственности, старых и новых книжках
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_O6LvUud6s
Thanks, that was an interesting interview. She’s as thoughtful and humane as I would have expected. When she said she thought the opinion polls were worthless and the vast majority of Russians opposed the war (because how could they approve of sending their children off to die?), I thought “typical intelligentsia optimism — hasn’t she heard about those young people who are being bombed and can’t convince their parents in Russia that it’s happening?”… and then around the 22:30 mark the interviewer said “You say Putin doesn’t understand the Russian people, but maybe it’s you and I who don’t know them well enough?” and I wanted to cheer.
I liked the fact that she reads Tolstoy in troubled times (my wife and I are in the middle of War and Peace now — my fourth read-through), and I was very pleased she mentioned Gazdanov as one of the memorable writers of the first emigration.
I really appreciate your Russian literature posts, even if you only mention a book.
“typical intelligentsia optimism ”
In Russian
– an intelligent* (one member of intelligentsia), plural intelligenty
– intelligentsia (sg.mass noun)
– intelligentskiy (adj. characteristic for “intelligents”)
– intelligencheskiy (adj. the same. Or maybe characteristic for intelligentsia, but it is still the same).
—
In English forming the singulative and adjectives is inconvenient:(((
—
*
Меня ёб интеллигент / дома на завалинке
Девки, “пенис” — это хуй! / только очень маленький…
An example of typical интеллигентской reflexion in verse… The form is that folk obscene chastushka, but the author likely does not understand what завалинка means.
Underestimating the humanity’s insanity is not an intelligentsia trait. 10 years ago bombing Kiev was as crazy as bombing any Russian city, now it’s fine. It is crazy, and if it is still crazy for you — maybe you used a time machine and stepped to 2022 right from 2012 — how you can expect that it won’t be crazy for others?
Pavlik Morozov’s cause is alive and kicking!
В Пензе школьники написали донос на учительницу, которая в разговоре с ними высказалась о войне в Украине. Об этом сообщает издание “7×7”.
Восьмиклассницы записали на телефон разговор с учительницей по английскому языку, в котором она описала поведение России и то, что она творит на территории Украины. В результате запись попала в правоохранительные органы.
Запись этой беседы опубликовала Baza. По данным “Пензаинформ”, разговор состоялся между учительницей Ириной Ген из училища олимпийского резерва и двумя восьмиклассницами, которым она объясняет, почему сорвалась их поездка на соревнования в Европу. “Пока Россия не научится вести себя цивилизованным образом, такое будет продолжаться” – ответила учительница, упомянув бомбежки украинских городов, Крым и малазийский “Боинг”. На слова учениц, что они ничего об это не знают, Ирина Ген сказала, что в России тоталитарный режим и любое инакомыслие считается преступлением и, что ей за эти высказывания тоже грозит 15 лет.
https://www.svoboda.org/a/v-penze-ucheniki-donesli-na-uchitelya-za-vyskazyvaniya-o-voyne-v-ukraine/31780944.html
Underestimating the humanity’s insanity is not an intelligentsia trait.
Yes it is, I’m afraid. I’ve read a lot of high-minded ruminations on the goodness of the peasantry and the nobility of the Russian soul over the years.
I just meant, what’s happening is madness. You do not have to be an intelligént to expect people not to be mad. Enough to get a job in Ukraine and you are on the other side of madness.
Also the Chechen war was worse. ~ 10 times more casualties for two Chechen wars. You do not expect a guy from Moscow to give a shit about it: in 90s he was angered at Chechens, in 00s he just was tired and want them to remove it from TV (and that was what the President did). But Ukraine? Bombing Kiev is impossible, for the same reason why Enlglish-Welsh war is impossible…
Meanwhile, things are shaping up in the right direction… Враг не пройдёт!
Жительница Москвы пожаловалась в полицию на пассажирку метро, которая смотрела видео с Зеленским на телефоне.
Москвичка Елена спокойно себе ехала в метро, когда сквозь шум внезапно услышала украинскую речь. Женщина увидела
троцкистский элементдевушку, которая прямо в вагоне без наушников смотрела выступление Зеленского. Кажется, это была диверсия.Однако отреагировать на неё Елена не успела. Девушка вышла из вагона и затерялась в толпе — тогда бдительная гражданка не растерялась и позвонила в полицию, чтобы передать все приметы «национал-предательницы»: брюки цвета хаки, розовая сумка и короткая стрижка.
А нужно всего-то надевать наушники в общественных местах.
I just saw a title (Quora):
Do Russians believe they are “invading” Ukraine?.
Then I let my eyes slip over it again, because it is the same topic as here and discovered that the question is:
Do Russians believe they are “liberating” Ukraine?
The subconscious does the job right. Synonyms, both long, both Latin, both -ing.
juha: Strangely, I understood almost all of that; it was that stilted it sounded almost Bulgarian. I mean the sentence structure.
juha: I’m currently translating it into English, with my limited understanding. It’s fun.
EDIT: I understand about half of it, actually. That’s still good, I guess?
“подследники”
The earliest mentions in Google are various catalogues of чулочно-носочные изделия of Soviet factories, around 1960. The natural questions are: 1. who exactly used след in the sense of стопа, “foot / sole”. 2. how the item was called before.
Not too intuitive for me even if we call a foot “след” (the usual meaning of sled is “trace, footstep”). Underfoot? But that would be a sole, not a very short sock.
След means simply “after” in modern Bulgarian. As in chronologically after. Might be unrelated.
According to Vasmer, след is related to English slide.
V, yes, there are similar usages in Russian. And последствия are consequences.
“not too intuitive”
Or the inventor just did not want to use наследники “heirs”:)
“подследники на двух спицах с описанием” , suggests a search engine. Apparently hinting on this site for enthusiasts of knitting: https://www.vjazanie.info/spicami/dlya-doma-1/sledki-na-2-spicax-s-opisaniem.html
Which contains:
pl. следки, gen pl. следков
and
следки-тапочки, treating them as slippers…
Day saved.
PEDS Legwear, formerly known as Richelieu Legwear
Reminided me Brett’s comment about macs and wellies. Peds could be Richelieus….
–троцкистский элемент– strikethough was both both the hardest and easiest part to translate. How do you translate the nuance of the dehumanizing part of “element”?
Деклассированные элементы is one of the main songs of the classic guitar repertoire of teenagers in Moscow 30 years ago (and in 90s in general I think – since around 2000 I do not know what teenagers sing to each other).
Alongside with other songs by Янка.
Teenagers sing?
Used to, myself* …
‘Course it were different in our day.
* Yn Gymraeg, wrth gwrs.
Teenagers sing?
Some did, at least in my day back in the 79s/ early 80s; we had a girl in our street who would sing and accompany herself on the guitar, and I myself participated in some singing around camo fires and on bus and train rides. From what I can observe with my daughter and nieces, teen / twen singing nowadays mostly takes the form of karaoke.
A canonical evening included a guitar, not less than 3 persons (one or two can play guitar), preferably some girls (var.: boys). Girls (var.: boys) count for persons and often can play guitar. Alcohol.
I do not know why singing required guitar.
Alcohol, that I udnerstand (https://youtu.be/IXuHPjOXxlU?t=487). As for me, a capella is just fine.
Compared to 60s they did not dance, though.
Does that qualify as a тусовка?
@drasvi: I actually had the same thought about richelieu being a possible name for the footwear. No doubt this was influenced by the fact that the similar-sounding roquelaure is a name for a garment, named for Antoine Gaston de Roquelaure* (probably). I think of the cloak as similar to the almaviva, named for another individual (fictional, in this case).***
* He was a marshal of France, as was his grandfather, also named Antoine de Roquelaure. Marshal of France was originally an office, not a rank, as was Constable of France. However, the position of marshal evolved differently, probably influenced by the use of marshal ranks in other states’ armies, to become an honor granted to victorious generals. This contrasts with Britain, for whom field marshal was a rank, or Prussia, where generalfeldmarschall was a rank, but one that commanders could only be promoted to for victory in warfare. Hence, the Prussians created the generaloberst rank, so that their top commanders (and royals) would be equal in rank** to those of other states. [This was also part of why the United States created the general of the armies (World War I) or army (World War II) ranks.]
** The French Third Republic did not create any marshals of France until well into the First World War. Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, great powers had tended to hand out promotions to the marshalate fairly freely; a major war might yield a dozen newly ennobled marshals. I don’t think it is entirely clear whether there were no French marshals created between 1870 and 1916 because the rank was due to the lack of major military victories during that period or a distaste for the rank as a symbol of the authoritarian past. In any case, the fact that the overall commander of the western front in 1914, Joseph Joffre, was outranked by the British commander, John French apparently led to some interpersonal awkwardness in the lead-up to the First Battle of the Marne. (His victory at the Marne, probably the most important battle of the war, was eventually the main justification for Joffre’s elevation to field marshal, but that did not happen until after he had been relieved of command in 1916.)
*** As his capstone undergraduate project, my brother tried to write a low fantasy novella without using any words that referenced real-world people or places. I am not so strict in my own writing, but it does give me something to think about.
Words, words, so many words – trying to (and erring) to describe a very distinct merchandise that is much easier to see once to understand. No, it is not a thighs, or hose, or footless leggins – it’s the other way, literally – a thin sock that only covers toes and heel and is intended to protect same when wearing dress shoes. Like these.
Walmart describes them as “contoured pad liner”, with variations (“insole backless”/ ” with gel”, &&&)
Also, “след” is more relative to trace than to slide. Imagine (here I go again, with my preference for an image over words) the trace your naked foot lives on a beach sand.
Indeed, like следа (trace) — noun. I’m not sure which spelling to use for the verb. I guess the most neutral would be “Следѭ”
@LH, пьянка:)
I do not know.
I learned the word in 80s as hippie slang, but I did not know hippies back then.
In 90s young people actively used тусоваться, тусить in the sense of hanging out somewhere/with someone. Hippies who I did know back then were not using the word anyhow differently.
Тусовка I think is an informal word for an assembly. It implies a fluid network of interpersonal/pairwise contacts/communication (while formal assembly may imply electing someone). Water is a тусовка (I mean, molecules тусуются in water forming structures).
Somewhat metonymically it thus can refer to a 1. community 2. crowd 3. process/event of gathering in a тусовка.
(1, “community”): Journalists adopted тусовка for various communities like that of pop stars or политическая тусовка (political establishment). Markedly informal, and with certain contempt. In another thread I noted that apart of Putin there exists various communities of people, and that maybe that the shift in our politics is not just Putin, but some community. I wanted to use “тусовка” (like journalists do).
(2) I absolutely can say about a group of animals “они тут целую тусовку устроили!”.
It suits well a loud group of crows, but I still can apply it to a group of animals who are just lying.
An iconic song of a comic/absurdist biker group Тайм-аут (they hosted a programme здрасьте нафиг, квачи прилетели on radio, and they describe themseves as “motologists” (мотологическая группа) and perform on biker events):
Большая тусовка спускается с гор – О, Йохан Палыч! / А я достаю свой тяжёлый топор – Ты нас не бойся!
Почтенная оса /ósa/ по небу летит – О, Йохан Палыч! / Трава зеленеет и солнце блестит – Ты нас не бойся!)
etc.
Here it is a crowd:)
dravsi: that’s the first time I’ve seen the word тусовка/тусовку, I think. What is its etymology?
Wiktionary doesn’t know.
So it’s a synonym of вечеринка, and wikitionary really does not know.
V, no. Not вечеринка. As I said: informal for “assembly”:)
Вечеринка is a usual translation for a “party” but I haven’t heard anyone actually calling an actual party (not as a translation for “party” in books) so, so it seems to have fallen out of use in Moscow at least. And I simply do not know how I can call a “party”:/ A birthday party is just “a birthday”.
—-
But funnily I too used a word “evening” to describe a few students gathering with alcohol and guitar.
I just meant two students trying to figure out what to do in the evening and then someone says let’s go to X and then they learn they have some money to buy some beer etc.
wow!!!
(I am reading it because of И. Рожанский утверждает, что тусовка и тусоваться в жаргоне «наших» хиппи стали употребляться в конце 70-х годов. Из жаргона хиппи они перешли в жаргоны других неформальных объединений, а затем —— в конце 80-к годов — стали общемолодежными жаргонными словами и получили широкое распространение в прессе и художественной литературе.. link)
Уныние!!!
…whoa. Culture shock. I thought this type of singing and this type of tune were specific to the Balkans!
@V, I do not know:( As I said, i first heard it in 80s as hippie slang, I do not know if it is true and if it is hippies or any other subculture (there are unambigously hippie words like хайратник). It makes sense because USSR was not fond of assemblies and any subcutures too. Thus this specific activity was characterstic for subcultures: you could come to стрела (hippies called this monument стрела) during a birthday of eihter of the Beatles and find boys and girls not knowing why they came there and what exactly to do, but hoping that something cool (ideally a romantic encounter) will happen.
Those were битломаны, not necessarily hippies, but what the Party could like about such events? It loves things solid, not the liquid phase.
Они делают такой гевалт, что мы имеем от них один хедик.
The effect is achieved here by use of waht WP calls light verbs. I do not know how I call them, I am tempted to say “auxiliary” because normally we do without them in Russian….
They make such a gevalt that we get from them nothing but a headache.
Perhaps “they do such a gevalt … ” gives some vague idea of what about делать гевалт is odd from the perspective of literary Russian.
I am now curious. Did they (Russian-speaking Ukrianian Jews) actually get cases right (almost) but employed “do” and “have” where we do not do that?
@David M: not a good example of Russian “тусовки”
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%96%D0%B8%D0%BB-%D0%B1%D1%8B%D0%BB_%D0%BF%D1%91%D1%81
Note the year, too.
The wolf’s last words to the dog in that delightful animated film, “Ты заходи, если что,” are a good example of the brevity and multivalence of which Russian is capable; it could be rendered “You drop by if anything should happen” or “Come and fetch me in case of any trouble,” but there’s no way to translate the common and very useful phrase “если что” in less than three words (“should anything happen,” but that’s too highfalutin’).
German can do it in three as wenn (et)was ist, the third being the copula that Russian lacks anyway.
I’m not sure if s’il y a quelque chose (with il merged into y in pronunciation) can mean “if anything happens”.
I see, but still very much on the other side of the Danube from what I thought…
In Ukrainian, I learned a few days ago, “have” is so common that it is used as a clitic to form an (optional) imperfective future that looks very Western Romance (“I have to do” > “I will do”).
Which side of the Danube? It’s a paraphrase of Ukrainian tale, as you could see in the costumes and the folk song. Nothing Russian about it. Come to think, even the Dog and Wolf are Ukrainian, too – in their attitudes to each other…
it could be rendered “You drop by if anything should happen” or “Come and fetch me in case of any trouble,” but there’s no way to translate the common and very useful phrase “если что” in less than three words (“should anything happen,” but that’s too highfalutin’).
“Drop by if anything comes up.”
Delightful film !
@dravsi: I think вечеринка is a calque of soirée, and was used much earlier than the ’80s. Possibly a century before.
Maybe not in Russian, though. At least in Bulgarian, it has a feel of late nineteenth and early twentieth courtship rituals between well-off families.
From 1792:
Там мамы и няни выдумывали для своих барышень разные забавы: играли в жмурки, прятались, хоронили золото, пели песни, резвились, не нарушая благопристойности, и смеялись без насмешек, так что скромная и целомудренная дриада могла бы всегда присутствовать на сих вечеринках. [Н. М. Карамзин. Наталья, боярская дочь (1792)]
Так точно некогда засыпал ты на своих веселых вечеринках с половину окунутым в ендову носом. [И. А. Крылов. Похвальная речь в память моему дедушке (1792)]
Very common in 19th century, e.g.:
Нынче не то что бал, да и не то что вечеринка, а так, запросто: горят одни лампы; свечей не зажигали; будет весь город. [В. А. Соллогуб. Сережа (1838)]
Delightful! Can you tell me what окунутым, ендову and зажигали mean?
окунутый ‘dipped’
ендова ‘flagon’
зажигать ‘to light, set on fire’
зажигать: I can see that from жега (heat), and the prefix. The other two seem opaque to me, unfortunately.
Ukraine barely touches the Danube from the north, the Balkan countries that I associate this style of music with touch it from the south, and I’m very surprised to find such music so far away from them.
@DM, the song is ой там на горi.
И после того несколко времени спустя пришли увеселителныя вечеры, то есть Светки. Тогда Аннушка приказала своеи мамке, штобы она ехала по всем дворяням, которыя живутъ по близности их вотчины и у которых есть дочери девицы, и приказала их просить, что бы они пожаловали к Аннушке в гости для их девическаго веселия на вечеринку. И мамка, по приказу госпожи своеи Аннушки, ко всем дворяням ездила и звала всех ихъ дочереи, и по тому еѣ прошению все они обѣщали к Аннушке быть. И притом знала Аннушкина мамка, что есть у Ѳрола Скабѣева сестра, и вспомнила Ѳрол Скабѣева одолжение, когд онъ подарил еи два рублевика, и приехала в дом к нему и просила сестру ево, чтобы она пожаловала в домъ столника Нардина Нащокина к дочере ево Аннушке для их веселия на вечеринку. И сестра Ѳрола Скабеева просила Аннушкину мамку, что бы она изволила подождать: «а я поиду к брату, ко Ѳролу Скобеевичу, проситца, — прикажет ли онъ мне ехать к Аннушке в гости. И что онъ мне скажетъ, то я тебе, мамушка, скажу». И пришла к брату своему, ко Ѳролу Скобѣеву, и обявила ему, что: «приехала от столника Нардина Нащокина от дочери ево Аннушки мамка — проситъ меня на вечеринку посидеть. Што ты мне, братецъ, изволишъ сказать?
The Tale of Frol Skobeev
pdf, 41-42
[ Video ]
⚡️Маразм крепчает!
В Новосибе бабулька злобно вывесила флаг Украины на балконе. К ней, конечно, тут же постучались из органов. Бабуля не стала открывать, заперевшись на все замки.
Тогда полицейские вызвали спасателей и обезвредили жуткую преступницу, совершив дефлаговизацию!
Будни ϟ СВЕРХДЕРЖАВЫ (http://t.me/budni_ru)
I think вечеринка is a calque of soirée, and was used much earlier than the ’80s. Possibly a century before.
@V, compare Latin vesper “evening, supper” (also “Venus, West”), vespera “vespers, evening prayer/liturgy”. Slavonic/Old Bulgarian вєчєрꙗ, вєчєрьнꙗ “supper”
утреня/заутреня, обедня, вечерня – morning service, the Divine Liturgy, evening service.
завтрак, обед – breakfast, lunch, Old Russian вечеря “supper”.
Also
“девушка, что вы делаете сегодня вечером?”, classic flirt line.
@juha, do not miss the piece about Tolstoy.
and
These look a bit like essays:)
But:
and
The Tale of Frol Skobeev is a delightful read and a much better introduction to 18th-century Russian literature than all those ponderous odes. The Russian is amazingly modern, too.
The Russian is amazingly modern
I liked:
Wo ime bożie stansia. My Alexandr, abo Witolt z bożi łaski welikij kniaź Litowskij i dedicz Horodenskij, Berestejskij, Dorohickij, Łuckij, Wołodimerskij, i inszich: znamenito czinim tym naszim listom, ninisznim i potom buduczim, komu budet potreba toho wedati, abo cztuczi jeho słyszati.
…фактически является аналогичным по содержанию, имеющейся общедоступной информацией, размещенной (опубликованной) в сети Интернет и различных социальных сетях, транслирующих негативное отношение к проводимой военной операции Вооруженных Сил Российской Федерации, содержащей в том числе, призывы и лозунги.
I don’t know how to render it in English. I think there are some grammatical mistakes. Did they copy-pasted it from some law or a memo and mixed up something? Well anyway, from grammar to semantics, does it mean what I think it means “because other people who say ‘no to the war!’ are against Russian invasion we treat this phrase as against the invasion too”.
P.S. I cannot translate, but why should it stop DeepL.
…is actually similar in content, available publicly accessible information posted (published) on the Internet and various social networks, broadcasting a negative attitude to the ongoing military operation of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, containing, among other things, appeals and slogans.
D.O. I tried DeepL and then I thought I am not ready to translate it on my own.
DL:
OBEY TO THOSE WHO ARE RIGHT. :-/
DL:
but: «6-я заповедь. Не убий»
“Wo ime bożie stansia” – I did not give a reference. It is from a document (Vituatas granting rigts to Jews, 1388) with a complicated textual history: the oldest Latin copy is 1470, Russian is 1507, included in Sigismund’s Privilegium de libertatibus Judeorum ex rutheno ut et alia translatum, ut sonant verba.. Published in this Polish orthography and from it in Russian 19th century orthography. In 1388 Vitautas was not magnus dux yet, and Wo ime bożie stansia was used in 15th century, so it seems to have been edited, also it is thought to be a translation from a Latin original. Whether this passage is 1388 or 1400s and whether it was translated from Latin or not, these formulas sound great from modern Russian perspective.
What it has to do with this thread is that it has Vasmer’s earliest example of “гвалт”, spelled in Vasmer as кгвалтъ. That is Gewalt.
E.g.
Iteż, jestliby chrestianin, nekotoroj żidowce rukoju khwałtownoju mel szto wcziniti, abo wdarił, majet byti karan podłuh prawa naszoje zemli. – Item si christianus ‘alicui judeae manu violenta aliquid fecerit, vel tetigerit debet puniri secundum iura terrae nostrae.
A Polish edition (archive). A HTML version of a modern Ukrainian edition (has both Cyrillic transliteration and the text in Polish orthography as in the Polish edition) 45. A Russian translation, from Станисловас Лазутка, Эдвардас Гудавичюс, Привилегия евреям Витаутаса Великого 1388 года, Moscow-Jerusalem: Jewish University in Moscow, 1993.
What an interesting document — thanks!
DeepL did something terrible: it changed “Tolstoy L.N.” (мы рождены, чтобы Кафку сделать былью…) to “L.N. Tolstoy”. In Russian:
L.N. Tolstoy must be a writer or something like that.
Tolstoy L.N. is a nameless victim of bureaucracy.
Yes, but in English we literally never use Tolstoy L.N., so DeepL was right to make the switch. Actually, I’m impressed it knows to do that.
Except alphabetically ordered Tolstoy, Leo (Russian Wikipedia adopted this style even though I do not even know how to browse it in alphabetical order. But their credo is “being encyclopaedic”:/).
@Jen in Edinburgh: “Footsies, under whatever name, are more the shape of ballet flats – they cover the heel at the back, the toes at the front, and the sides of the foot in between, but not the top of the foot, so you can wear them with court shoes and similar.”
This describes precisely the typical Soviet podsledniki, as far as I remember them. I would only add that, as a rule, they were made of the same sheer nylon fabric as pantyhose, which made them almost invisible and set them apart from socks.