Russian Language Blog

«Дрессировке не поддаётся!» [Doesn't succumb to taming (or training; teaching)] – I saw this splendid advertisement for «Новая газета» ['New Paper'] in Yekaterinburg in early January, and had planned on using it for a post on the dative case with the words ‘Anna Politovskaya Would’ve Been Proud”, but yesterday’s events caused me to think it fits right now.

There are two ways you can live as a foreigner in Russia: either you can see your life there in the big ‘Russian Federation Perspective’ and get mad about everything that’s wrong and unjust and horrible, awful, terrible – or you can view your life as just being your life in this breathtaking, huge country inhabited by astonishing, kind, intelligent, generous and unique (in many, many ways! Both good and bad, I’m afraid) people. I try to live my life according to the second way, even though I know all is not as well as we wished it to be here, and that many things have changed since I arrived (for the worse), but my reality here is not as gruesome as what one might see on TV. Often I try not to take things that I read too «близко к сердцу» [‘close to heart'], but it’s not always possible. My Russia is the best country in the world – but I am aware that my Russia is not everybody’s Russian Federation. Early this morning, while I was browsing through «Русский репортёр» as I always do, I came across a title of a story that read «Средь бела дня» [adv. in broad daylight, in open daylight]. I noticed it first because I know it’s a phraseology that’s always puzzled me (it should be «среди белого дня» [‘in the middle of a white day'] for it to be a grammatically correct sentence, now shouldn’t it?), but as I read it I was no longer puzzled at all over any grammatical constructions whatsoever. The story shocked me, and I can’t even explain why I was so shocked this time, when it’s not the first time. I was really shocked when Anna Politovskaya was murdered in October 2006 (I’ve read all of her books; for Christmas 2005 my mother got me a Swedish translation of her “Putin’s Russia”), which was one of those ‘coming-of-age’ moments for me. But this – a lawyer pushing for the re-opening of a case that should’ve given the guilty prison for life is walking down the street after a press conference with a young female journalist (she was still just a student!) in the middle of the day in Moscow and are gunned down. And nobody sees anything! Markelov died immediately; the girl earlier this morning in the hospital after an operation that failed to saver her life. You can read about it in English at the Russophobe (usually that’s a bit hardcore for such a humanitarian as me, but in cases like these she’s the best!), or in Russian at Novaya gazeta’s own page (beware of nasty pictures; not for the sensitive).

The ‘Word of the Week’ that we’ve had here on this blog for a while now is a very good thing (it proved especially good when that “word” was «Барак Обама»), but what about making some changes in the new year and try ‘Proverb of the Week’ instead? If you really want to get to know a people, find out what they think, what they feel, or know well, and not just today (because for that you could read a paper or a book and feel content afterwards), but what this people has felt and known and thought for a long time now, to where should you turn? To the «пословица» [adage, proverb; paraphrase] of course! Phraseology is also important when it comes to this, but phraseology is harder to make use of in a foreign language because it should be a part of the sentence you pronounce, whereas a proverb is already a finished sentence, ready made to be used whenever it seems fit. In Russian proverbs are especially interesting to a foreign ear (and eye!) because they show how deep and far back in the Russian roots the case system and the free syntax lie. This is also true of proverbs in any other language, but let us stick to Russian here. Most Russian proverbs are impersonal, expressed either in second person singular (like «Что посеешь, то и пожнёшь» [‘What you sow, that you harvest']), or third person plural (for example, «Лес рубят – щепки летят» [‘When they cut down the forest the splinters fly']. There are also an abundance of Russian proverbs of the type «Муж и жена – одна сатана» [‘Husband and wife - one Satan', meaning that husband and wife are alike in what they want and think, and always act collectively]. Proverbs are a fascinating part of the language because they show both how people speaking a certain language think and their way of life. In the two first proverbs we sense that they’re from a time when Russia was still largely an agricultural country, and when it comes to the third… it could be from a thousand years ago, but it could also be from just yesterday.

The play «Горе от ума» ["Woe from Wit"] from 1825 is written in rhymed verse and many of its lines have become famous proverbs and expressions. Not many of them are still in use today (they seem a bit archaic to modern Russian), though their essence remain true, like for example «Чтоб иметь детей, кому ума не доставало?» [meaning: ‘You don't have to be smart to have children']. Here it is preformed by international students at Ural State University in June 2008.

In today’s Russia many proverbs that have served the nation since what seems like forever get a second life when they’re changed with the times. One of the first proverbs I learned how to use and then learned to love in its ‘second life form’ is «С кем поведёшься, от того и наберёшься» [‘Who you make friends with, from them you also accumulate' (wisdom, experience, habits, and so on and so forth)]. The meaning of it is that you become like the people you surround yourself with, both in a good way and in a bad way. In Russia today everybody knows the original form of this proverb, and that has caused this form to almost become extinct, because people have started coming up with their own versions. Most of them imply that ‘making friends’ with someone often leads to ‘more than friendship’. In the Urals I have only heard «С кем поведёшься, от того и залетишь» ['with whom you hang out, from them you also get knocked up']. The verb «залететь» doesn’t only mean ‘to fly in’, but also has the colloquial meaning ‘to get knocked up; to get pregnant’ (stress on the fact that it was ‘unplanned’). But there are many, many variants of this proverb, proving two things: 1. Russians know how strong influence from friends can be, and 2. this influence can take different forms, not only will you accumulate habits and experience but other things as well. Once I heard someone in Perm, I think, say «С кем поведёшься, с тем и посидишь» [‘with whom you hang out, with them you'll also serve prison time']. 

On this site I found the following versions, apparently from «Антипословицы русского народа» [The Anti Proverbs of the Russian People]:

«С кем поведёшься, на того и похожи дети» [...like them the children also look]
«С кем поведёшься, от того и забеременеешь» [...from them you also get pregnant].
«С кем поведёшься, от того и заболеешь» [...from them you also get sick].
«С кем поведёшься, от того и залетишь» [...from them you also get knocked up].
«С кем поведёшься, от того и заразишься» [...from them you also get infected].
«С кем поведёшься, от того и третий лишний» [...from them you don't also need a third].
«С кем поведёшься, с тем и напьёшься» [...with them you get also drunk].
«С кем поведёшься, с тем и переспишь» [...with them you also sleep].
«С кем поведёшься, с тем и подерёшься» [...with them you also fight].
«С кем поведёшься, с тем и проживёшь всю жизнь» [...with them you'll also live your whole life].
«С кем поведёшься, так тебе и надо» [...and that's also the way you deserve it].
«С кем поведёшься, тот и отец ребёнка» [...they are also the father of the child].

What would be a good English translation of this proverb? Is there any English variant of it? In Swedish we have ‘man blir som man umgås’ which can roughly be translated as ‘you become like the way hang out (with other people)’. The meaning is the same as the Russian, though it lacks a second half which could be used for creativity in the way the Russian people has been creative with theirs…

Never mind the swastika someone painted on this poster (honestly, I didn’t even notice it was there when taking the picture so please forgive me this stupid mistake!) but let’s instead try to focus on two other things present there: 1. “the Soviet poster revived in the 21^st century”, and 2. poetry about a bank in times of crisis being both «преданный» [‘dedicated'] and «верный» [‘faithful']. Some would say this is a. «симпатично» [ sympathetic; cute], or b. «смешно» [funny], perhaps even c. «сентиментально» [sentimental], but I would be brave about things and crown it a very certain sign of «отстой» [sediment, deposit; sludge, dreg], which is incidentally my new favorite Russian word!

Isn’t that so typical, though? Just as I finished blogging about my favorite Russian word (remember «есьчо»?) I meet another Russian word that is even better and I fall in love with it instead and… yes, I’ve change my mind! I’ve picked a new favorite word (and something tells me that this process of falling in love with new Russian words will last eternally…). I loved all of your favorite words which you mentioned in the comments for the last post – «ёжик» [small hedgehog] has two wonderful sounds: «ё» and «ж», «форточка» [‘window leaf'] you’ll probably use not only in Russian, but also only in Russia, «ощущение» [feeling, perception; sensation; feel] leaves a soft ‘feeling’ (get it?) in your mouth, and yes, we should all try to use «усвояемый» more often. The first time I heard the word «отстой» was from a friend of mine a couple of days ago when she had been to a restaurant which failed to make an agreeable impression on her and she thus commented it in the following fashion: «Там полный отстой!» [which could be translated as something in the manner of "it's really bad there" or "that place is way behind"]. Clearly my friend wasn’t talking about «результат отстаивания» [result of settling] which, for example, one may define as «осадок, получающийся в результате отстаивания взвеси в жидкости (нижняя часть)» [a residue received as a result of suspension settling (the lower part)]. Thus «отстой» means the gross and disgusting last remains left from some kind of fluid on the bottom of jars or pots after some time has passed (depending on the owner of the jars or pots this amount of time can differ from days till years or even decades). Though clearly what she meant was not this sludge, as she used the word in a more ‘expressionistic’ and ‘figuratively speaking’ fashion, so the restaurant neither looked nor smelled nor served food reminding of moldering residues from the bottom of containers. Now I’m not a native speaker of Russian, but I figured out pretty fast that this word was no compliment, but I couldn’t grip the whole scope of it, so I asked her to clarify what it meant. She explained it as something that’s either far behind its own time, or just really bad (in many, many ways). Thus it can describe both the opposite of contemporary and the opposite of good stuff. But how to use «отстой» in every day speech? You can always try your way around with it, and use it whenever you’re not content with something, and see when it works and when it’s not okay. Or you can take a hint from these interesting sentences that I found when I googled the word (with imaginative translation into English courtesy of me):

«Французский Диснейленд – полный отстой по сравнению с испанским Порт-Авентура!» [The French Disneyland is complete dreg compared to the Spanish Port Aventura!]

«21 (двадцать одна) причина того, что iPhone (айфон) – это полный отстой!» [21 reasons why iPhone is absolute sludge!]

«Америка – это отстой?» [Is America way behind?]

«Дарвин – отстой, физика – отстой, таблица умножения – отстой.» [Darwin is sediment, physics is sediment, the multiplication table is sediment.]

Next thing to come – yours (and my!) least favourite Russian word. Actually I wanted to start with the word in Russian I absolutely hate… but I figured; positivism first!