Comments:

1. 

    

   Rob McGee:

   A bit of zoology, prompted by the translation of the joke … A заяц is not a rabbit, it’s a hare. A rabbit is кролик. Кролик живет в норке под землей, заяц в гнезде на земле.

   David — first, I knew that hares and rabbits are zoologically different, but I didn’t know about the “норка под землей” vs. “гнездо на земле” distinction, so thanks for that point.

   Second, while you are zoologically correct, I must defend Yelena on linguistic grounds! She lives in America, and in US English, the traditional distinction between “rabbits” and “hares” has been hopelessly (and perhaps irreversibly) confused by decades of Bugs Bunny cartoons. E.g., WWII stuff like Bugs Bunny Joins the U.S. Hare Force to Zap the Japs, and numerous jokes about “hare remover” and “hare cuts” and “hare conditioning”, etc.

   While we’re on the topic of biological distinctions vs. linguistic distinctions: Biologists clearly distinguish “apes” from “monkeys”, but colloquial English doesn’t observe this difference; on the other hand, colloquial English distinguishes “whales” from “dolphins”, but to biologists, there’s not an absolute difference — “killer whales (orcas)” and “beluga whales” and “narwhals” may all be called “types of dolphin.”

2. 

    

   David Roberts:

   Rob – yes, it has become apparent to me over the past few days that we brits make more of a distinction than most between rabbits and hares. Hares are recognised as able to run very fast (at dog races the dogs chase an electric hare, never an electric rabbit) and for bizarre behaviour in their mating season (mad as a March hare), while rabbits are recognised for their prolific breeding (breeding like rabbits is a common expression) and their high propensity for the activity necessary for breeding (this of course gives rise to several common expressions that are too coarse [Русские читатели, pronounced the same as course] for the Russian blog). As you’ll probably already know, rabbit breeding was used to first demonstrate the Fibonacci series, linked to the golden section you mentioned in your recent guest blog. The Fibonacci series was what got my interest in Russian kick-started many years ago.

   In the UK we also distinguish between rabbits and hares when it comes to eating them. There is a dish called Jugged Hare (I’ve never tried it), but no Jugged Rabbit. Rabbit pie is a well known dish, but never Hare pie.

   Near where I live there used to be a barber’s shop called Herr Kutz!

   On the whales/dolphins point, although we distinguish between the two the zoology can sometimes be wildly inaccurate. The country of Wales has its own national anthem, with versions in Welsh and in English, and in the English version there is a line “Wales, Wales, oh but my heart is with you”. In a parody version sung by rugby players in pubs after a match, this line becomes “Whales, whales, bloody great fishes are whales”.

3. 

    

   Richard:

   У меня вопрос!

   Где ударение в имя Пелевин??? Я выписал книгу автором Виктор Пелевин (“Синий Фонарь”).

   Спасибо! 🙂

4. 

    

   Minority:

   David, “mad as March rabbit”? Haha, we’ve got “мартовские коты” [“March male cats”] instead here, in Russia =)

5. 

    

   Minority:

   * sorry, I’m confused by you rabbits and hares… “a March hare” =)))

6. 

    

   Richard:

   Oops, the above should read “фамилия”, not “имя”.

7. 

    

   Minority:

   Richard, ПелЕвин.

   “Я выписал книгу автором Виктор Пелевин”
   It’s not correct. You can say:
   – Я заказал книгу Виктора Пелевина.
   – Я заказал книгу “Синий Фонарь”. Ее автор – Виктор Пелевин.
   – Я заказал книгу, написанную Виктором Пелевиным.
   – Я заказал книгу. Ее написал Виктор Пелевин.

8. 

    

   Richard:

   Minority,

   I understand the corrections, thank you.

   However, why wouldn’t “выписывать” work? I ordered this book from Amazon and my understanding of “выписывать” is that it means “to order something by mail, to order something from a catalogue”. “Заказывать” seems to mean “order” but more in the sense of ordering dinner.

9. 

    

   Minority:

   Richard, we use word “выписывать” in several cases:
   1. “Саша выписал из книги формулу.” [Sasha wrote down the formula from the book.] – when you find something useful in a book or magazine, or somewhere… And write it in other place to remember.

   2. “Я выписывал этот журнал 3 года.” [I’ve subscribed for this magazine for 3 years.] – when you want to say you’re recieving by mail some newspaper, book or magazine regularly – every week, every month…

   3. “Он старательно выписывает каждую буковку.” [He carefully writes out every letter.]. Also it may refer to painting or dancing/ice-skating – “Фигурист выписывает кренделя на льду”.

10. 

     

    Richard:

    Okay, gotcha! Thanks!

11. 

     

    Rob McGee:

    Minority: In old books (like, from the 15th century or so), the variant “mad as a marsh hare” can be found — сумасшедший, как заяц в болоте.

    Some scholars argue that “marsh hare” was the original form, possibly in reference to a hare in a marsh jumping over the puddles and mud so as not to get its paws dirty!

    But I think the majority of scholars believe that “March hare” is the oldest variant, and that “marsh hare” was a later misunderstanding or misspelling of this.

12. 

     

    Rob McGee:

    @David: “Rabbit pie is a well known dish, but never Hare pie.”

    [Rob McGee краснеет]
    Ох, человек, тебе не стыдно!!!

    If you said the phrase “hare pie” in a classroom of American 14-year-olds, it would lead to absolute chaos — you’d have to call the National Guard with tear-gas to restore order.

    (It’s like saying “Lake Titicaca” in front of 9-year-olds…)

13. 

     

    Rob McGee:

    @Minority: “Фигурист выписывает кренделя на льду.”

    Oh, I love this! In English, we normally just say “the ice-skater made a figure-eight“, which seems rather boring. Крендель (“pretzel”) is a more colorful image.

    (If I’m not mistaken, крендель normally means “a sweet pastry in a twisted, pretzel-like shape”, but in some contexts it can also mean “a salty, German-type pretzel”.)

14. 

     

    Rob McGee:

    Unfortunately, Dolores isn’t good example for this… The only thing that comes to mind is Долресушка, Долоресочка, but it sounds really bad

    “Долоресочка” may sound really bad as a nickname, but you know what would sound much worse?

    “Лоли-и-и-ита, свет моей жизни, огонь моих бёдер!!”

    (“Dolores” is the real name of Nabokov’s most famous heroine…)

15. 

     

    David Roberts:

    Rob, talk about 2 nations divided by a common language! No заячий пирог your side of the Atlantic then.

16. 

     

    David:

    Rob, your comment on Lolita leads us to the answer to the Долорес problem. Lolita is a diminutive of a diminutive, like Rob is a diminutive of Robert and Robbie (as in Robbie Savage, recently retired professional footballer who has been appearing on Strictly Come Dancing over here) is a double diminutive). So the single diminutive of Dolore is Lola, which is nicely Russified and declinable as Лола, from which we can get a Russian sounding possessive adjective:Я знаю Лолиного мужа, его зовут Фидел.

    • 

       

      yelena:

      @David Wow, nice one, David! I totally didn’t remember that, but yes, Lolita is a diminutive of Dolores! I agree with Minority that to a Russian ear Lolita sounds nothing like a diminutive. Yet Russian diminutives can be rather unexpected, such as Юра being a diminutive of Георгий (but also of Юрий).

17. 

     

    Minority:

    Wow, that’s a surprise for me. Лолита sounds good in Russian (I can’t say the same about Lola). But I was sure it’s not a diminutive name ’cause it sounds all-sufficient.

    If you will look at this from the russian point of view you will understand why.

    Most of diminutive names are shorter than an original name, and sound much softer and caressing.

    Федор – Федя
    Иван – Ваня [softer]
    Анастасия – Настя
    Елена – Лена
    Екатерина – Катя
    Мария – Маша

    The only way you can make original longer is to use endearment suffixes -очк, -ечк, -иш, -юш, -уш, -еньк, -ен, -к. And to tell the truth most of these suffixes are used ONLY with diminutive names:

    Федор – Федя – Федечка, Феденька. NOT Федорушка! You can say it but it sounds insulting.
    Иван – Ваня – Ванечка, Ванюша, Иванушка [in fairy-tales only].
    Екатерина – Катя – Катюша, Катенька, Катюшка. But NOT Екатеринушка/Екатериночка!
    And so on.

    Note: if you use only -к with word, the result is too informal and may be even abusive [most of us teased each other in childhood using such names]: Катька, Ванька, Танька, Ленка, Сашка, Светка…

    And back to Lolita. As you can see, there’s no way in Russian to make Lolita from Lola, but we’ve got an obvious way to make Lola from Lolita.

18. 

     

    Alex:

    What’s interesting is that adding the suffix -к to names has a different effect for male and female names. It’s disrespectful and maybe even abusive when added to a woman’s name (Катька, etc) but it’s informal in a pleasant and good-natured sort of way when added to a man’s name. The best friend of mine always calls me “Лёшка” (from Лёша, Алёша) and it sounds really warm and friendly, almost endearing. But my wife’s friends never call her “Оксанка” – that would be rude.

19. 

     

    Rob McGee:

    No заячий пирог your side of the Atlantic then.

    Well, I suppose you could serve заячий пирог to Yanks — so long as you called it a “jackrabbit pie” or “wild-rabbit pie.”

    But “hare pie” is a homophone for “hair pie”, which is vulgar sexual slang for the женские половые органы.

    (See also the famous “Nice beaver!” joke from the first movie in the Naked Gun trilogy…)

20. 

     

    David:

    Rob, unless I’ve led a very sheltered life, which I don’t think I have, заячий пирог could be translated over here without anyone turning a hair. There is a lot of overlap, but not complete, between British and US Мат

    Another example of the two nations divided by a common language syndrome: in the Lancashire town where I grew up there used be a lot of cotton mills, which employed large numbers of women (mainly young, because they had to give up work when they got married. The mills used to employ a man with the job title of knocker-up, with the job of knocking up all the women at their homes before the day’s work started at 6.00am. Those days had already gone by the time I was born, but to knock someone up is still a widely used phrase over here, without the US meaning.

21. 

     

    David:

    Minority, -ito (masc) and -ita (fem) are widely used diminutives in Spanish, added not just to names but to common nouns as well. I think Spanish and Russian are about equally complex, but unfortunately in different ways, when it comes to diminutives and augmentatives.

22. 

     

    Minority:

    Alex, Оксанка sounds rude enough… But it’s not the rule for every name. My name sounds quite OK with -к – Наташка, nothing rude at all. =)

    • 

       

      yelena:

      @Minority Minority, there’s at least one well-known exception here. Remember Ксанка, Яшка и Данька из Неуловимых мстителей? In some cases, adding -ка to a girl’s name is not a sign of rudeness, but rather of her being “one of the boys”, as in the song Хороший ты парень, Наташка 🙂

23. 

     

    Minority:

    I found a good riddle about the theme of gender =)

    У трех маляров был брат Иван, а у Ивана братьев не было. Как это могло случиться?

    (I guess all of you understand why)

24. 

     

    Rick Haller:

    There is a very similar riddle in English. I won’t spoil things by giving the answer to the one Minority has given.

    I will give a hint, but I worry about my Russian and the hint is a bit obscure:
    “Они известны для быть известны.”

25. 

     

    Rob McGee:

    @Rick: “Они известны для быть известны.”

    I guess you mean to say “They’re famous for being famous” (a remark that is often made about no-talent celebrities like Paris Hilton).

    There might be a better and more idiomatic way that a native speaker would translate this, but my own suggested translation would be “Они известны именно тем, что они известны.”

    I still don’t know exactly which riddle in English you mean, though. The one I’m familiar with is this:

    A father and his young son were in a terrible car accident — killing the father and seriously injuring the boy. They brought the boy to the hospital for emergency brain surgery, and the neurosurgeon took one look at him and said, “I cannot operate on this young man — he’s my son!”

    (This riddle was quoted in an episode of the 1970s American sitcom All in the Family — and ironically, it’s the “dimwitted” middle-aged housewife Edith who quickly sees the correct answer!)

26. 

     

    Rob McGee:

    and ironically, it’s the “dimwitted” middle-aged housewife Edith who quickly sees the correct answer

    For those who may be unfamiliar with the show, the key point is that although the “Edith” character was in many ways old-fashioned and not very well educated, she was a person completely без предрассудков (“without prejudices”). So, it was Edith’s lack of prejudice that allowed her to answer the riddle so quickly.

27. 

     

    Minority:

    Rob, did I get it wrong or the answer is: the “official” father is dead, and the neurosurgeon is his biological father?

28. 

     

    Alex:

    I spent a long time racking my brains over Rob’s riddle and finally gave up. I then did a google search and the answer was so simple that I felt myself a complete idiot. Minority, it’s not about biological or official. Hint: when you picture a neurosurgeon who is it? Could something about the image be stereotypical? Another hint: it’s connected with the subject of this thread.

29. 

     

    Minority:

    Damn it, neurosurgeon is his mother. xD
    All work and no play makes Minority a dull girl.)))

30. 

     

    Alex:

    Makes two of us, Minority! 🙂

31. 

     

    David Roberts:

    I’ve only just looked closely at the title of this blog: How to Figure Out Gender of Russian Noun. This really needs one or two (I won’t say how many) articles (won’t say whether definite or indefinite) and/or another stroke on the keyboard, to make it look like it’s written by a native English speaker.

    Русские друзья, can you come up with corrections (there are several alternatives)?

32. 

     

    Rob McGee:

    Alex and Minority — sorry, I should’ve been more clear that the surgeon riddle follows the same logic as the маляры riddle! (The surgeon was a woman, as were the three house-painters.)

    Маляр (“house-painter”) was a new word for me — I went Googling and found that it’s borrowed from the German Maler.

    (I knew it must be borrowed, because you would naturally expect the Russian word for “house-painter” to be based on the root -крас-.)

33. 

     

    Minority:

    Rob, no need to apologize. It’s a riddle, so a thing should make brain work. Самое смешное, что я сама загадала практически ту же загадку, но на английском затупила. =)

    Маляр is way shorter than “красильщик” or “покрасчик” so I think it’s a good borrow.

34. 

     

    David Roberts:

    Minority, затупила is a new verb (past tense) for me, but I presume it comes from тупой – made into a verb and за- to make it perfective. In Welsh (geographically the nearest language to where I live) “twp” (w is pronounced like Cyrillic у) means exactly the same as тупой. At first this similarity between a Celtic word and a Slavonic word looks quite remarkable, but put s in front of both and the relationship to the English (and Romance language) equivalents becomes clear.

35. 

     

    Rob McGee:

    “twp” (w is pronounced like Cyrillic у) means exactly the same as тупой… put s in front of both and the relationship to the English (and Romance language) equivalents becomes clear.

    Hmmm… David, keep in mind that the most basic and literal meaning of тупой is “dull, like an old knife”; it can also mean “obtuse” in the geometric sense of “having an angle between 90 and 180”. The meaning “dull-witted” or “stupid” is only a metaphoric extension of this. So the phonetic similarity between “stupid,” twp, and тупой could be totally an accident.

    For what it’s worth, Vikislovar does NOT connect тупой with the Latin verb stupere — which means “to feel amazed/dizzy, as if one has been hit on the head”. The Latin word comes, in turn, from an IE root that means бить. And the English “stupid” without any doubt восходит к латинскому глаголу stupere, but I don’t know about the Welsh twp.

    But if I understand Викисловарь correctly, it’s possible that there’s a relationship between тупой and the Germanic/English “stump” (пень или обрубок).

36. 

     

    David Roberts:

    Rob – yes I think you’re right, twp and тупой are probably just accidentally similar. Very likely that twp is from the same root as latin stupere. When I put тупой into Google Translate to go from Russian to Welsh it gave heb fin (without an edge).

    Thanks for пень and обрубок!

37. 

     

    Alex:

    And the popular similes are:

    Тупой как пень (или туп как пень – the short adjective form), and тупой (туп) как дерево. (I like the English one: ‘thick as two short planks’ – my dictionary tells me it’s only British English though…)

    Another word, which is popular now is тормозить, to ‘apply brakes’, to be on the slow side. Personally, I don’t use ‘затупил’, so instead of what Minority said, I could have said ‘я затормозил’. A popular offence among teenagers is ‘ты тормоз!’ – you are a dumbass.

    As for the article in the title of the thread, I would write “How to figure out the gender of Russian nouns’, but isn’t it permissible to drop articles in headlines?

38. 

     

    Alex:

    From Vladimir Vysotsky’s song making fun of the reincarnation theory: А если туп как дерево, родишься баобабом. 🙂

39. 

     

    David Roberts:

    Alex, I like Тупой (туп) как пень (дерево). Thick as two short planks and thick as a brick are still going strong in the UK. I think they originated with building site workers.

    “How to figure out the gender of Russian nouns” is good native speaker English. You could even discard “the”, but “nouns” would need to be plural “How to figure out gender of Russian nouns”. With “noun”in the singular ” we need an “a” “How to figure out the gender of a Russian noun”. A short “headline English” would be “Russian noun gender”

40. 

     

    Pedro Taam:

    How marvelous this website is!

    As I’m a portuguese native speaker, I’m used to word gender and word gender awkwardness . But here I learned two new rules (new for me): the мя and the тя ones.

    Again, thank you for the website!