Moscow Times article

[alektoeumenides.livejournal.com]

Idiom Idiocy

By Michele A. Berdy

Валять дурака: to play the fool, to act like an idiot

A fun little list of mistakes we foreigners make in Russian is making the e-mail rounds, causing you to wonder, "Hmm ... That sounds right -- what's the problem?" The problem is usually that we non-native Russian speakers mix up our metaphors and expressions, definitely have a problem with prefixes, find prepositions problematic, and cheerfully fracture великий и могучий русский язык (the great and powerful Russian language). We generalize rules of grammar where we shouldn't, for example, with idioms.

Take, for example, не надо валяться дураками. Here the speaker applied the rule that a comparison "like something" usually uses the instrumental case. Он мухой сбегал в магазин. (He ran to the store in a flash.) So acting like a fool must be валяться (lie around) дураками (like idiots), right? Wrong. The idiom is валять дурака: Не обращайте не него внимания -- он просто валяет дурака. (Don't pay any attention to him: He's just acting like an idiot.) Or maybe the speaker was thinking of another idiom: там и конь не валялся -- which means "to put off doing something." Отчёт надо закончить к четвергу, а там ещё и конь не валялся! (The report is due by Thursday and they haven't done a single thing!)

And then there are those pesky prefixes. I myself am famous for mixing up my prefixes: For example, I once cheerfully announced, Пора утопить баню! (Time to drown the bathhouse!) The verb топить, much to our confusion, can either mean "to heat something" or "to drown/sink" someone or something. To heat up the bathhouse would be топить, but once you stick on the prefix у- you are definitely talking about sinking it under water.

Judging by the e-mail list of bloopers, one of my compatriots must have called his Russian colleagues on the carpet with an indignant Не надо накачивать бочку на меня! and was probably rewarded with howls of laughter. Накачивать is the verb you use for pumping something up, like tires: У меня колесо спустило -- надо его накачать до того, как поеду на дачу. (One of my tires is low -- I've got to fill it before I drive out to the dacha.) What the poor guy wanted was the verb катить (to roll) in the expression: Не надо на меня бочку катить! (Stop dumping on me!)

Then there are mistakes we make when we hear phrases incorrectly -- and then generalize: Я слышал крайним ухом. There is a phrase видеть краем глаза -- to see out of the corner of one's eye, literally "with the edge of one's eye" -- and clearly the speaker wanted to say "I heard in passing" -- but he confused край with крайний. Close but no cigar.

Sometimes prepositions make a world of difference: Дорогой, я могу тебе заехать в любое место! This means "Dear, I'll whack you one anywhere you want." Заехать кому-то в (or по) and then the body part is slang for "to hit someone somewhere." Probably not what the person wanted to say.

Someone else sent his staff into giggles with the ponderous statement А сейчас вопрос на зацепку. (And now a question to put in gear!) Hmm, that can't be right. The expression is actually вопрос на засыпку, which means "a stumper," "a tough/tricky question." It comes from student slang that means "question that can't be answered" during an oral exam, that is, a question you're given to make sure you don't pass. You can say, for example, Я засыпался (I flunked/I blew the test).

And that's pretty much the way we foreigners feel about Russian: No matter how long we study, we'll always flunk the exam.

Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter.