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[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

Question about reflexive verbs:

I know that verbs that are pretty much always reflexive will end in sya (I can't use Cyrillic on this comp, I'm not at home). I was wondering what you do with verbs that aren't reflexive in nature. For example, "to teach". In English, you would say "I teach you" or "I teach him". Verbs in English can easily be reflexive by just saying "I teach myself" instead of "I teach me".

So, in Russian, would you say "I teach me" (menya) or is there another word for "myself" in this situation? Best I can think of, it would either be "menya" or "cebya". Would both of them work, or just one of the two, or neither at all? Menya sounds a little funny, but hey... Russian is a funny language sometimes ^_~

ETA: When would you use "cama"? (sama... my attempt at using Latin letters instead of cyrillic, but hey, these are all pretty much the same lol)

Comments

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

The use of играться is not a problem of formal and informal speech. It's a problem of literate and illiterate speech. As a writer or a speaker (an, last but not least, as an editor with ten+ years of an editor's experience,) I know how to use a lot of informal elements in speech/writing -- in order to make speech/writing brighter etc. I also know what elements one cannot use by no means, under no circumstances. One of those words is "играться". There is nothing in the word "играть" that prevents it from being used instead of that terribe "играться" in the context you are talking about. Quite the contrary, it's "играться" that cannot be used even in this "informal" context. Informal DOES NOT equals "illiterate." If you think it does, then why don't we say "she don't."

[gera.livejournal.com]

One of those words is "играться". There is nothing in the word "играть" that prevents it from being used instead of that terribe "играться" in the context you are talking about.

Well, what can I say? I respectfully disagree :)

Quite the contrary, it's "играться" that cannot be used even in this "informal" context. Informal DOES NOT equals "illiterate."

Then how come that this word ended up in a dictionary with the same annotation as здоровенный? Note that it is not even defined as просторечие.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Maybe you could explain the following: how come that of 26 Russian dictionaries available online, only one (ant the most questionable one,) namely Yefremova's "Новый словарь русского языка" (2000), gives that word AT ALL?
Try to find it in Dahl's, Ozhegov's, Ushakov's...

Nothing.

Because it's not a legitimate Russian word.
And all three mentioned above give profanities, colloquial forms etc. all right.

As for Yefremova's, this relatively new dictionary still is very questionable and, I'm afraid, must be seriously reviewed and renewed. Many people don't use it as a reliable source - first of all, because stylistical strata are all mixed up there.

[gera.livejournal.com]

Try to find it in Dahl's, Ozhegov's, Ushakov's...

Why, here it is (http://vidahl.agava.ru/cgi-bin/dic.cgi?p=68&t=10814) in Dahl's:



I can't tell you much about other two dozen dictionaries (by the way, I would be extremely grateful for their URLs), but I can tell you this: some dictionaries are just more complete than others. It is impossible to judge of what's NOT in the language by what's NOT in a dictionary.
Besides, try to find приватность as equivalent of privacy (meaning freedom from intrusion) in any Russian dictionary. In fact, I doubt you will even find it as separate word at all (rather than a noun form of приватный).

As to your other comment, doesn't the fact the word is used by writers and in Shukshin's case in their own speech, rather than of their characters, tell you something about the place of this word in the language? Maybe in Dahl's time it was characteristic of the Southern Russia, but Shukshin was by no means a Southerner, he was a Siberian.
If its usage by writers should be disregarded, this raises a more important question: who does a language belong to? To a handful of academics who decided what's right and what's wrong?
The contradiction between the dictionaries only tells me that this is a matter of controversy between two schools - a more rigid one and a more liberal one. This is not a matter of knowledge or authority but rather a matter of opinion and I told you mine.

This word is definitely an informal one, a colloquialism, but this does not mean it's not there, not part of the language. Frankly, I am yet to see an official Russian dictionary that includes a few Russian words, which do not appear in formal speech, but can be heard daily on the streets.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Well, there certainly is a "more liberal" trend to advocate the elements of illiteral speech and to promote them as acceptable and somehow "normal," and I'm just happy that, as an author and an editor, I do belong to the the opposite school. Luckily, the majority of the authors and the editors does, otherwise the historically obvious process of the erosion of language norms would go way faster than it should.

[gera.livejournal.com]

I don't hold such a liberal view on all language issues. For example, I don't think neutral gender for "кофе" should be made a norm just because this is how many people use it. The language won't lose anything without this relaxation. On the other hand, forceful exclusion of "играться", in my opinion, robs the language.

Again, I would be very grateful if you can give me links to the multitude of the Russian dictionaries you mentioned, especially those that go as far as including profanities.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

In my opinion, forceful inclusion of the stuff like "играться", "гуляться", "любиться", etc. destroys the language.

As for the links: unfortunately, right now I have no time for HTML tags, so I just copy-paste it from my browser bookmarks and you have to check them out on your own:
(all dictionaries listed under slovari.gramota.ru can be searched from the single interface, http://slovari.gramota.ru/)

http://slovari.gramota.ru/portal_sl.html#gorb
http://slovari.gramota.ru/portal_sl.html#zar
http://slovari.gramota.ru/portal_sl.html#ab
http://slovari.gramota.ru/portal_sl.html#lv
http://slovari.gramota.ru/portal_sl.html?d=elistratov
http://www.rubricon.com/tsd_1.asp
http://www.rubricon.com/nsr_1.asp
http://www.slovari.ru/
http://fro196.narod.ru/speak/dictionary.htm
http://slovari.ru/lang/ru/ivoc/ksis/index.html
http://slovari.ru/lang/ru/ivoc/sem/index.html
http://slovari.ru/lang/ru/ivoc/dal/index.html
http://slovari.ru/lang/ru/ivoc/ojsh/index.html
http://slovari.ru/lang/ru/ivoc/orfo/index.html
http://slovari.ru/lang/ru/ivoc/mas/index.html
http://www.ets.ru/udict-inostr-r.htm
http://www.ets.ru/udict-abbrnew-r.htm
http://www.ets.ru/udict-abbrbig-r.htm
http://www.rusyaz.ru/pr/index1.html
http://www.tel-inform.ru/misc/day/dis.htm
http://slang.od.ua/
http://www.dictionnaire.narod.ru/
http://starling.rinet.ru/indexru.htm
http://www.kcn.ru/tat_ru/universitet/infres/slovar/index.htm
http://mt.slova.tk/russian/stats.htm
http://www.artint.ru/projects/frqlist.asp
http://spravka.gramota.ru/difficulties.html

[gera.livejournal.com]

Thank you. So which ones include profanities?

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

http://www.ets.ru/udict-rus-mat-r.htm is simply a dictionary of profanities.

[gera.livejournal.com]

Well, it is interesting, that none of the "real" dictionaries apparently doesn't list those everyday words. On the other hand, any serious English dictionary includes such words as "fuck", "cunt", "cock", "shit" etc. So, again, non-inclusion of a word in an official Russian dictionary tells very little about its place in the language.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

English-speaking cultures and Russian culture have a different attitude towards profanities. It's not tabooed in English-speaking cultures as it is in Russian culture. The Criminal Code of Russian Federation has a special article concerning public offense (Article 130 (http://www.d-sign.ru/uk/17.htm#130)) which mostly works if the offense is expressed in the form of profanities. I cannot judge if this taboo is good or bad. It just exists, and we have to respect this fact.

[gera.livejournal.com]

Well, you'd probably be suprised to find out that on all the public TV channels (which means - government funded and thus the only ones which fall constitutionally under government regulations) all the above mentioned words are carefully bleeped out from all movies and other programs.
Still they are part of the language and there is no reason not to include them in a complete dictionary.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Surprisingly enough, some of those words are not bleeped out of movies on Russian TV, especially when it runs after 11 pm (which is the legal barrier for underage TV watch: they only show beer ads after that time, for instance.) They do it during the news programs or talk shows, anyway.

BTW they are included in some academic dictionaries (which aren't accessible online, at least for free: rubricon.ru has some of them in the paid section.)

[gera.livejournal.com]

Surprisingly enough, some of those words are not bleeped out of movies on Russian TV

This is interesting. The only exception made on US public channels based on the time of day is for the word "shit". Late at night they won't bleep it out. "Fuck" is bleeped out 24 hours.
On the other hand, on the premium channels which are not under government control, nothing is censored regardless of the time of day.

BTW they are included in some academic dictionaries (which aren't accessible online, at least for free: rubricon.ru has some of them in the paid section.)

This is actually funny. Somehow it resembles the American TV situation: you need to pay to hear these words :)

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

OK, here's the dictionary I rely upon in my everyday editorial practice.
"Трудности словоупотребления и варианты норм русского литературного языка", словарь-справочник, Ленинград, "Наука", 1974.
Unfortunately, it isn't available online, but here's a scan from it.

SHOULD NOT be used instead of "играть", see?
examples of NON-NORMATIVE usage, see?
Those two authors imitate illiterate speech by using this word, which is NON-NORMATIVE.
Dixit.
Бледнолицый шакал сказал всё.