Names of products

[smorodina.livejournal.com]

Local supermarket Morrisons has just launched its own brand of vodka called - Morrisov! Suppose it sounds vaguely Russian to an uninformed Brit.

Comments

[-alex-dee-.livejournal.com]

не самое оригинальное название водки, которое я видел =\\...

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

I would love to remind that the working language of this community is English. You are free to comment in Russian, but you are also expected to provide an English translation in such case.

[beowabbit]

Hi. I'd have sent this in email, except that I couldn't easily find an email address for you. Feel free to delete and/or ignore it. I realize that it's your community and you get to set the rules, and that there's a good reason for them.

Personally, as an English-speaker with a few years of Russian, but who can't read extended passages without a dictionary, I find the occasional comment entirely in Russian useful. They tend to be very short, which means I usually only have to look up a word or two if that (and even if my Russian were considerably more limited, looking up almost every word at http://lingvo.yandex.ru/ wouldn't take ridiculously long), so it's a very easy, low-impact opportunity to practice my Russian. And I think that English speakers who don't really know enough Russian to string together an entire question in Russian and Russian speakers who don't really know enough English to string together an entire answer (or comment) in English can still form a valuable community here. This community will be less useful for me if people who don't feel confident enough of their English to comment in it decide not to comment at all.

I often comment entirely or mostly in English in ru_learnenglish (whose userinfo says "You are encouraged to post in English but Russian is absolutely welcome if you are having any difficulty."), although I make some effort to make my posts accessible to non-native speakers (eg giving synonyms for hard words or Americanisms), and I think that has been worthwhile sometimes.

This is not a request that you change the community policy or anything like that. I just wanted to give you a little data about how I personally as a Russian learner have found the Russian-only posts here useful. Thank you very much for creating this community, and whether you relax the rules or not, I'll definitely still find it very useful!

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Well, I haven't created this community. I have been assigned by the founder (yers who later resigned. The rules of this community have been set long before me, so I didn't have to be a nuclear scientist to simply follow it (Russians say, не должен был быть семи пядей во лбу, i.e. didn't have to have a seven-palms-high brow; a palm is an ancient measure unit, about one 7th of a feet.) But still I regard those rules as useful. The problem is that for each advanced learner like you, we have several people who only try to start learning the Cyrillic alphabet but still aren't sure if Я stands for R or something. We have one thousand and two members today (1002!) and too many of them are still in a very early stage of their study. That's why we find useful (and simply polite) to keep this particular rule alive. BTW if an entirely Russian comment is provided by an English translation (which certainly helps the early-stage learners to see how the real Russian speech works,) those advanced learners who want (just like you) to test their abilities by translating these comments by themselves, still have an useful (though, no doubt, temptating) option not to look at the English translation and still be able to read the Russian comments "as is" :)

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

If this were a community for advanced learners, I would have no qualms about changing the policy. However, we have members of all levels here, including people who are only just learning the alphabet. For them, comments in Russian are simply inaccessible.

[rottenshworz.livejournal.com]

Моррисоновка - ничуть не хуже табуретовки!
~_^

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

I would love to remind that the working language of this community is English. You are free to comment in Russian, but you are also expected to provide an English translation in such case.

[friendlic.livejournal.com]

I think it would be rather hard to tranlsate the above comment to English. It makes little sense to the Russians itself :)

[aerope.livejournal.com]

cute.

[egh0st.livejournal.com]

Well, i guess that was response to "Chelsea" vodka made in Russia :)

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Wow. Having left the alcohol front years ago, I don't keep myself up with the news like that... is that true that they sell vodka under this brand name in Russia? 8---))

[night1ngale.livejournal.com]

Hm, what prevents you from trying to find in online-shops? =)

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

:)) And what prevents you from answering? ;-)

[night1ngale.livejournal.com]

I'm too lazy for this :)

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

16 words typed to avoid an one-word answer (yes or no.) That's what I call laziness, man.

[http://users.livejournal.com/__marginal/]

Well, if they removed one extra R, it would sound as a Russian surname: Morisov - Морисов (s pronounced as in 'son').

I checked ti in yandex, and found some people with this name:
Морисов Михаил Николаевич (http://history.tver.ru/book/book.php?r=12&l=204&ch=1&lim=350&ch=1)
Александр Морисов (http://www.vostokmedia.ru/news.print.php?id=34817)

This site -
http://www.merkushev.net/surname_origin.html
lists two possible origins of this name:

1) Морисов < Марйс (probably a typo, really Марис) < Марк или Марей

2) Морисов, Марусов, Марусев, образованные от уменьшительных форм имени Мария (from diminutives of 'Maria').

[http://users.livejournal.com/__marginal/]

P.S. Of course, in the real surname 'Morisov' the stress is on the second sylable - [mo-REE-sov], not [MO-re-sov].