That old myth again

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

A recent addon to our "Myths on Russian Language" section:

the babushkas (accent on the first syllable means the women; on the second, the scarf)

(Psychology Today, May-June, 1992)

In fact, neither of those meanings is true: there is no word "babUshka" meaning "the scarf" in Russian language; "the women" in Russian is "женщины"; бабушка (accent on the first syllable) means "grandma" or "granny," with the secondary, colloquial meaning "any old woman."

Comments

[sventhelost.livejournal.com]

I'd never heard that one. One of my teachers always had to correct one of my fellow students, who had learned Polish first, wherein the accent is on the second syllable. (Or so we understood it at the time.) We all ended up correcting him by the end. :)

[b0bb.livejournal.com]

> who had learned Polish first, wherein the accent is on the second syllable

Second from the last, actually.

[philena.livejournal.com]

I thought that with an -ушка diminutive ending, if the accent is on the -y- then there is a derogatory component. The example I was given was рЕчушка (little river)/речУшка(stupid, silly dump little river). Does that not apply to бабушка? Does that apply to the example I was given?

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Whoever had given you that example, did you a bad service. Neither in бабушка, nor in речушка the accent never drifts, and I have never heard about such difference as "рЕчушка (little river)/речУшка(stupid, silly dump little river)" -- the first version simply does not exist. Well, it might exist some 150 years ago as an entirely artificial pseudo-folkloric "poetic" word, but nobody had used it since then. Was the one who gave you this example a native Russian speaker?

[philena.livejournal.com]

No, he's the chairman of the Slavic department (my BA advisor, in fact), and an expert in Russian morphology and phonology. At least, I thought so. And I respect him so much! Oh, dear.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Well, if he's not a native speaker, it's more or less OK - a non-native speaker would probably not know the nuances THIS subtle. What did HIM a bad service was probably (I cannot state that!) too much knowledge: he probably encountered this strange form "речушка" in some obscure book of pseudo-folk tales from the 19th century and could not tell it from a word from the "real," living language.

[noser.livejournal.com]

When it comes to languages, native speakers should be more respected than language department chairmen :) Seriously, any native speaker is a better "expert" than those guys.

[philena.livejournal.com]

Native speakers are certainly better in what is correct, but they are not experts in the actual linguistic principles that govern what is correct. One of the most important things I've been taught in my classes is that you never trust a native speaker to explain "why." They can only explain "what." I suspect the chairman is very good at "why," and the reason he goofed this time is because he didn't double-check his "what"s.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

>you never trust a native speaker to explain "why"

Well, this largely depends on who that native speaker is :) Some were especially trained to explain those "why"s, so you can trust them alright - at least more than the "specialists" described here (http://imkostin.livejournal.com/64397.html) (warning: baaad Russian obscenities inside!)...

[dair-spb.livejournal.com]

exactly those text I reminded when read about "chairman of the Slavic department".

more to the topic: in general I think philena is right. Common guy like me can rarely describe "why".

(And happy_accidents asks "why" pretty often, confuses me sometime ;-))

[shalapanova.livejournal.com]

Then please tell them why "Да нет" means "no" :-)

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

You better explain why "да-да-да", being said with a certain intonation, means "no" :)

[dair-spb.livejournal.com]

isn't it almost the same in English?.. I thought one can say "yes, of course" with same "certain intonation" (irony)...

[salexey.livejournal.com]

Because "да" in this case doesn't mean "yes", but "но".

P.S.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

>they are not experts in the actual linguistic principles that govern what is correct

Heaven save us from the "experts" who invent non-existing "priciples" like the one that you describe above ;-)

Re: P.S.

[philena.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes! Hence the "actual" linguistic principles. I've seen some really, really tortured reasoning that attempts to explain some facts that are simply irregular exceptions to rules. One of my phonology professors told us about an assignment he had to do which had a typo in the data. He was able with very little extra effort to create a system of rules that would generate the incorrect data.

[noser.livejournal.com]

One of the most important things I've been taught in my classes is that you never trust a native speaker to explain "why."

Of course! Department chairmen want you to believe in their usefulness :)

[miram.livejournal.com]

Perhaps he was misguided by another diminutive, рЕченька. Anyway, there is no idea of dumbness in this form as well.

[b0bb.livejournal.com]

> I have never heard about such difference as "рЕчушка (little river)/речУшка(stupid, silly dump little river)"

This difference is a pure fantasy of half-educated mind, I believe.

> the first version simply does not exist.

Well, it does sound like some regional, old-fashioned dialect.
Whether that word actually exist - I have no idea.

self-derivated?

[kisukitty.livejournal.com]

"рЕчушка-река" as in "рЕченька-река"?
or probably heard once in some folk song...

[shellesie.livejournal.com]

there's no word "рЕчушка" at all, and "речУшка" is just a pet name for "река" (like "девчУшка" for "девочка"). Who on earth gave you such an example?!

[gera.livejournal.com]

It's diminutive but not necessarily derogatory. It might be derogatory, stressing the insignificance of the river, or might be actually signify fondness or tenderness towards the river (which should be small anyway).

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

But there is no word like "рЕчушка" anyway.

[gera.livejournal.com]

I think we discussed it here before... Probably, even in connection with the myths.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Yes we did, several months and a couple of hundreds of new active members ago :) Actually, I've just found this extremely stupid example from an otherwise reliable popular magazine, so I've decided that it would be useful to show how eactly stupid it was (and not without a reason, as a couple of previous comments clearly show: this myth is too widely spread.)

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

I have edited the post, so that its title wouldn't state that this myth was new for this community anymore.

Peculier and peculier...

[noperapon.livejournal.com]

In today Hebrew, бабУшка means "матрёшка".

Re: Peculier and peculier...

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Oh no.

Re: Peculier and peculier...

[b0bb.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes.
And not only in Hebrew, in English too:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=babushka+matrioshka

Re: Peculier and peculier...

[kisukitty.livejournal.com]

in Finnish матрёшка is "mAtushka" :/

Re: Peculier and peculier...

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Well, this doesn't surprise me a lot - Finland was a part of Russian Empire for more than a hundred years, so some influence must have been there. I have heard a Finnish folk song, entirely in Finnish, where the refrain suddenly sounded as "oi travuska travuska, travka zelonoi" (broken Russian "ой, травушка-травушка, травка зеленая" - O thou grass, thou green grass).

[embers.livejournal.com]

My goddamn Russian teacher in sixth grade told us that one meant "Grandmother" & the other "head scarf."

In America, however, it has become quite colloquial to call those head-scarves "babushkas."

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

The correct word for what you call a head-scarf (which is, actually, a shawl) is платок.

[embers.livejournal.com]

I know this now, but it took me several years of confusion to figure that out!

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Well, some Russian teachers of English tell their students that it's OK to change the verb tenses within one sentence in English just the way it happens in Russian.

[b0bb.livejournal.com]

You're kidding.

It is true that you can mix tenses in a sentence, but to tell that a teacher would be a much better one than the ones who allegedly do.

[joliecanard.livejournal.com]

I thought платок was a shawl, and head-scarf was косынка, yes?

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not a girl, and neither am I an expert in the history of Russian dress, so I cannot tell one from another :) Basically платок isa thicker, larger and heavier thing than косынка, and it's square while косынка is triangular (косая, therefore the name,) that's all I know.

[b0bb.livejournal.com]

You're mostly right.

"Косынка" is a particular kind of "платок" (triangular, etc.).
"Шаль" is a another particular kond of "платок" (wool-woven, etc.)

See "babushka" definition in Merriam-Webster below.

However, you can commonly say "платок" referring to "косынка" or, to the less extent, "шаль" (not vice versa)


Main Entry: ba·bush·ka
Pronunciation: b&-'büsh-k&, -'bush-
Function: noun
Etymology: Russian, grandmother, diminutive of baba old woman
1 a : a usually triangularly folded kerchief for the head b : a head covering resembling a babushka
2 : an elderly Russian woman

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

the women

I'm pretty sure that they aren't saying that "babushka" means any woman (they would have written it differently). A good portion of Americans know that "babushka" is "grandmother" in Russian, so I think they were referring to that meaning.

Not that they're not wrong about saying "babushka" with different stress means "scarf"...

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

>I'm pretty sure that they aren't saying that "babushka" means any woman

What they were saying was, exactly:

accent on the first syllable means the women

There was no sign that they meany anything but "the women," women in general, in the entire article.

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

It's their usage of "the" that shows that they didn't mean any woman. If they weren't referring to a specific group of women ("babushkas"), they wouldn't have used the definite article.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

OK, agreed. You're THE native speaker in this case, not I :)))

Re: Peculier and peculier...

[oryx_and_crake]

They probably mix it up with баба which a vernacular for ANY kind of woman (and can also mean "grandmother" in children's speech).

[b0bb.livejournal.com]

You may want to refer to Wikipedia (I found their account here quite accurate):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babushka