vocabulary expansion through mastery of Russian root words: кислород

[faustin.livejournal.com]

Today I noticed an interesting word on a box of laundry soap (bearing the non-Russian name "Dosia"): кислород. (This soap features "aktivniy oxygen"... some fancy soap!)

I understood almost immediately: кисло-, I already knew, means "sour", as in кисломолочний продукты, "sour milk" products.

And I've seen род hundreds of times on forms I fill out. It means sex (I always answer, "mushy").

My momma didn't raise no slow-herbert, you keep in mind. I figured out the same day that кислород clearly means, "sour sex".

(I'm still working on how this serves to endorse the product as a laundry soap.)

And I'll help you with some further vocabulary expansion, building on these same roots. There's водарод --- "water sex", and углерод --- I'm pretty sure an угле is derived from "corner", so this very likely means "corner sex". Since there are many kinds of corner ("I was backed into a corner"; "on the corner of the coffee table"; "hanging out on the street corner"; "the county corner taking care of their dead bodies") you can see that this "corner sex" word is rich with possible connotative flexibility.

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Since we're obviously in scholarly mode here, I'll submit this linguistic work from MGU:



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Happy ...er, добрий... April Fool's Day, horoshee ludee. It may be the 2nd where I'm posting from in siberia, but it's still April 1 in Moscow and the other places who are behind us. If you can teach me a greeting for April 1st, that would be nice. And otherwise correct my mistakes, of course. :-)

Comments

[salexey.livejournal.com]

>> bearing the non-Russian name "Dosia"
Why do you think it's not Russian? The name Dosia doesn't exist indeed, but it sounds absolutely Russian. A kind of invented names for a product.

>>And I've seen род hundreds of times on forms I fill out. It means sex
That couldn't be "род". It must have been "пол". "Род" is used in grammatical context.

Водород

"Углерод" is from "уголь" (coal), not угол.

BTW, "-род" in these words means "gives birth to" (derives from "родить, рождать"). So like кислород gives birth to a sour taste (if you taste it with your tongue).

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

First of all, would you please put that large picture behind a lj-cut. Thank you. Don't let the Fool's Day be your day ;-)

[faustin.livejournal.com]

Sorry about that! I fixed it now.

[pancratium.livejournal.com]

nice idea!

[sodafloat.livejournal.com]

I thought "rod" was birth? and sex is...sex?

[faustin.livejournal.com]

No, you're right, род means birth. The reaons I've heard it so many dozens of time and translated it, in my mind, as "sex" is from grammar lessons: muschkoy rod, zhenskiy rod, sredniy rod, meaning "masculine, feminine, neuter". Not from forms -- I misremembered.

Sex = пол, in the context of those forms (male / female).

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

S pervum aprelja - ne komy ni veru :)

( with april 1st - belive no one :)

[upthera44.livejournal.com]

county corner = county coroner

[faustin.livejournal.com]

thanks for pointing out the play with words... :-)

I guess we should also explain, they're not *exactly* homonyms, but very close.

[hope1972.livejournal.com]

род means gender (word gender in linguistics), not sex. We don`t use this word to talk about sex at all.

[nicodimus-canis.livejournal.com]

How do you translate "окружающая среда" into English? I know :))))

[faustin.livejournal.com]

abbyy lingvo gives us: environment, sphere, milieu, surroundings

but I also noticed, tucked in there somewhere, "kislaya sreda" which meant "acid medium"... кислая среда — acid medium

в нашей среде — in our midst, amidst us

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So I don't get it... what's the point? Is there a joke here I'm missing?

[nicodimus-canis.livejournal.com]

It was a joke. Once I heard that someone translates it as "surrounding wednesday" :)))

[wileyokiley.livejournal.com]

My russian professor explained it to us this way--the words водород and кислород are built from their roots in Russian exactly the same way that they are in English. Hydro- is a root meaning related to water, Oxy- is in the sense of oxidation, rusting or becoming sour (maybe this one is a stretch), and -gen is a root for generation, or birth.

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

Here род stands for matter/substance/material. There is an old (and wrong) physical theory that the heat is a kind of matter that transfers between objects and hence they get colder or hotter. This heat matter is termed in Russian as теплород. It works the same for oxygen (кислород), though кисло is derived from окислять (to oxidize). So, there's no funky sour sex, there's some substance that can oxidize and that is oxygen. :)