Stress is important

[david-us.livejournal.com]

I'm currently reading an interesting book entitled "A Practical Handbook on Stress in Russian."

They had some example sentences in the introduction that I found very interesting.

How would you interpret these sentences?

Я беру и мою тарелку.

Стрелки на башенных часах стояли неподвижно.

Or, the ever popular: 

Я хочу писать.  :)

Depending on where you place the stress, the meaning of the sentence completely changes!

Can you think of some other interesting sentences like these?

This sort of reminds me of humorous English sentences like:

We must polish the Polish furniture.
Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
After a number of injections my jaw got number.
I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

Comments

[maneka.livejournal.com]

ахахаххахахахаххаха

[trepang.livejournal.com]

"беру и мою" is an interesting case; there are such construstion as "взял и пошел", "беру и делаю", where "взять" is something like an auxilary verb, meaning suddenness of the action. Thus, "беру и мою тарелку" сan mean "I take the dish and clean it", but also "I suddenly start cleaning the dish".

[oryx_and_crake]

There is one more possible meaning:
Я беру твою тарелку. Я беру и мою тарелку.
I take your plate. I take my plate, too.

[trepang.livejournal.com]

yes, I forgot about this homonymy.
it's all about the stress: моЮ is "my", мОю is "I wash" or "I clean".

[wordchick.livejournal.com]

Would anyone actually say that, rather than свою?

[oryx_and_crake]

Probably not, but this entire phrase is somewhat artificial.

[david-us.livejournal.com]

The book says that "Я беру и мою тарелку" can mean either "I take and wash up the plate" or "I take my plate too."

I think the point is that мою́ means "my" and мо́ю means "wash".

[trepang.livejournal.com]

yes, моЮ is the accusative from the feminine pronoun моЯ (my)
and мОю is "I wash"

[oryx_and_crake]

In Стрелки на башенных часах стояли неподвижно. the word башенных somewhat removes the ambiguity. (на часах can mean a clock or a guard on duty, but на башенных часах can only mean a tower clock; and a person cannot stand on a tower clock, therefore only one meaning is possible.)

[konstkaras.livejournal.com]

There was a joke by one KVN team, putting wrong stress into the refrain of once popular song:

А я нашёл другую,
Хоть не люблю, но целую...

[david-us.livejournal.com]

Help out us non-native Russian speakers with this. I think I understand the obvious meaning here - but what stress changes are you referring to -and- how does it change the meaning? Is there a joke there?

[konstkaras.livejournal.com]

I've found another woman, though I don't love her, but...

Right stress - но целую - means "I use to kiss her", wrong - целую -"she's whole" or "she's intact".

[al-r.livejournal.com]

And I found another girl...
Although I don't love her, I kiss her / she is 'not spoiled'

целУю - kiss
цЕлую - complete, not spoiled (virgine? :))

[oryx_and_crake]

The second version does not rhyme though

[al-r.livejournal.com]

depends on how you sing it :))

[konstkaras.livejournal.com]

As I remember, it vas a parody of german duet Modern Talking trying to impress Russian audiens with knowlege of Russian songs. They did not sing it, just spoke.

[rower.livejournal.com]

цЕлую - i would rather translate it as "in whole". i.e. the girl is apeace. on contrary the found girl could be in peaces, broken or missing severe part of her. and, yes, it might even imply, that the girl is no more alive. although цЕлая can mean "a virgin", too, still it's more obscene than colloquial meaning from my point of view.

[llill.livejournal.com]

Косой с косой косил косой.
Now I`ll try to translate this.
A squint-eyed person wearing his hair in a braid mowed with a scythe.
All three Косойs has the same stress.
It is like "to finish Finnish" in English.

Трусы носят трусы. cowards wear pants.

A russian joke:
After a romantic dinner the lady says to her man:
- Теперь ты мой! (Now you are mine)
- Нет уж, мой сама! (Clean the dishes yourself)

[rower.livejournal.com]

just do not forget to show the stresses :)
:: трУсы носят трусЫ.

[fortsas.livejournal.com]

"Я плачу" - you can either put stress on "a" and get the phrase "I cry" or put stress on "y" and get "I pay". )

[creiz.livejournal.com]

It's always the case when you need sth that you just know that you know, but your memory just goes blank... so, that being the case, after some thinking I could only come up with 1 phrase: Это же настоящая мука! The key word being мука, of course)))

And some puns on other issues like importance of punctuation. You probably know this one since everybody knows it: Казнить нельзя помиловать. Meaning changes drastically depending on whether you put a comma before or after нельзя.

Then there's this phrase колоколоколокола demonstating importance of putting space character (it can read either кол около колокола or колокол около кола).

And a couple of well-known puns, hope not too crude for your taste)))
- Two tickets to Dublin. (which to a Russian sounds like ту тикец туда-блин)
- Куда, блин?..
- To Dublin, to Dublin! (туда-блин, туда-блин!)

Ту-ти-ту-ту-ту - that's not the sound a train makes, it's Russian trying to order two cups of tea to room 22.

Oh, well... toldja. You come up with anything but what you need on topic at the moment.

[rower.livejournal.com]

actually there exists a whole world of russian jokes based on formal homonims - different words having complete resemblance (including stress) in some of their forms, or different meanings of same word i.e. : дУло - has blown (like wind) or barrel (of a gun). стрелять в упор - to shoot point-blank or to shoot a pillar, support.

[llill.livejournal.com]

Yes indeed. You should google some jokes about Stirlitz (Анекдоты про Штирлица). Almost all of them are based upon that fenomena.

[rower.livejournal.com]

это мне ? :) i just thought that citing those jokes in whole won't help a lot, so i just gave out the salt.

to David - i remember somewhere in english wikipedia something like "russian jokes". maybe you really should browse those ?