Getting all bent out of shape

[ybelov.livejournal.com]

By Michele A. Berdy

Враскорячку: an awkwardly splayed, bow-legged pose/position/stance

I have to admit that my ears perked up the other day when I heard Prime Minister Vladimir Putin say: “ … у нас в народе есть такое не очень литературное слово … ” (Our people have a word that isn’t exactly standard literary language … ). Oh, boy. Time for another Russian lesson.

The context for this week’s lesson was this: Before his trip to Moscow, U.S. President Barack Obama said that he thought “Putin had one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new.” Putin responded with his “nonliterary” (read: not quite fit to print) phrase: Мы враскорячку не умеем стоять.”

Some news agencies apparently didn’t know what to make of this phrase and seemed to follow the principle: When in doubt, leave it out. But other English-language media gave it a go, translating it variously as: “We don’t stand bow-legged,” “Russians don’t know how to stand so awkwardly with their legs apart,” and “We do not assume strange postures.” So which is right? Well, all of them — more or less.

The word раскорячка is derived from a root that means “to be crooked” or “to bend over.” It can be used alone to refer to someone who is bow-legged. The phrase стоять в раскорячку describes an awkward stance in which a person is in a half-crouch and his legs are splayed at odd angles — as if he just got off a horse after riding for four days through uneven terrain. Hence the “strange posture, bow-legged, awkward stance with legs apart.”

Ходить враскорячку would be to walk in a bow-legged gait. I also learned from my dictionaries that враскорячку can be combined with two other verbs: сидеть¸ (to sit) and лежать¸ (to lie). I asked a group of Russian friends to demonstrate and got something that looked like a game of Twister played after a couple of bottles of vodka. As far as I could tell — after I stopped howling with laughter — we might say in English: “He sat with his legs splayed awkwardly” or “He was lying with his legs stuck out at odd angles.”

In any case, стоять враскорячку is an unsteady, half-crouching, awkward stance. In Putin’s comments, this contrasted nicely with his assertion of the way Russians do stand: “Мы твердо стоим на ногах и всегда смотрим в будущее” (We stand solidly on our feet and always look to the future).

So far, so good. What I couldn’t figure out, however, was all the winking and smirking over this phrase. One publication teased: Переводчикам Обамы будет трудно точно перевести эту фразу (Obama’s translators are going to have a hard time translating this phrase exactly). In a comment in The Moscow Times, columnist Yevgeny Kiselyov wrote, “Even the best English translation cannot capture the familiarity of Putin’s remark … this is an inappropriate vocabulary for a prime minister.”

Bow-legged — inappropriate? Gosh. Kiselyov seems to have mighty high standards for his leaders’ public announcements. Puzzled, I asked around, but my cultured and educated informants were no help.

So then I took the low road: the Internet. After about five pages of Putin quotes I hit pay dirt. It turns out that there is another usage of the phrase: same stance, only a sexual setting. Got it? Let me put it this way: The phrase враскорячку can be combined with other, far more interesting verbs.

If you still don’t get it, you’ve led an even more sheltered life than I have.

I have got to get out more.

Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter.

The Moscow Times, 10 July 2009

http://www.moscowtimes.ru/article/1016/42/379422.htm

Comments

[temniy-mu.livejournal.com]

great article )

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

It's a shame Michele A. Berdy (whom I admire as a good writer) does not get deeper, revealing all the versions of that elegant statesmen' word, such as враскоряку, раскорякой, and раскорячившись.

[evaluna68.livejournal.com]

For those of us who apparently have lived a more sheltered life than Ms. Berdy, does anyone care to provide a detailed explanation of the last usage of the idiom?

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Well, at least one can apply the reflective Russian verb (the one which has four letters in English) to this ungly adverb (which describes how exactly the action has been performed,) and see what happens :)

[evaluna68.livejournal.com]

It sounds like what would happen is that at least one of the parties would fall over. :-)

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Not that I exactly understood this expression literally, or were a huge fan of such multistorey obscenities, but I could assume that both parties employ the same stance in this brilliant examle of how dirty Russian vulgar language can really be.

[evaluna68.livejournal.com]

Well, such idioms have always been a linguistic weak spot of mine.

[wordchick.livejournal.com]

So then, does this word always have naughty connotations? Is it clear simply from the surrounding words that he was being crass, or was it his facial expression that made the meaning clear?

[temniy-mu.livejournal.com]

he was not being crass. and it is literary language which meaning is rather clear

[alamar.livejournal.com]

As a someone who has this language as a native:
The world враскорячку doesn't have any explicit naughty meaning.
Of course, as any word involving awkward postures, it has some naughty connotations; but in my opinion they're not nearly strong enough to flag this word inappropriate.

As for it's literatureness, I guess if I yandex thru classics section on http://lib.ru/ , I'll find dozens of matches.

[xiefyn.livejournal.com]

"The phrase враскорячку can be combined with other, far more interesting verbs."

Better part of the dictionary 'can be combined with other, far more interesting verbs.' Author is just making much ado about nothing.

Putin may have had this soviet joke in mind

[botanik1.livejournal.com]

Одной ногой мы стоим в социализме, а другой уже шагнули в коммунизм, - говорит лектор. Старушка его спрашивает:
- И долго, милок, нам эдак раскорякой стоять?

Lecturer: We are standing with one foot in socialism, while with the other we have already stepped into communism.
Old woman in the audience: And do we have to stand раскорякой like this long, sonny?

[neprostobob.livejournal.com]

стоять в раскорячку=To stand inconveniently and unstably