Moscow Times Russian language article.
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learn_russianI have decided to copy and paste the weekly article from the Moscow Times about Russian language use. It's usually pretty interesting and unless you know to look for it on their webpage, you wouldn't find it, which is a shame. I'll make a point of posting them every weekend.
Moscow Times, Friday, June 04, 2004
By Michele A. Berdy
У него рыбьи глаза: He has eyes like a shark (literally, "fish eyes").
Colors are tricky across languages and cultures. You wouldn't think they would be -- after all, yellow is yellow, right? Well, you don't have to live in Russia long to discover that one man's purple is another man's blue.
Let's start with human coloring, since even this can be a linguistic challenge. Russian tends to be more specific and elaborate than English.
Take hair: English gives us four basic hair colors -- blond, brown, black and red, which can be modified with "light, "dark" or "medium." Russian divides up the colors a bit differently. In Russian, a blonde woman can be блондинка (a blonde, having any shade of blonde hair), светловолосая (fair, fair haired, any shade of light hair), белокурая (pale blonde), or even золотоволосая (golden-haired). She might be described as having льняные волосы (ash-blonde hair, literally "flaxen," but without the English sense of shimmering fields of gold). Someone who is белобрысый is white blond, which seems to have a negative connotation (i.e. so pale in coloring that they seem almost albino). As far as I can tell, strawberry blondes don't exist in Russia, or at least there is no easy way to describe them. You might say: Она блондинка с оттенком рыжего (literally, she's a blonde with red highlights).
Русые волосы refers to any shade between dark blonde and medium brown. Каштановые волосы is literally "chestnut" colored hair: brown with red highlights. People with this color hair are called (from the French) шатен (for men) or шатенка (for women). Брюнет(ка) is used for a dark-haired person (immortalized in Ilf and Petrov's "Twelve Chairs" as пышная брюнетка -- a curvaceous brunette). Black hair is чёрные волосы.
Redheads are рыжие in Russian. There doesn't appear to be a specific word to describe that bright red hair color achieved with henna, which foreigners tend to think of as Russian Red. You can say: у неё медно-рыжие волосы (she has coppery red hair) or она красится хной (she dyes her hair with henna).
If this all seems a bit complicated, you can simply say, она -- светловолосая (she's fair) or она тёмноволосая (she's dark-haired).
As people age, they first get some gray in their hair: у него тёмные волосы с проседью (he has dark hair streaked with gray). A few more years and you can say: у него пепельные волосы (he has salt-and-pepper gray hair). And finally: он седой (he's gray.) Or if his gene pool is a bit different, you can say: он лысый (he's bald).
A person with fair skin is described as белокожий; olive-skinned or dark-skinned people are смуглые. Someone with a peaches-and-cream complexion might be described thus: она белокожая с румянцем (something like "she's fair with apple-red cheeks"). You can also hear the rather baffling phrase, она абсолютно здоровый человек -- кровь с молоком! (literally, "she's an absolutely healthy person -- blood with milk!"), which seems to refer to white skin with rosy cheeks. If you want to say that someone's skin is smooth, you can call it бархатистая кожа (velvety skin) or кожа, как персик (downy skin, literally "skin like a peach").
And then there are eyes -- a field day for Russian poets. Eyes can be чёрные (dark brown, so dark they appear black), карие (brown,), тёмные (dark), зелёные (green), темно-зелёные (dark green), бледно-зелёные (light green), болотные (hazel), голубые (blue), синие (dark blue), серые (gray), фиолетовые (violet), бирюзовые (turquoise blue) or аквамариновые (aquamarine). Not all of this is poetic hyperbole; I had never met anyone with синие глаза until I came to Russia and swooned over a pair of brilliant, dark, sapphire blue eyes. (In the United States, this is only achieved with colored contact lenses.)
And then there are evil eyes: стеклянные (hard as glass), стальные (steely, a shade of blue-gray, with the connotation of coldness) or рыбьи (fish eyes: a watery blue-gray that suggests coldness or menace). Giving someone the fish eye is, apparently, a cross-cultural phenomenon.
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter.
Moscow Times, Friday, June 04, 2004
By Michele A. Berdy
У него рыбьи глаза: He has eyes like a shark (literally, "fish eyes").
Colors are tricky across languages and cultures. You wouldn't think they would be -- after all, yellow is yellow, right? Well, you don't have to live in Russia long to discover that one man's purple is another man's blue.
Let's start with human coloring, since even this can be a linguistic challenge. Russian tends to be more specific and elaborate than English.
Take hair: English gives us four basic hair colors -- blond, brown, black and red, which can be modified with "light, "dark" or "medium." Russian divides up the colors a bit differently. In Russian, a blonde woman can be блондинка (a blonde, having any shade of blonde hair), светловолосая (fair, fair haired, any shade of light hair), белокурая (pale blonde), or even золотоволосая (golden-haired). She might be described as having льняные волосы (ash-blonde hair, literally "flaxen," but without the English sense of shimmering fields of gold). Someone who is белобрысый is white blond, which seems to have a negative connotation (i.e. so pale in coloring that they seem almost albino). As far as I can tell, strawberry blondes don't exist in Russia, or at least there is no easy way to describe them. You might say: Она блондинка с оттенком рыжего (literally, she's a blonde with red highlights).
Русые волосы refers to any shade between dark blonde and medium brown. Каштановые волосы is literally "chestnut" colored hair: brown with red highlights. People with this color hair are called (from the French) шатен (for men) or шатенка (for women). Брюнет(ка) is used for a dark-haired person (immortalized in Ilf and Petrov's "Twelve Chairs" as пышная брюнетка -- a curvaceous brunette). Black hair is чёрные волосы.
Redheads are рыжие in Russian. There doesn't appear to be a specific word to describe that bright red hair color achieved with henna, which foreigners tend to think of as Russian Red. You can say: у неё медно-рыжие волосы (she has coppery red hair) or она красится хной (she dyes her hair with henna).
If this all seems a bit complicated, you can simply say, она -- светловолосая (she's fair) or она тёмноволосая (she's dark-haired).
As people age, they first get some gray in their hair: у него тёмные волосы с проседью (he has dark hair streaked with gray). A few more years and you can say: у него пепельные волосы (he has salt-and-pepper gray hair). And finally: он седой (he's gray.) Or if his gene pool is a bit different, you can say: он лысый (he's bald).
A person with fair skin is described as белокожий; olive-skinned or dark-skinned people are смуглые. Someone with a peaches-and-cream complexion might be described thus: она белокожая с румянцем (something like "she's fair with apple-red cheeks"). You can also hear the rather baffling phrase, она абсолютно здоровый человек -- кровь с молоком! (literally, "she's an absolutely healthy person -- blood with milk!"), which seems to refer to white skin with rosy cheeks. If you want to say that someone's skin is smooth, you can call it бархатистая кожа (velvety skin) or кожа, как персик (downy skin, literally "skin like a peach").
And then there are eyes -- a field day for Russian poets. Eyes can be чёрные (dark brown, so dark they appear black), карие (brown,), тёмные (dark), зелёные (green), темно-зелёные (dark green), бледно-зелёные (light green), болотные (hazel), голубые (blue), синие (dark blue), серые (gray), фиолетовые (violet), бирюзовые (turquoise blue) or аквамариновые (aquamarine). Not all of this is poetic hyperbole; I had never met anyone with синие глаза until I came to Russia and swooned over a pair of brilliant, dark, sapphire blue eyes. (In the United States, this is only achieved with colored contact lenses.)
And then there are evil eyes: стеклянные (hard as glass), стальные (steely, a shade of blue-gray, with the connotation of coldness) or рыбьи (fish eyes: a watery blue-gray that suggests coldness or menace). Giving someone the fish eye is, apparently, a cross-cultural phenomenon.
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter.
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Erm....
Date: 2004-06-06 10:21 pm (UTC)As I said, nowt personal meant, I just sort of thought I should justify the one-sided nature of my plugging.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-06 11:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-12 01:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-07 11:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-07 11:45 am (UTC)