Subject
Re: perils of learning Russian
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Sublime Weill/Gershwin! Well-spotted, Barry. Well-missed, Carolyn?
I would add, forcibly, that we really must end this dated nonsense that
[name-your-pet-language] is particularly (nay, uniquely) blessed with
elegance¹ or expressiveness¹ or [name-your-pet-predicate]. This myth owes
much to [Sir] William Jones (18th century pioneer philologist, prime mover
in the Indo-European family hypothesis, quid googlet).
³The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful
structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and
more exquisitely refined than either ... ³
Equally daft and discredited is the claim that, say, Russian grammar, is
exceptionally complex and challenging. In truth, ALL natural languages (we
include creoles but exclude pidgins) are equally difficult, and at the same
time, equally simple (in that children worldwide acquire their
mother-tongue¹ equally painlessly and at approximately the same speed [see
Chomsky et al]).
Having mastered¹ our native¹ language effortlessly¹ without reciting
grammar-book paradigms, or struggling through lists of exceptions,¹ we
wrongly fancy that the second language we tackle as adults has been devised
by some devil-linguist determined to drive us mad. Just one example:
Anglophones may faint when faced with all those Russian noun declensions,
although these are no worse than Latin and much simpler than Basque. What
English has gained¹ by losing inflections is more than made up by the
incredible complexity of English prepositions. Native speakers, of course,
are usually blind/deaf to the subtleties/quirks of their own grammars. I¹ve
even heard it said: ³Thank God, English has NO GRAMMAR!² Try reading R Quirk
[sic] for instant disillusionment. And can I here make a plea for a
DESCRIPTIONIST approach to language & its usage? There¹s an antiquated
PRESCRIPTIONIST tendency with many on this List (³should La Fontaine be
Lafontaine?²) , reflecting what I consider to be a humourless misreading of
Nabokov¹s oft conflicting, changing and ever-teasing opinions. That¹s a
penalty paid by all aphorists: brevity is the soul of wit but the bowels of
ambiguity © skb. And it helps, I think, to answer CK¹s strange criticism of
VN¹s English fluency. VN the aphorist preferred to pre-prepare his answers
to pre-submitted interviewers¹ questions. Thousands of lecture students and
visiting scholars (not to mention Dmitri) can attest to VN¹s off-the-cuff
spontaneous wit in perfectly native¹ English (howbeit with some residual
Russian intonations).
Summary: there¹s a sortof trade-off between the grammatical areas of
complexity/simplicity found in the world¹s 6000 extant languages. You can
range from 17 genders to none; three colour-words to three-hundred; no
number-words (rare) to an infinity; Austronesian languages with just three
verbs; Amerindian languages with sixteen words for ³we²; separate male and
female versions of the ³same² language; complex, life-threatening
Honorifics; and so on. Yet in ALL these tongues, one can convey the fact
that ³My parents were poor but honest² (Russell¹s famous test) and explain
WHY Onegin flirted with Olga at the ball, and deliberately shot first in
order to kill Lensky!! Narrational efficiency will vary! (European
translators will find it easier to explicate Pushkin¹s social structures
than Papuan or Cherokee.) Ah-BUT, I hear you cry, ONLY Pushkin¹s Russian can
REALLY convey Evgeni¹s motives. Non-Russians will NEVER EVER ... (continued
page 84). It¹s therefore quite surprising to read in Edmund Wilson¹s
infamous review (NYRB, Vol 2 Number 2, Aug 26, 1965) of Nabokov¹s ³serious
failure² in ³miss[ing] a fundamental point in the central situation [that
is, EO¹s behaviour leading up to the duel - skb] ... Nabokov says that the
latter act is quite out of character.¹ He does not seem to be aware that
Onegin, among his other qualities, is, in his translator¹s favorite
one-syllable adjective, decidedly $$$ [alas, my print-out loses the
Cyrillics - skb] - that is to say, nasty, méchant.²
Phonetically, too, we err in assigning to selected natural languages
particularly ³euphonious² or ³semantically significant² ranges of sounds.
The former is eminently subjective; the latter is problematical in ³modern²
i.e., old-fashioned Saussurian linguistical terms. Both have been debated on
our V-list with a depressing lack of comprehension. Am I flogging a DEAD
NAGGY? (I use VN¹s controversial rendering of Pushkin¹s ego loshadka as ³his
naggy.² Wilson prefers ³his poor horse² which doesn¹t quite sound adequate.
My infallible Brituition is ³his POOR OLD NAG.² This may appear
tautological, since nags are usually poor and old horses, but the
collocation is AS HEARD in spoken English, STRAIGHT from the HORSE¹S MOUTH,
and matches the spirit of the Russian diminutive. ³Naggy² seems a forced,
dictionary-only diminutive to my ears.)
Meanwhile, I admit to being thrilled, and siding with Jansy¹s
word-mysticism, when I find Nabokov extolling
³The Russian word [for the Padus racemosa] with its fluffy and dreamy
syllables, admirably suits this beautiful tree ...²
BUT Is that lingering Lolita as prETTY as bETTY? You bet! I ask because I¹ve
just stumbled on a battered copy of Punch (Or the London Charivari) dated
July 28, 1919. VN might well have seen it? The cartoon shows a rotund, jolly
WW1 Major chatting up a remarkably Nabokovian Nymphet (short skirt, black
stockings, shoulder-length hair, angelic-evil profile, provocative posture):
Major: ³And so you¹re TWELVE, are you BETTY? Really, I wouldn¹t have thought
so.²
BETTY: ³Oh, Major, you FLATTER me!²
I expect another ³Huh² from CK! And I must agree that tastes in humour
shift. Many Punch cartoons in 1919 portray subtle social comedy situations
as well as outright giggles.
What is true is that, quite accidentally, some language sound-sytems offer
more rhyming and alliterative opportunities than others. Think of the
thousands of EASY rhymes in Dante¹s Commedia and Pushkin¹s EO. Much depends
on where inflections and sound-mutations come in words (front, end, or
middle!) Some languages have 80+ consonants including throat-killing clicks
but few vowels; others like Cantonese and Mandarin have quite a limited
range of syllables but need complex tones for disambiguation. As explored
deeply by VN in his EO commentaries, the different stress patterns in
English and Russian greatly influence the prosodial possibilities. BTW:
Russian Prosody was another area where Wilson and VN disagreed quite rudely.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 02/03/2009 02:29, "Barry Warren" <barrywarren94703@YAHOO.COM> wrote:
> Carolyn Kunin, I'm not sure what you're up with the the so-called famous Ode
> to Roman Jakobson that you quote. This is obviously a parodic alteration of
> the final stanza of "The Saga of Jenny," words by Ira Gershwin, music by Kurt
> Weill, from the 1941 musical "Lady in the Dark." Below is the final stanza of
> that song's clever lyrics.
>
> Submitted by list member Barry Warren
>
> "Saga of Jenny" (final stanza):
>
> Jenny made her mind up at seventy-five
> She would live to be the oldest woman alive
> But gin and rum and destiny play funny tricks,
> And poor Jenny kicked the bucket at seventy-six
> Jenny points a moral with which you cannot quarrel,
> Makes a lot of common sense--
> Jenny and her saga prove that you're gaga
> If you don't keep sitting on the fence
>
> Jenny and her story point the way to glory
> To all man and womankind
> Anyone with vision comes to this decision--
> Don't make up your mind
>
>
> --- On Sun, 3/1/09, Carolyn Kunin <chaiselongue@EARTHLINK.NET> wrote:
>> From: Carolyn Kunin <chaiselongue@EARTHLINK.NET>
>> Subject: [NABOKV-L] perils of learning Russian
>> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
>> Date: Sunday, March 1, 2009, 7:16 AM
>>
>> Yesterday Jansy wrote: You may weep for me - for all you care
>>
>> So I won't cry for you, dear Nabokovian, the truth is I never should have.
>> But all seriousness aside, undertaking the learning of Russian is definitely
>> not for everyone. There is even a famous Ode to Roman Jakobson that makes
>> that very point. It ends thus:
>>
>> Roman made his mind up at seventy-five
>> That he would live to be the oldest Slavist alive.
>> But analyzing grammar can play awfully mean tricks
>> And poor Roman gave up Russian at seventy-six.
>>
>> Roman and his story
>> point the way to glory
>> for all man and womankind:
>> If you study Russian
>> It might lead to concussion
>> And you're bound to lose your mind.
>>
>> Carolyn
>>
>> * I believe the less famous poet's name is Richard von Echternach.
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I would add, forcibly, that we really must end this dated nonsense that
[name-your-pet-language] is particularly (nay, uniquely) blessed with
elegance¹ or expressiveness¹ or [name-your-pet-predicate]. This myth owes
much to [Sir] William Jones (18th century pioneer philologist, prime mover
in the Indo-European family hypothesis, quid googlet).
³The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful
structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and
more exquisitely refined than either ... ³
Equally daft and discredited is the claim that, say, Russian grammar, is
exceptionally complex and challenging. In truth, ALL natural languages (we
include creoles but exclude pidgins) are equally difficult, and at the same
time, equally simple (in that children worldwide acquire their
mother-tongue¹ equally painlessly and at approximately the same speed [see
Chomsky et al]).
Having mastered¹ our native¹ language effortlessly¹ without reciting
grammar-book paradigms, or struggling through lists of exceptions,¹ we
wrongly fancy that the second language we tackle as adults has been devised
by some devil-linguist determined to drive us mad. Just one example:
Anglophones may faint when faced with all those Russian noun declensions,
although these are no worse than Latin and much simpler than Basque. What
English has gained¹ by losing inflections is more than made up by the
incredible complexity of English prepositions. Native speakers, of course,
are usually blind/deaf to the subtleties/quirks of their own grammars. I¹ve
even heard it said: ³Thank God, English has NO GRAMMAR!² Try reading R Quirk
[sic] for instant disillusionment. And can I here make a plea for a
DESCRIPTIONIST approach to language & its usage? There¹s an antiquated
PRESCRIPTIONIST tendency with many on this List (³should La Fontaine be
Lafontaine?²) , reflecting what I consider to be a humourless misreading of
Nabokov¹s oft conflicting, changing and ever-teasing opinions. That¹s a
penalty paid by all aphorists: brevity is the soul of wit but the bowels of
ambiguity © skb. And it helps, I think, to answer CK¹s strange criticism of
VN¹s English fluency. VN the aphorist preferred to pre-prepare his answers
to pre-submitted interviewers¹ questions. Thousands of lecture students and
visiting scholars (not to mention Dmitri) can attest to VN¹s off-the-cuff
spontaneous wit in perfectly native¹ English (howbeit with some residual
Russian intonations).
Summary: there¹s a sortof trade-off between the grammatical areas of
complexity/simplicity found in the world¹s 6000 extant languages. You can
range from 17 genders to none; three colour-words to three-hundred; no
number-words (rare) to an infinity; Austronesian languages with just three
verbs; Amerindian languages with sixteen words for ³we²; separate male and
female versions of the ³same² language; complex, life-threatening
Honorifics; and so on. Yet in ALL these tongues, one can convey the fact
that ³My parents were poor but honest² (Russell¹s famous test) and explain
WHY Onegin flirted with Olga at the ball, and deliberately shot first in
order to kill Lensky!! Narrational efficiency will vary! (European
translators will find it easier to explicate Pushkin¹s social structures
than Papuan or Cherokee.) Ah-BUT, I hear you cry, ONLY Pushkin¹s Russian can
REALLY convey Evgeni¹s motives. Non-Russians will NEVER EVER ... (continued
page 84). It¹s therefore quite surprising to read in Edmund Wilson¹s
infamous review (NYRB, Vol 2 Number 2, Aug 26, 1965) of Nabokov¹s ³serious
failure² in ³miss[ing] a fundamental point in the central situation [that
is, EO¹s behaviour leading up to the duel - skb] ... Nabokov says that the
latter act is quite out of character.¹ He does not seem to be aware that
Onegin, among his other qualities, is, in his translator¹s favorite
one-syllable adjective, decidedly $$$ [alas, my print-out loses the
Cyrillics - skb] - that is to say, nasty, méchant.²
Phonetically, too, we err in assigning to selected natural languages
particularly ³euphonious² or ³semantically significant² ranges of sounds.
The former is eminently subjective; the latter is problematical in ³modern²
i.e., old-fashioned Saussurian linguistical terms. Both have been debated on
our V-list with a depressing lack of comprehension. Am I flogging a DEAD
NAGGY? (I use VN¹s controversial rendering of Pushkin¹s ego loshadka as ³his
naggy.² Wilson prefers ³his poor horse² which doesn¹t quite sound adequate.
My infallible Brituition is ³his POOR OLD NAG.² This may appear
tautological, since nags are usually poor and old horses, but the
collocation is AS HEARD in spoken English, STRAIGHT from the HORSE¹S MOUTH,
and matches the spirit of the Russian diminutive. ³Naggy² seems a forced,
dictionary-only diminutive to my ears.)
Meanwhile, I admit to being thrilled, and siding with Jansy¹s
word-mysticism, when I find Nabokov extolling
³The Russian word [for the Padus racemosa] with its fluffy and dreamy
syllables, admirably suits this beautiful tree ...²
BUT Is that lingering Lolita as prETTY as bETTY? You bet! I ask because I¹ve
just stumbled on a battered copy of Punch (Or the London Charivari) dated
July 28, 1919. VN might well have seen it? The cartoon shows a rotund, jolly
WW1 Major chatting up a remarkably Nabokovian Nymphet (short skirt, black
stockings, shoulder-length hair, angelic-evil profile, provocative posture):
Major: ³And so you¹re TWELVE, are you BETTY? Really, I wouldn¹t have thought
so.²
BETTY: ³Oh, Major, you FLATTER me!²
I expect another ³Huh² from CK! And I must agree that tastes in humour
shift. Many Punch cartoons in 1919 portray subtle social comedy situations
as well as outright giggles.
What is true is that, quite accidentally, some language sound-sytems offer
more rhyming and alliterative opportunities than others. Think of the
thousands of EASY rhymes in Dante¹s Commedia and Pushkin¹s EO. Much depends
on where inflections and sound-mutations come in words (front, end, or
middle!) Some languages have 80+ consonants including throat-killing clicks
but few vowels; others like Cantonese and Mandarin have quite a limited
range of syllables but need complex tones for disambiguation. As explored
deeply by VN in his EO commentaries, the different stress patterns in
English and Russian greatly influence the prosodial possibilities. BTW:
Russian Prosody was another area where Wilson and VN disagreed quite rudely.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 02/03/2009 02:29, "Barry Warren" <barrywarren94703@YAHOO.COM> wrote:
> Carolyn Kunin, I'm not sure what you're up with the the so-called famous Ode
> to Roman Jakobson that you quote. This is obviously a parodic alteration of
> the final stanza of "The Saga of Jenny," words by Ira Gershwin, music by Kurt
> Weill, from the 1941 musical "Lady in the Dark." Below is the final stanza of
> that song's clever lyrics.
>
> Submitted by list member Barry Warren
>
> "Saga of Jenny" (final stanza):
>
> Jenny made her mind up at seventy-five
> She would live to be the oldest woman alive
> But gin and rum and destiny play funny tricks,
> And poor Jenny kicked the bucket at seventy-six
> Jenny points a moral with which you cannot quarrel,
> Makes a lot of common sense--
> Jenny and her saga prove that you're gaga
> If you don't keep sitting on the fence
>
> Jenny and her story point the way to glory
> To all man and womankind
> Anyone with vision comes to this decision--
> Don't make up your mind
>
>
> --- On Sun, 3/1/09, Carolyn Kunin <chaiselongue@EARTHLINK.NET> wrote:
>> From: Carolyn Kunin <chaiselongue@EARTHLINK.NET>
>> Subject: [NABOKV-L] perils of learning Russian
>> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
>> Date: Sunday, March 1, 2009, 7:16 AM
>>
>> Yesterday Jansy wrote: You may weep for me - for all you care
>>
>> So I won't cry for you, dear Nabokovian, the truth is I never should have.
>> But all seriousness aside, undertaking the learning of Russian is definitely
>> not for everyone. There is even a famous Ode to Roman Jakobson that makes
>> that very point. It ends thus:
>>
>> Roman made his mind up at seventy-five
>> That he would live to be the oldest Slavist alive.
>> But analyzing grammar can play awfully mean tricks
>> And poor Roman gave up Russian at seventy-six.
>>
>> Roman and his story
>> point the way to glory
>> for all man and womankind:
>> If you study Russian
>> It might lead to concussion
>> And you're bound to lose your mind.
>>
>> Carolyn
>>
>> * I believe the less famous poet's name is Richard von Echternach.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/