languagehat.com: BUSINESS IS IN THE HAT!

BUSINESS IS IN THE HAT!

An LJ post by glo_ku (in a sort of English after the first paragraph) reveals a wonderfully Joycean sense of wordplay, and would make an excellent test of a student's mastery of Russian idioms, colloquialisms, and slang. The "Russian" part starts off "???? ?????????????? ?? ??????? ???????????? ??????????" [Glad bonzhurstvovat' yus apresle lungaminnogo absenstviya], which when looked at through multilingual glasses translates as "Glad to greet you after the long absence," and proceeds to become too multilingual even for me (I have no idea what "???? ?????? ????????" means). The "English" part starts "The events I'd like to tell you about took place in a small town of Derry Vushko right after the old fart Party Zahn have thrown away the hooves"; "Derry Vushko" is the Russian word ????????? [derevushka] 'small town,' Party Zahn is ???????? [partizan] 'partisan' (the partisan fighting behind enemy lines is a familiar figure in Russian/Soviet life and literature), and "thrown away the hooves" is ???????? ?????? [otbrosil kopyta (thanks, Valera!)], a slang phrase comparable to "kicked the bucket." Similarly, later on ???????? [difiramb, 'dithyramb, eulogy'] becomes "Dee Fee Rumba" and ?????? ????? [katit' bochku, 'to take action to harm someone else's career'] is literally rendered as "to roll a barrel." It's lots of fun if you like that sort of thing. (Via Anatoly.)

Posted by languagehat at May 17, 2012 10:03 AM

"???? ?????? ????????" = "was/??? mucho/????? besch?ftigt/?????"

? ?????, ?? "??????", ? "????????" ??????.

ha-ha! the nickname of the blogger is a giveaway ? it's a tribute to the famous Glokaya Kuzdra by Academician Lev Sherba, a nonsensical but grammatically correct sentence.

Sort of like Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky:

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/Did gyre and gimble in the Wabe. /All mimsy were the borogoves/And the mome raths outgrabe..

The poem, especially the first stanza, is quoted in almost every textbook in linguistics, to make the same point as Glokaya Kuzdra.

Thanks for both the explanation and the correction, Valera, and thanks for Sherba, Sashura!

m-l: A closer analog to the Russian is "The gostak distims the doshes," less well known (obviously) to the public at large than Jabberwocky but well known to anyone concerned with semiotics and designed to make the same point Sherba was making.

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