Dictionaries on line

William Ryan wfr at SAS.AC.UK
Wed Feb 28 14:16:30 UTC 2001


Faith,
Yes, indeed. My even more aged memory still recalls the Russian for
'Mizzen-royal-backstays', 'must (in wine)', 'the meeting place of the black
grouse in mating season' and  'St John's Wort', the last coming from Povest' o
nastoiashchem cheloveke, which we had to read on a naval interpreters' course,
and in which the wounded hero crawls through about a hundred pages of forest, and
records most of the flora and fauna of European Russia.  And an otherwise
excellent university teacher of English of my acquaintance was in the habit of
exclaiming 'Christ on a bicycle' at moments of stress, under the impression that
this was common parlance.
It also works the other way, of course. My habits of speech in Russian are rooted
in Leningrad student idiom of the 1960's and sometimes make modern young Moscow
sophisticates giggle.

Will Ryan

Faith Wigzell wrote:

> A note to Michael. I am British and have no idea what that expression
> means. I am near retirement age so it clearly is really archaic! I would
> add that as students we had a game called 'know your dictionary', which
> involved catching one's friends out with ridiculous vocabulary taken from
> the dictionary, which included absurd English expressions that none of us
> had ever heard of. (By the way, the game was a disaster for language
> learning, as to this day I have a vocabulary of completely useless words.)
> When I spent a year in the USSR in the early 60s and, I may say, on
> subsequent visits, I was always falling out with Russians who would try out
> allegedly English idioms on me to my bemusement or mirth. Blame the
> dictionary.
>
> Yours
>
> Faith Wigzell
> School of Slavonic and East European Studies,
> University College London
>
> >Dear SEELANGers:
> >
> >In response to Ms. Spivak's request for recommendations for on-line
> >dictionaries, I'm reposting below an earlier answer which comes from an
> >online guide I wrote for undergraduate students. (I apologize to my British
> >colleagues for the "lamentable" comment, though I added it for my students'
> >sake: I remember as an undergrad looking up "na svoix dvoix" in Mueller and
> >finding "on Grey's mare" as the translation... It took searching in several
> >English (American) dictionaries, in turn, to discover what that meant.)
> >
> >Several addenda:
> >1. I've been translating technical documents lately, and have found that the
> >Cyrill and Methodius site listed below has an excellent selection of
> >computer-related terms, though it's significantly better from Russian to
> >English than vice-versa.
> >2. Another very useful web reference source is Paul Goldschmidt's Dictionary
> >of Period Russian Names http://www.sca.org/heraldry/paul/index.html. It's
> >basically a long list of Russian imena and familii that gives the
> >etymological meaning and sometimes the initial history of a given family --
> >very useful sometimes.
> >
> >****
> >
> >
> >There have been a couple of questions recently about Russian online
> >dictionaries. I put the following list & recommendations together for my
> >students. There's a mix of Russian dictionaries, Russian-English, and
> >English-Russian. Mr. Stratienko asked whether they were accurate --
> >considering the generally lower standards for online publication, they've
> >all struck me as fairly reliable.
> >
> >The Cyrill and Methodius site also has a really very good news service that
> >offers some of the more interesting commentary around on Russian and world
> >events. Check out also their reviews of museum exhibits in Russia.
> >
> >Dictionaries and References:
> >
> >Ozhegov's Dictionary of the Russian Language (???????? ??????? ????????
> >?????): http://www.agama.ru/oz_demo.htm The standard Russian Russian
> >Dictionary. 40,000 entries, with examples of correct use and some sayings.
> >
> >Mueller's English-Russian: http://www.falcon.ru/cgi-bin/wwwdic Not a bad
> >dictionary, exhaustive, but lamentably British.
> >
> >Andrei Sabelfeld's English-Russian Dictionary:
> >http://www.cs.chalmers.se/%7Eandrei/dictionary/index.cgi?English=file&Encodi
> >ng=1251 About 77,000 entries. I've found it to be quite useful and accurate.
> >
> >The remarkable Babylon: http://babylon.nd.ru/ Search any or all of the
> >following books: The Dictionary of World Wisdom, Area Codes, The Dictionary
> >of Orthography, The Dictionary of Foreign Words, Brokhaus and Efron's
> >Dictionary. The latter is really an encyclopedic dictionary, and probably
> >the best reference book ever published in Russian.
> >
> >Another excellent reference site is Cyrill and Methodius (?????? ? ???????):
> >http://mega.km.ru/ Particularly useful is the pop-up keyboard that allows
> >you to type (albeit slowly) in Cyrillic regardless of whether you have the
> >proper drivers installed. In addition to a fairly good encyclopedia, the
> >site has a well-designed English-Russian/Russian-English dictionary.
> >
> >
> >
> >Michael A. Denner
> >Russian Studies Department
> >Campus Unit 8361
> >Stetson University
> >DeLand, FL 32720
> >904.822.7265
> >
> >-------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
> >  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
> >                http://members.home.net/lists/seelangs/
> >-------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>  Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
>   options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
>                 http://members.home.net/lists/seelangs/
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Professor W. F. Ryan, MA DPhil FBA FSA
Librarian, Warburg Institute
(School of Advanced Study, University of London)
Woburn Square, LONDON WC1H 0AB
tel: 020 7862-8940 [direct line]; from outside UK dial +44 20 7862 8940.
fax: 020 7862-8939; from outside UK dial +44 20 7862 8939.
The Warburg Institute's main switchboard number is 020 7862-8949
The Warburg website is at http://www.sas.ac.uk/warburg/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                http://members.home.net/lists/seelangs/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------



More information about the SEELANG mailing list