Dictionaries on line

Dean Worth dworth at UCLA.EDU
Wed Feb 28 18:18:52 UTC 2001 

Will,
        "Christ on a bicycle" expanded in the fresh air of New Hampshire to the
euphonic but incomprehensible "Long John Jesus Christ on a bicycle" I heard
at the Pinkham Notch headquarters of the Appalachian Mountain Club, c.
1944. I suspect, though, that this was an individual invention on the part
of someone who was creating a rural, woodsy persona for himself. Not a
trace of a Brit accent, either. Regards, Dean Worth



At 02:16 PM 2/28/01 +0000, you wrote:
>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
>> >
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>--
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>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/
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