Russ. zajti : vojti

[Edward M Dumanis]

In the former Soviet Union, many people did not pay much attention to how
they should speak correctly, and interchangeable usage of the verbs with a
very close but clearly distinct meanings was quite common. However, the
norms were strictly observed in the mass media. So, it is not surprising
that their children do not follow the strict usage rules which were
abandoned by their parents.
If you are interested in the distinction between those verbs, I'll be glad
to answer any specific question you might have.

Sincerely,

Edward Dumanis <dumanis at acsu.buffalo.edu>


On Thu, 7 Mar 2002, Steven Young wrote:

> Colleagues,
>
> In dealing with students who were born in the former Soviet Union and are
> native speakers of Russian (we have quite a few on campus), I've long
> observed usages which are non-normative but seem to have become de-facto
> norms in everyday spoken Russian, like odet' [sviter] rather than nadet',
> or ezhaj / ed' as the imperfective imperative of exat' (I won't bring up
> kushat' : est' again!).  I was reminded of the whole question of norms in
> reading in a student essay "on zashol v komnatu"--for many native-speaker
> students I've dealt with, 'zajti' seems to have almost replaced 'vojti' in
> the context of going into a room.  I remember one student trying to draw a
> slight semantic distinction for me, though I couldn't follow her
> intuitions.  Any comments?
>
> Steve Young.
>
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