Russ. zajti : vojti

[Polina Rikoun]

I would certainly use vojti in "On voshel v komnatu," zajti sounds wrong
to me in this sentence.  Maybe this is partly a question of regional
variation, where zajti may be replacing vojti in some places but not
others.  (I grew up in Odessa and do not remember hearing "zajti" being
used instead of "vojti" there.)

Best,
Polina Rikoun
Harvard University

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