Russ. zajti : vojti

[Adassovsky Georges]

>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?

It's seems to me that:
"Vojti" is neutral : to enter in
While "Zajti" implies some purpose: either to come in to do something, or to see someone.

Georges

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