Another query - What is then "spousal companionship"?

Maryna Vinarska vinarska at YAHOO.COM
Sun May 28 17:12:32 UTC 2006


I don't understand it... For me "companion" means "partner". And I thought that companionship is the same with partnership, meaning Partnerschaft, which is "grazhdanskij brak" in Russian, i.e. "supruzheskaia blizost'" which is not legalized. Yes, in the theological language they used to have a special name for this kind of relationship, but everything is changing...
So it seems I misunderstood everything.
What is that "spousal companionship" at all then? What does it imply and how is it supposed to be called in Russian?

Alina Israeli <aisrael at AMERICAN.EDU> wrote: >I came across the phrase "supruzheskaya blizost'" in a context where
>in English one would expect
>"conjugal relations" or "marital relations".  Neither phrase is
>ambiguous in English, and either one is
>suitable for high-toned moralistic literature, but the Russian struck
>me as a euphemism for a euphemism.
>Couldn't it just as easily imply "spousal companionship", which is
>nice but not identical to "marital relations"?

No, it couldn't. The Russian phrase is totally completely unequivocally
unambiguous.

There are some other phrases which may look euphemistical, yet are
unambiguous as well:

Oni blizki. Oni sostojat v blizkix otnoshenijax.

__________________________
 Alina Israeli
 LFS, American University
 4400 Mass. Ave., NW
 Washington, DC 20016

 phone:    (202) 885-2387
 fax:      (202) 885-1076 

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