"provincial" expressions

[Alina Israeli]

1. We have to distinguish a) prescriptive usage and b) descriptive  
usage. Even the most academic of academic dictionaries include the  
standard and not so standard language.

2. We have to know where each variety of language - standard, not so  
standard, substandard, and so on (there are more than 3 Lomonosov's  
styles, but three is a good start) - is appropriate: who says what to  
whom and on what occasion.

3. There are different dialects, territorial as well as social ones.  
When I grew up in Leningrad I was well aware as a girl that the  
janitor's daughter who lived in the same apartment building as I  
spoke a very different language, she had a different pronunciation even.

Descriptively, Eastern Ukraine or Ekaterinbourg dialects are very  
interesting, prescriptively, I don't think I would necessarily follow  
their usage.

When we say "provincial" in common conversations we probably mean the  
condescending attitude the people in big cities (and I don't exclude  
my former self) take towards non-city relatives: they don't know how  
to dress, how to use the fork and knife and how to use the napkin.  
Language-wise this attitude means that they don't know point 2 above:  
they cannot maneuver from one style of discourse to another and use  
the language and its styles appropriately.

>   I had a house guest from Eastern Ukraine who called my machine  
> stiralka. Do people really go to the trouble of saying stiral'naia  
> mashina in everyday conversation instead?

I don't know if we can call it "go to the trouble", some devices do  
have long names, and some have acquired abbreviations. We say in  
English "washing machine" or "washer" but the latter mostly in the  
context of "washer and dryer", so Americans do go to the trouble of  
saying "washing machine" on many occasions. Or take "hair dryer": it  
hasn't become HD, or simply "dryer". One may be using it every day,  
but not necessarily talking about it every day.

It very much depends on how often the term is used. Those who use  
them on daily basis AND talk about them constantly must have shortcuts.

Going back to "psikhushka":


>> "Sms-ka" does sound provincial just like "psikhushka"
>> (psikhiatricheskaia bol'nitsa),


It very much depends on p.2 again. In my time that's where dissidents  
were taken, and those discussing it from the top floor to the the  
bottom of my apartment building (although not with one another, each  
on his own floor) would state: Ego uvezli v psixushku. A person  
working in the psychiatric ward will certainly not use that term  
about herself, and probably not even about the dissident in question.  
Speaking of someone who had a nervous breakdown, it depends on my  
attitude towards that person, his/her disease, his/her attitude  
towards the disease and also, his/her behavior prior to  
hospitalizations: if the person was raging mad, the word psixushka is  
very appropriate, if the person was a quiet paranoid nice person, I  
am more likely to say "ego polozhili v bol'nicu" while the  
psychiatrist from three lines above is more likely to say "ego  
gospitalizirovali".


And as a serious person that I am, I simply must mention Andrei  
Bil'zho who begins every little story with the words: Когда я работал  
в маленькой психиатрической больнице... http://www.peoples.ru/tv/bilzho/
Some may know better his caricatures: http://www.petrovich.ru/picture/


Alina Israeli
LFS, American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington DC. 20016
(202) 885-2387 	
fax (202) 885-1076
aisrael at american.edu




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