russkogovojrschije and russkojazychnyje

[Olga Meerson]

That whole article was based on divorcing two synonyms poetically, i.e., without stipulating the rules of the game. That is similar to, say, Pushkin's "vse te zhe l' vy, drugie l' devy, Smeniv, ne zamenili vas?" Yes, Tatiana is right, but so is everyone else. As Alina puts it so aptly (Alina, I know you love to play with language!), "I would like to somewhat  disagree (which does not mean that I am  
correct)." Precisely: it is not even the question of who is correct but who addresses  the poetic--this-moment's--intention of the utterer/author more attentively. Who is more right in their interpretation depends on how the interpreted utterer defines or, yes, deliberately refuses to define the rules of interpretation. Humpty-Dunpty's notion that a word means what he (one) wants it to mean is no joke when it comes to Russian and Russians. If from that point of view alone, we Russians are all poets--never deigning to specify our respectively idiosyncratic uses of what at first may sound as common terminology. That is why there are so many conflicting interpretations of the same term often coming from native speakers or professional translators: when the context is in any way marked, the rules of the game change. So to interpret, one needs to consider the context, and not only linguistically but poetically as well. Remember the last sentence of the article--something like bor
emsia za to, chtoby sdelat' vsex russkogovoriashchix russkoiazychnymi. The context is clear: boremsia za pogolovnuiu gramotnost'. Nothing else is clear--or should be. What we have should be enough. An opposition is established between the two alleged synonyms: yes, A may equal B in the expected world but in "ours", A has yet to be transformed to become B, nado borot'sia i provodit' konferencii, chtoby russkogovoriashchie stali russkoiazychnymi. The hidden allusion to pogolovnaia gramotnost' further enhances our ability to interpret this terminologically messy nonsense. And if so, who cares about having the terms precise in any other context except the given? Smeniv, ne zamenili vas.  
All this concerns an earlier discussion of Bakhtin's protivoslovo as well. First translated from the German Gegenrede, in Bakhtin's context it changed/narrowed its meaning (irreversibly!) and came to emphasize the counter-discourse always simultaneous with the main one and embedded within it, rather than a vozrazhenie or a gainsay. The same happened, way earlier, with the 19th C. Russian translation of Hegel's Bewussheit: it became a SAMOsoznanie, and then the notion became unique to Russian Personalist philosophy. Go figure. As the late Robert Maguire used to tall us, his students, any word can be successfully translated from Russian, except for a foreign one, esp. when it seems to be recognizable. I wouyld add, especially when in Russian it sounds like an obvious calque. There is no way back.
In other words, we all understood the difference between russkogovoriashchie and russkoiazychnye, not in general, but in that article. The opposition of the general and the Humpty-Dumptian usage is what all forms of Russian discourse--wit, rhetoric, polemics, and poetry-- depend on.
Cheers,
o.m.

----- Original Message -----
From: Tatyana Buzina <tbuzina at YANDEX.RU>
Date: Friday, June 1, 2007 4:06 am
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] russkogovojrschije and russkojazychnyje

> Some native speakers of Russian have trouble formulating the 
> difference off the bat. Their first impulse is to say that there's 
> no difference. The difference they ultimately propose  is that 
> "russkogovoriashchie" means anybody who speaks Russian regardless 
> of its quality ("russkogovoriashchii gid"; it doesn't matter if 
> the tour guide stumbles over every word); "russkoiazychnye" are 
> native speakers of Russian.
> regards,
> Tatyana
> 
> 01.06.07, 00:21, Alina Israeli <aisrael at AMERICAN.EDU>:
> 
> > I would like to somewhat  disagree (which does not mean that I 
> am  
> > correct). I think this is an attempt to make a calque from 
> French  
> > (whether he knows it or not) where they distinguish Francophone 
> and  
> > Francofile, those who speak it natively vs. those who are not 
> native  
> > but fluent and certainly not a Francophobe.
> > So, I think they want to make sure that there are a lot more  
> > Russophone, i.e. educated native speakers, not just speakers of  
> > kitchen Russian, and against their assimilation into other cultures.
> > On May 31, 2007, at 3:52 PM, Olga Meerson wrote:
> > >  The basic difference is simple: russkogovoriashchie are 
> people who  
> > > speak Russian but don't read or write in it and have had no, 
> or  
> > > have been deprived of, education in Russian, books, papers, 
> all the  
> > > works. Simply illiterate heritage speakers. Eusskoiazychnye 
> are  
> > > literates.
> > > o.m.
> > >
> > 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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