Question about usage of names and social convention

[Elena A. Arkhipova]

Well, everybody has kind of his/her own way of speech.. I'm Russian, and I'd 
find it unappropriate if someone address my friend "chelovek" in front of 
him. The only exception is "Pomogi cheloveku", but it's phrasal.
As to "rebenok", it can be kind of a joke.
But anyway, both are not polite at all.
Rgds,
Elena.


Elena A. Arkhipova, PhD, MBA
Chair of Department of
Russian as a Foreign Language,
Program Coordinator
Nevsky Institute of  Language and Culture
27 Bolshaya Raznochinnaya
St. Petersburg, 197110, Russia
tel./fax: +7 812 230 36 98

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tom Anderson" <djonniirina at YAHOO.COM>
To: <SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 6:21 PM
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Question about usage of names and social convention


Greetings,

I actually live with Russians and have noticed that they refer to me as 
"chelovek" in my presence; or "rebenok" in front of my son. I have often 
wondered about that.

Just an observation.

--- On Tue, 4/28/09, greniers at GEORGETOWN.EDU <greniers at GEORGETOWN.EDU> 
wrote:


From: greniers at GEORGETOWN.EDU <greniers at GEORGETOWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Question about usage of names and social convention
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Date: Tuesday, April 28, 2009, 9:22 PM


Sarah Hurst wrote:

I think it's also considered rude in English to say "he" or "she" instead of
the person's name in the presence of the person, so I'm guessing your book
refers to the first example, where someone addresses a second person by
their name. It seems to me this is done more commonly in Russian than in
English, especially when a patronymic is involved for further emphasis of
politeness.

Sarah


I hear my American students routinely referring to their classmates as "he" 
or "she" in the particular classmate's presence--and I routinely explain to 
them that it is not considered polite in Russian; in response, some of the 
students say, "yeah, it is not too polite in English either,"--from all of 
which I gather that the rule against saying "he" or "she" about a person who 
is present must be much stronger in Russian than in English. So I would say 
that this rule is what the book was referring to.

In addition, I have not noticed that Russians address their interlocutor by 
name more often than Americans do. In fact, I remember someone--perhaps John 
Stewart--analyzing Sarah Palin's interview style and showing how she kept 
saying "Charlie" to the reporter, so it must be a question of individual 
differences in the US. What do other SEELANGers think?

Best regards,
Svetlana Grenier

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