"Where is the house, and where is the street"

[Kostina, Irina S]

"Где эта улица, где этот дом, где эта барышня, в что я влюблен? Вот эта улица, вот этот дом, вот эта барышня, в что я влюблен".
Here is a grammatical mistake or a mistake made by purpose. It should be -  в которую я влюблен, but it is very long and does not fit in poetry rhyme or maybe a girl is not a human being as it always was in Russia (курица - не птица, баба - не человек) , so it is " в что", а не "в которую"? 

________________________________________
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of Sarah Marie Parker-Allen [lloannna at GMAIL.COM]
Sent: Friday, November 13, 2009 7:34 PM
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: [SEELANGS] "Where is the house, and where is the street"

Hello, all. I can't think of where else to ask this. Thanks in advance
to any replies!

In 1982, my paternal grandfather (born in NY in 1912, raised in a
Yiddish-speaking household whose adult members listed themselves on the
1910 census as being from "Russia," but his parents were in fact born in
Jonava, Lithuania) recorded an album of songs he and his comrades sang
while he was in one of Franco's prison camps during the Spanish Civil
War. Snippets can be heard for free on the Smithsonian website:

http://www.folkways.si.edu/TrackDetails.aspx?itemid=17841

Two of the recordings are in Russian. One of them, listed as number 211
under the name "Evening Chimes," is too much of a challenge for me to
understand with my year and a half of undergraduate Russian studies.
I've been trying to sort out the story behind the other one - track
number 112, "Where is the House." You can actually hear the entire
Russian portion of the track by clicking on the little play icon next to
the track name. I like this one mainly because I understood all but two
words after about the fifth week of Russian 101.

The translation my grandfather gives immediately afterwards and in the
liner notes is "Where is the house, and where is the street, and where
is the girl that I used to meet?" The only references I'm finding online
are to a very similar song in French (with a little boy) and a mention
on this page:

http://bibliotekar.ru/encSlov/3/165.htm

Which is problematic in that it seems to me that it is talking about
romantic themes in the Stalinist era, and either my grandfather was
remembering it wrong (he says in the recording that this is a song he
learned as a lullaby from his mother,) or the last word is different.
And there's no explanation of where the song comes from, which is what
I'd really like to know. Googling the phrase "Где эта улица? Где этот
дом?" turns up all manner of stuff that doesn't include the rest of the
song, suggesting it's a common reference. I think.

So, that's what I've got. Is this some random snippet from a larger
work? Is it just a random song fragment that children (and their
parents) sing? Did grandpa replace the "b" sound with "g"?

I'm the only living person in the family who can form a coherent
sentence in Russian, I'm not that good at it, and all of the project
notes are lost (and half a continent away from me anyhow,) so I have no
other source to go to at this point. Help, please!

I believe you can get the liner notes for free on the Smithsonian page,
incidentally (the Russian stuff is transliterated: it looks to me like
the notes were typed and then photocopied, and I imagine Cyrillic
typewriters were in short supply in Glendale in 1982.) If anyone wants
to take a stab at identifying the chime song, that'd be great, too; I
just know it's beyond me right now.

--
Sarah Marie Parker-Allen

parker-allen.1 at osu.edu
http://www.smp-a.com

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