Vsem sestram po ser'gam

[John Dunn]

The phrase can be found in Aleksandrov's  Polnyj russko-anglijskij slovar' (1885), where it is translated as: every person* must have his tithe-pig; every lawyer must have his fee.  These translations, suggesting dues that cannot be avoided, may be sliightly misleading, but the implications are negative.  I don't think that modern examples are restricted to criticism; the phrase can, I believe, be used of, for example, the sort of competition where everyone wins a prize, though here the meaning, if positive, is still ironic.

Incidentally, someone with access to more sources than I have to hand may be able to correct me, but it looks to me as if the phrase appears in Ushakov's dictionary, but then disappears from Soviet sources.  Is this correct, and, if so, why?

John Dunn.

*In case you are wondering why you have missed out on your personal tithe-pig, I assume this is a misprint for 'parson'.

-----Original Message-----
From: Olga Meerson <meersono at GEORGETOWN.EDU>
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:29:33 -0500
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Vsem sestram po ser'gam

I second Sveta's opinion. It feels to me that, when used negatively, the expression is simply given a tint of irony, but that inherently, it denotes and connotes something positive.  The problem is not native speakers vs. foreigners but people prone to take positive things ironically vs. those taking them at face value. The latter group, paradoxically, interprets the irony of use in a particular writer's idiolect as more marked. Irony, in general, seems to be the more marked the less inherently idiomatic the use. In other words, Robert, the fact that grossman uses the expression as connoting something bad is marked by his own irony, not by something accepted and unmarked in the Russian language of his time per se. Such as least is my perception of the expression as a native speaker. On the other hand, Lena Ostrovskaia, also a perfectly apt native speaker and philologist. disagrees. This may be a matter of a generational gap: Lena is younger, and since my times, the language !
 se!
ems to have evolved into treating many OTHER positive things with irony--in other words, to have become more cynical :)

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John Dunn
Honorary Research Fellow, SMLC (Slavonic Studies)
University of Glasgow, Scotland

Address:
Via Carolina Coronedi Berti 6
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Tel.: +39 051/1889 8661
e-mail: J.Dunn at slavonic.arts.gla.ac.uk
johnanthony.dunn at fastwebnet.it

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