Vsem sestram po ser'gam

[Robert Chandler]

Many thanks to Sveta, Lena, John and especially to Olga - this has turned
out to be an unexpectedly interesting discussion!

Vsego dobrogo,

Robert



> 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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