den' rozhdenija

[Alina Israeli]

That older guy saying "звучит дико" is exaggerating a tad.  
The professional PhD holding teacher is wrong.

I think most of us who are saying it correctly, that is "moj den'  
rozhdenija" endured strict drilling from mothers or grand-mothers.

Grammatically it's quite simple: den' rozhdenija is reinterpreted as  
one entity — den'-dozhdenie. A quick search on Google for "день‒ 
рожденье" gives About 71,900 results. And this entity should  
definitely be neuter.

Let's approach the search from the other end: "мое день" gives a  
whopping About 188,000 results. I deliberately left out whatever could  
follow den', it could be spelled differently or it could be "den'  
varen'ja": "мое день варенья" About 17,600 results.

(Of course there are some non-Russian hits mixed in as well, but the  
numbers are so large, that there could hardly be a doubt of its  
popularity.)

Fortunately, "мой день варенья" is a lot more common:  
About 316,000 results

"мое день рожденья" — About 21,000 results

"мой день рожденья" — About 546,000 results

Fortunately, the frequency of use proves the professional language  
teacher wrong. We are not there yet.

AI


Oct 6, 2010, в 8:48 PM, John Hope написал(а):

> SEELANGTSY!
>
> I appeal to your collective wisdom with a grammar question.  Today a  
> young native speaker newly arrived from Moscow used the phrase  
> день рождения было (den' rozhdeniia bylo).  She  
> spelled the phrase день рождения correctly on the board,  
> keeping the genitive, but used the neuter verb form.  When I  
> suggested that this was grammatically incorrect, she told me that  
> nobody now would say "den' rozhdeniia byl" or "moi den' rozhdeniia".
>
> I'd just chalk this up to "kids today," but when I asked an older  
> native speaker, this one a Ph.D.-holding professional teacher of  
> Russian, I was told that, when using the possessive pronoun, моё  
> день рожденье (moe den' rozhden'e) is preferable, i.e.  
> using the neuter form and the uninflected rozhden'e (precisely that,  
> not рождение / rozhdenie).  I confess, I am unable to  
> understand how such a construction is possible grammatically.  I  
> agree that it is widely encountered (as a Google search  
> demonstrates), but correct?
>
> Another, older native speaker and professional linguist told me he'd  
> never heard моё день рожденье before, and said that it  
> звучит дико.  I'm inclined to agree, but not being a native  
> speaker myself I hesitate.  Is anyone able to explain to me by what  
> grammatical understanding the uninflected form and neuter modifier  
> may be considered correct?
>
> Many thanks,
>
> John P. Hope
> Colgate University
>


Alina Israeli
Associate Professor of Russian
LFS, American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave.
Washington DC 20016
(202) 885-2387 	fax (202) 885-1076
aisrael at american.edu





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