den' rozhdenija

[Slava Paperno]

This is nothing new. When I was a kid several decades ago, I had classmates 
who said all sorts of ungrammatical things, as people will do in any culture. 
Моё день-рожденье was one of them. Одевать пальто was another. One 
played with whoever happened to live in one's neighborhood. This doesn't 
mean their Russian was just as good as mine. Mine was tons better. Одевать 
пальто has become the norm, but день-рожденье has not, says I. My father 
grilled me never to say более-менее, and now that's the norm, too. Some 
simple folks think it's OK to say "Professor Emerita," donchey? 

Slava 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list 
> [mailto:SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of Alina Israeli
> Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 2010 9:24 PM
> To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
> Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] den' rozhdenija
> 
> 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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