No subject

[Irina Shevelenko]

>From what I recall, this is the way I said it as child and heard it from other children: с деньрождением!

On 10/07/10, Bradley Agnew Gorski  <bradleygorski at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

> Irina and others:
> 
> I'm interested in a follow-up question: Do children then congratulate each
> other (and their parents) with the words, "с деньрождением"?
> 
> Bradley
> 
> On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 5:41 AM, Irina Shevelenko <idshevelenko at wisc.edu>wrote:
> 
> > Dear John,
> >
> > "Мой день рождения был" is the only right way to say it in modern literary
> > Russian. "Моё день рождение" is the way kids say it invariably, until they
> > are formally introduced to Russian grammar. As a child, you treat "день
> > рождение" as a single word and you determine its gender by the second noun;
> > hence the phrase "моё день рождение было".  Once you learn that it is in
> > fact "день рождения (or рожденья)" (Nom. followed by Gen.), you realize that
> > it is "день" that determines the gender of a possessive pronoun and a verb.
> > Some people never cease to be kids, as we know, and they keep saying it the
> > kids' way. It seems to be pretty common, indeed, to hear "моё день рождение"
> > in colloquial Russian but it is completely a-grammatical ("моё день
> > рождения" takes this a-grammaticism just one step further).
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Irina
> >
> > -----Original Message---
> > From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list
> > [mailto:SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu](javascript:main.compose() On Behalf Of John Hope
> > Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 2010 7:48 PM
> > To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
> > Subject: [SEELANGS]
> >
> > 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
> >
> >
> >
> >
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> 
> 
> -- 
> bradleygorski at gmail.com
> +7.965.287.2737
> 
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