TIME quoting Putin

[imwitty]

I like better the combination "beat with the billy club (or night stick) on
the noggin"...

The difference between "dubina" and "dubinka" is not so subtle as it seems:
former is much bigger than latter and besides the former was used not just
as a primitive weapon, but also as a tool (lever, etc.) "Dubina" has also
second (and very popular since old times and until today) meaning: it's a
(very often used) definition of the extremely dull/stupid person.

Putin definitely means "dubinka" (since their OMON units
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMON do use "dubinka" similar to the billy club
(see http://www.vokrugsveta.ru/telegraph/technics/551/ for the history of
this "democratizator" worldwide and in Russia.)

The word "bashka" *NEVER* was considered vulgar, just a common parlance,
even in the old times. Probably, it wasn't used very often by the old
Russian aristocracy at the high level receptions, but otherwise...

It does have Turkic origins ("bash" in Tatar means "head"; "bashka" means in
Tatar "other" or "another", according to the famous Vladimir Dal's
dictionary, but in the old Russian sayings they are used sometimes as
equivalent terms (i.e. in the idiom "bash na bash" -- "an equivalent
exchange".) Besides -- as any other language I know, including English --
Russian "assimilates" foreign words creatively, transforming them to be more
"fit": Russian suffix -k- is one of the often used for different purposes.

Lora
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On Sat, Sep 11, 2010 at 5:37 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: TIME quoting Putin
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>   Google Translate got it right IMO: "beat with the cudgel on the head".
> Or something like, "club on the noggin", but that mentions the weapon
> only indirectly (of course, "club" could be either a verb or a noun here).
>
> It is most certainly NOT truncheon literally, although that appears to
> be what was implied with the comment, as the referent was what London
> police would do with protesters showing up in a place other than the one
> they got a permit for.
>
> There is a subtle difference between "dubina" and "dubinka". The latter
> means billy club or truncheon. The former is just a wooden club or
> cudgel. It's also like the difference between a night stick and a
> baseball bat. And, if we are taking the comments literally, "on" is more
> appropriate than "over" or "upside".
>
> Finally, the issue of "head". Indeed, the expression used by Putin was
> "b'iut dubinoi po bashke". "Bashka" is the more colloquial, perhaps even
> vulgar, expression for "head". Russian folk etymology ascribes it to
> Turkic origins--likely accurate, as Turkish for head is "baş" (although
> "başka" means something entirely different).
>
> VS-)
>
> On 9/11/2010 5:53 PM, imwitty wrote:
> >   Sure, Victor...
> >
> > Enjoy the bird:
> >
> > *http://kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=1495411
> >
> > It also has a lot of "golden eggs" for different tastes (;'-)))
> > *
> > Lora
> >> On 9/8/2010 9:53 PM, imwitty wrote:
> >>>    Paul,
> >>>
> >>> You are right: I just found the original interview in the Russian
> newspaper "Kommersant". I don't know Chinese, but German and Spanish
> translations are almost correct comparing to the translation provided by
> "Time" in its "Verbatim" section -- which definitely isn't verbatim.
> >>>
> >>> I said "almost", because all three translations use the word "head
> (Kopf, cabeza). Putin actually used "bashka" (the stress on the second "a")
> like you would use "mug" instead of "face." It is the common parlance
> equivalent of the Russian word "golova" -- "head" -- (the stress on "a".)
> >>>
> >>> Probably in this case "head" might be replaced with "bean") Also, I
> personally would use instead of "truncheon" something like "club", "bat", or
> "billy club", but I don't work for "Time"... (;'-)))
> >>>
> >>> Lora
>
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