LL-L 'History' 2006.07.13 (06) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 13 July 2006 * Volume 06
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From: Obiter Dictum <obiterdictum at mail.ru>
Subject: LL-L 'History' 2006.07.13 (01) [E]

Dagse, folks.

Going on Dutch.

Russian, with is wealth of nautical terms borrowed from what dictionaries say is
Dutch, has surprisingly few idioms containing the adjective _hollandskij_.

_Hollandskij syr_ (Hollandse kaas) : Not necessarily directly from Edam, as is
easy to guess. Can be fermented and formed into cute red-waxed balls at Ivanovka
Dairy Farm (hmmm, a Hollaenderei! :) ), 16 miles southeast of Moscow.

_Hollandskaja seledka_ (Hollandse herrings). That must be the famous 3-year-old
maatjes haringen, as far as I know, caught in the season that starts on the
second day after Trinity every year. With the Herring Races, etc.
But I am not sure that brined _seledka_ they used to sell in Moscow years ago (in
Soviet times) had anything to do with Holland or the Netherland. Rather, theye
should have had a special recipe for brining named 'hollandskij.' There is no
such _Hollandskaja seledka_ in the democratic Russia now ;) Nor is there canned
Alaska pollack. Odd: there were plenty of either in the Soviet Union,
proverbially famous for its undersupply of sausages. There are scores of brands
of that Russian staple on the market under democracy now. But no _hollandskaja
seledka_ or canned pollack. Oy wey, no harmony in this world...

_Hollandskaya pech_ A (Duch-style?) fireplace/stove/oven with a chimney--in the
16th century, IN CONTRAST with the traditional Russian fireplace (no chimney),
which used to fill the izba (cabin) with smoke ("topilas' po-chernomu" –"stoked
in the black fashion"). Was a luxury item in Muscovie of the 16th century. Also
called _hollandka_ (literally, "Dutchwoman").

Two more _hollandka_'s:
1. A cow of the Dutch... what to you call it correctly (I'm no cowboy :) --
variety, race, breed? Like cheese, not necessarily imported from Holland. Can be
bred and raised anywhere north of Voronezh. And may well be of mixed origin
(judging by poor productivity).

2. A Russian (usually navy) sailor's uniform blouse with a deep V-shape front
slash (through which you normally see the Russian uniform striped white/blue
jersey underneath) and a wide square collar covering the shoulder blades
(originally made of leather, I presume, to keep off drip from the sou'wester).
Oddly, my Russian explanatory dictionary says that blouse was called _hollandka_
before the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. Ever after, the blouse seems to have had
no official name at all. The dictionary marks the modern name, _formenka_, as
colloquial. However, I remember guys ex-naval guys call it _hollandka_ as late as
the 1970s.

_Hollander_: just a hollander roll. As used in paper manufacturing.

That seems to be all. Except for one mysterious Belarussian word: _halendr_.
Various Internet resources claim that small group of mixed stock (positively
Germanic surnames, typically Polish first names, Lutherans (!), speak only
Russian with a trace of Belarussian accent but with no German or Dutch
inclusions) are descendants of Dutch settlers in what was the united
Polish-Lithuanian-Saxonian state under Saxonian kings (Augustus ?). They had two
"colonies" (Neidorf & Neibrou) on the Belarussian side of the Bug south of Brest.
"Colonies" are the Russian names for the German (including ex-Wolgadeutsch)
settlements in Russia (right, whose ancestors arrived under Catherine II). The
word _kolonist_ frequently meant "German" in Russian in the 19th century (no
ethnic adjective was needed). OK, these _halendry_ are now in Siberia. No, not
relocated under Stalin: they moved from what was the "Kingdom of Poland" under
the Russian Empire to Siberia in search of a better life as early as in 19th century.
According to other sources, _halendr_ is just "Haulaender", settled on previously
untilled land in then Poland in the 16th century (natuerlich, who would give
ready land to newcomers speaking a strange language and not recognizing the
authority of the Roman Cathorlic Church).
Whichever is right, Belarussian/Rusisna historians cannot support their claims
(made in the 19th or 20th centuries) of the DUTCH origin (even ultimate) of the
_halendry_ positively with documents, but just evoke the phonetic proximity of
_halendr_/_halendar_ and Hollander.
Folks, has anybody heard of _halendry_? There's quite a bit on them on
Belarussian and Russian sites.
If anybody's interested, let me know, I'll post links. Better if you read
Russian. I could translate, but I'm a bit busy now. The Belarussian language is
reasonable easy to read, but exact translation would be tricky for me. Many
apparenty same words may have meanings different from Russian.

As concerns the Japanese...
One word with an idiomatic meaning I can think of is 蘭学, rangaku, "Duch
studies." "Occidental Studies," rather. I take it that the Dutch (why not the
Portuguese?) lent their fragrant Japanese ethnonym to the whole Occidental
civilization in the 17th(?) century. Correct?
If so, could "ran" then mean generally "Western", "foreign" at the time? The same
way _nemets_ used to originally mean any Germanic and Romance-speaking
West-European foreigners before the Russians began to distinguish between
_frjazi_ (including Italians), _raguzy_ (Austrians) etc.? Am I saying that the
Dutch took Holland?

Finally... OK, there is one more thing Dutch in Russian.
_Hollandskij her_" :)
"Her" or "kher" (Cher, if in German/Dutch) is the very old (Church Slavonic) name
of the Russian letter "X" (pronounced as "ch" in German or Dutch.). OK, it's a
sort of euphemistic acronym of the word xyé. Who speaks Russian and can read my
Cyrillics knows that the word is grossly vulgar in Russian. "Her" is thus
something like "effing" in (British?) English.
Now the joke. To get it, you know already some of the Russian words I mentioned
here (including _syr_ - "cheese").

A telephone dialogue (in Russian):
Male voice: Hello, is that the _Hollandskoe_Embassy?
Female voice: Young man, there may only be _syr hollandskij_ or _her
hollandskij_. *This* is the Royal Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

A Russian linguist with a flair for history claimed he had investigated the
origin of the idiom. Wrote he (from memory): The idiom appeared in Peter I's
time. Timmerman Pieter of Zaandam had to return to Moscow in haste to stamp out
the Strelets mutiny that had flared up in his absence. At an _assambleja_
("assembly", a crude Pieter-style ball party) he threw in his Kremlin palace
between Strelets executions outside the Kremlin on the third day of his return,
he told his boyars to call himself Heer Pieter, perhaps the way they addressed
him back at Zaandam wharves (haai, Marcel, is dit waar?), instead of _hosudar'_
(your majesty). Ruthless, uncouth, boorish, blasphemous, pipe-puffing,
geneva-swilling, conspicuously long and nervous, he was readily (and, I suspect,
not without a secret glowing sense of moral revenge) was addressed "Heer," that
was naturally shortened to "cher" in Russian (for it does not know any difference
in the length of vowels). And his hugely outlandish, masquerade Dutch costume
added the adjective. Hence the modern meaning of _her hollandskij_: a mildly
biting description of an insolent, brazen, pretentious male, usually thrown in
his face.

Well, that was my _dve kopeiki_ to the Dutch subject.

Groete,
Vlad Lee

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