gender of Dolly's sixth child?

[Edward M Dumanis]

In Russian, they do not say normally "grudnaya devochka" or "grudnoy
mal'chik" but only "grudnoy rebenok" which corresponds to the masculine
gender in Russian. When there is a contradiction between linguistic and
biological gender in Russian, both versions with "emu" and "ey" are
correct, and the latter is just more specific because it identifies the
child's sex while the former is mute on this specificity: here, "emu"
means "rebenku" and "ey" means "devochke." However, the Russian grammar
cannot be used in translation. In English, it should be "She's only three
months."

Sincerely,

Edward Dumanis <dumanis at buffalo.edu>

On Wed, 20 Apr 2005, Romy Taylor wrote:

> Dear Seelangers,
>
> Reading Anna Karenina, an attentive student asked why Dolly's sixth child, a
> girl born in Part II, is suddenly a boy in Part III?
>
> Here are the passages in Russian:
>
> II. 2. "(ona rodila devochku v kontse zimy)"
>
> III. 8. Dolly talking with peasant women as her children bathe --
> "-Vish' ty, znat' tozhe kupali, govorila drugaia na grudnogo.
> -Net, emu tol'ko tri mesiaca, - otvechala s gordost'iu Dar'ia Aleksandrovna."
>
> In the English translation, the peasant woman asks about "him," and Dolly
> answers "he's only three months," but in the Russian the only motivation for
> Dolly to answer "emu" is the word "grudnoi" (= "rebenok").
>
> Is it natural for Dolly to call a female baby "emu"?  If so, should the
> translation render "emu" as "She's only three months"?
>
> Very gratefully,
> Romy Taylor
>
> *********************************************
> Romy Taylor
> Dept. of Germanic, Slavic and Semitic Studies
> and Dept. of Comparative Literature
> University of California at Santa Barbara
> Santa Barbara, CA  93106
> rtaylor at gss.ucsb.edu
> Phone: (805) 893-8177
> Fax: (805) 893-2374
>
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