discourse words
Alina Israeli
aisrael at AMERICAN.EDU
Thu Nov 29 03:09:51 UTC 2007
Many thanks to Olga Yokoyama for defending the discourse words that
traditionally earned a bad reputation being called crutches, sornjaki
and many other things. A quick Google search of the subject gives you
a number of citations. But I would like to mention a book edited by
Denis Paillard and K. Kiseleva "Diskursivnye slova". (Moscow 1998)
In my translation class I actually teach the meaning of some of those
words, like v principe, for example, and how to translate them into
English. Learning to use them in a foreign language is a lot harder.
This is a true sign of mastery of the language.
AI
On Nov 28, 2007, at 7:41 PM, Yokoyama, Olga wrote:
> [quoting Renee Stillings: Oh, and drop all the crutch words. Russian,
> both written, and verbal, is often littered with ambiguous
> (non-committal ...) terms like "v principe," "vozmozhno," etc. In
> nearly
> all cases these can just be dropped for the sake of good
> writing ... or
> speaking. I can't tell you how many times a question along the
> lines of
> "How's the weather today?" is answered by "V principe, kholodno."
> Is it
> or isn't it???]
>
Alina Israeli
LFS, American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington DC. 20016
(202) 885-2387
fax (202) 885-1076
aisrael at american.edu
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
options, and more. Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
More information about the SEELANG
mailing list