a possibly minority position

[William Ryan]

Geoffrey: Begins to sound more convincing - but still second hand. Welsh 
has 'ty bach' (little house) as an analogy to the Czech.
Jerry: I doubt if 'little boy's room' would get much recognition in the 
UK either. Derision perhaps - I suggest you try asking the way to it 
next time you are in a London pub. 'Head' may well be US street slang 
but it has been the normal term in a nautical environment since the 18th 
century at least (UK and US I think). Common Russian euphemisms of 
varying degrees of acceptability are otkhozhee mesto, nuzhnik, nuzhnoe 
mesto, sortir, gal'iun (nautical 18th c. in origin, like 'head'). How an 
innocuous French verb like 'sortir' comes to be a Russian noun of some 
vulgarity is one of those transformations which makes etymology so 
fascinating.

Will Ryan


Chew G wrote:
> If we're talking about Reger, the secondary source is Slonimsky's Dictionary of Musical Invective, quoting Reger as follows: "Ich sitze in dem kleinsten Zimmer in meinem Hause. Ich habe Ihre Kritik vor mir. Im naechsten Augenblick wird sie hinter mir sein."  (On the web at http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/Strasse/1945/WSB/reger.html)
>  
> By the way, is there any equivalent in Russian to Czech "hajzl" (which as a non-expert I have always assumed comes from Austrian German "haeusl") for the lavatory?  Not exactly a euphemism though, and it's used pretty widely as a personal insult as well.
>  
> Geoff
>  
>  Geoffrey Chew
>  Institute of Musicology, Masaryk University, Brno
>  chewg at seznam.cz
>  
>  Department of Music, Royal Holloway, University of London
>  g.chew at rhul.ac.uk
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list on behalf of William Ryan
> Sent: Tue 1.4.08 01:42
> To: SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU
> Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] a possibly minority position
>
>
>
> It doesn't sound at all like Johnson to me. A quick look at Google shows
> attributions to several anons, Max Reger, Winston Churchill, Noel
> Coward, George Bernard Shaw, G. K. Chesterton and Voltaire, none with a
> verifiable reference. One Reger citation does give the recipient and
> date (Rudolph Louis, 1906) - but I would have been more convinced if it
> had been quoted in German. Sounds like one of those general purpose
> witticisms.
> Will Ryan
>
>
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