meaning of " ochered' "

[George Kalbouss]

	This is a great topic.  All cultures have various forms of lines with 
accompanying
and often visceral reactions.  The first time I read about this topic 
was in "Catcher in the
Rye," -- through Holden Caulfield's refusal to stand on line to see the 
Radio City Musical
Hall's Christmas Show.  Anyone who has served in the US military knows 
about military lines,
and the accompanying term "hurry up and wait."  In US culture, we even 
have a regional
division of people who wait "on line" and people who wait "in line."  
The Brits don't have
lines, they have queues.  Americans don't have them,  we "line up," 
they "queue up."  I don't
know what they do in Canada.  I never lined up for anything in that 
country.

	In the Soviet days, I remember getting Intourist guides into arguments 
with each other
regarding lines (ochered') and its offspring, tolpa ( kind of a 
nascent, or pre-ochered' ) and how people refer to
more than one of them.  It seems that while linguists can readily come 
up with nominative  and genitive plurals for
these words,  ordinary people can't that well, especially (mnogo 
ocheredei? ochered'?) (mnogo tolp? tolop?).

	More than that, there are other cultural differences.  Americans and 
Brits line up dutifully.
Russians,  Italians and many other mainland Europeans kind of blump up, 
they don't really
line up.  This blump does get smaller as individuals get served, but no 
one stands
dutifully behind another.    Does ochered' imply a line (one person 
behind another), or
is a blump an ochered'?

	Lots of other cultural differences --  I'm eager to hear more.


George Kalbouss
The Ohio State University

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