Pronouciation of "Zdravstvyuitye"

[William Ryan]

Why should it be 'rude and unprofessional in any text book'? Outside the 
US an ass is an ass, equus asinus, and by any other name would smell as 
sweet. Also, in British colloquial use, a fool. I imagine the vulgar 
usage in the US is part of the common semantic development: word x - in 
this case 'arse' (tozhe krasivo, as the old Russian joke has it), a word 
apparently of common Teutonic, if not Indo-European origin, and 
certainly found in English literature from the earliest times - becomes 
socially unacceptable>becomes taboo word>is replaced by 
euphemism>euphemism itself becomes the taboo word - a cycle which can be 
repeated several times.

As one of the diminishing band of graduates of the Royal Navy's National 
Service Russian course in the Cold War period (actually it was a joint 
services course and it came to an end in the late 1950s) I don't recall 
this particular, and quite helpful mnemonic, but it would have been 
fairly typical of the many ribaldries which were joyfully invented to 
relieve the tedium of intensive language study, often in military camps 
in remote parts of the British Isles. The only thing which makes me 
wonder a little about this particular mnemonic is that I don't think  
that British students of the period would have been particularly 
familiar with the American usage, so the mnemonic, if it existed, must 
have been 'Does yer arse fit yer' - which I think is anyway slightly 
closer to the Russian, and more euphonious. But if there are any more 
ex-JSSL students out there who remember it differently, please correct me.

Will Ryan


MOLLY V. PEENEY wrote:
> I think this is rude and unprofessional for any textbook.  Sincerely, Molly Peeney
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: John Langran <john at RUSLAN.CO.UK>
> Date: Monday, March 3, 2008 3:54 pm
> Subject: [SEELANGS] Pronouciation of "Zdravstvyuitye"
> To: SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU
>
>   
>> Without wanting to start a long bear trail, I would be interested to 
>> know 
>> what colleagues in the US think about a tried and tested method to get 
>>
>> beginners to pronounce the Russian word for "hello". I undestand that 
>> this 
>> originated in British Navy Russian courses at the end of the 2ww, and 
>> is 
>> still useful:
>> "English speakers sometimes find this hard to pronounce.  If you have 
>> a 
>> standard English accent, try thinking of your donkey! Say "Does your 
>> ass fit 
>> yer?" fairly quickly and slurring the first "D". The result is often 
>> very 
>> close to "Çäð‚âñòâóéòå!". "
>>
>> My question is, would this be too rude in American English to include 
>> in a 
>> textbook?
>>
>> John Langran
>> www.ruslan.co.uk 
>>
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