Fortochka/Was ist das?

Fri Feb 4 13:54:14 UTC 2011

The current French meaning for vasistas seems to be a skylight or velux window. Originally it refered to a window at eye level on a door that Germans could look out to see who was there.  Unfortunately, this doesn't help with finding an appropriate translation as a fortochka,  in the current sense, refers to neither.  I suggest a calque from the German and simply call it the 'whatsit'
AM

> Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2011 13:32:37 +0000
> From: John.Dunn at GLASGOW.AC.UK
> Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Fortochka/Was ist das?
> To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
> 
> It may be felt that the word васисдас has not been treated too kindly by lexicographers. The word is not included in Dal' nor, just for the record, in the Slovar' russkogo jazyka XVIII v. It does, however, appear in Ushakov's dictionary, where the entry notes:
> [фр. vasistas от нем. was ist das? — что это такое?], a derivation which prompts the question why, if the word is borrowed from French, it reproduces the German spelling. Ushakov categorises васисдас as устар. and defines it as: Небольшая форточка в двери или в окне and produces two illustrations, one being the familiar one from the Evgenij Onegin, the other, which may help to answer Ralph Cleminson's question, coming from Leskov:
> Сидела сама у васисдаса и продавала билеты.
> 
> The word is also apparently included in the 17-volume dictionary; I don't have the relevant volume to hand, but I would hazard a guess that the entry does not differ too much from Ushakov's. 
> 
> Vasmer accepts Ushakov's derivation; the Russian edition glosses the word as смотровое окошко.
> 
> V.P. Somov, Slovar' redkikh i zabytykh slov (M. Vlados, 1996), defines the word as follows: форточка, оконце в двери или в окне. (I hope someone will rise to the challenge of explaining the precise difference between an окошко and an оконце). His illustration is also from Pushkin, but, just for a change, from Pikovaja dama: 
> И когда милая немочка отдернула белую занавеску окна, Германн не явился у своего васисдаса [bold in the dictionary] и не приветствовал ее обычной улыбкою. [Germans again, you will note].
> 
> According to www.gramota.ru the word is included in Русский орфограческий словарь and in Русское словесное ударение, where it is glossed as форточка.
> 
> So it would seem clear(ish): a васисдас is a sort of форточка, through which one can smile, sell tickets and (perhaps) sell bread, as circumstances require. But then we turn to E.S. Zenovich, Slovar' inostrannykh slov i vyrazhenij, M., Olimp/AST, 1998, where we read:
> ВАСИС(Т)ДАС [нем. Was ist das? Что это?] — уст. в России — название мелких лавок и магазинов, которыми владели немцы.
> Lexicographers can do strange things, and sometimes for very strange reasons, but I find it difficult to believe that this definition was plucked out of thin air. Any thoughts?
> 
> John Dunn.
> 
> ________________________________________
> From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of R. M. Cleminson [rmcleminson at POST.SK]
> Sent: 04 February 2011 10:40
> To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
> Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Fortochka/Was ist das?
> 
> On 2/2/2011 5:43 AM, John Dunn wrote:
> > Aleksandrov's 1885 dictionary gives 'vasistas', which, although implausible and probably inaccurate, should, at least, please the Pushkinisty among us.
> >
> > John Dunn.
> >
> Indeed. And the Pushkinisty will recall that it comes in Evgenij Onegin 1.xxxv:
> 
> И хлебник, немец аккуратный,
> В бумажном колпаке, не раз
> Уж отворял свой васисдас.
> 
> In my edition, at least, the word васисдас is set in italics. Assuming that this follows Pushkin's instructions, and not some Soviet editor's (can anyone consult a first edition?), it implies that the word was not yet fully accepted as a Russian one (though Pushkin and his readers would have been familiar with it from French), and it seems to appear here as a curiosity in reference to the baker's nationality.
> 
> Aber was war das, eigentlich? The man can hardly have been opening and shutting the spyhole in his door -- he was running a bakery, not a speakeasy, after all. Was he selling his wares through a hatch rather than over the counter? I'm not at all sure that the word is attested in this sense, though it was used later in the 19th century for the little window through which tickets, &c., may be sold. Or is it a metaphor for the door of his oven (the same shape)? In this case the passage would mean that he had already baked more than one batch of bread, which makes perfect sense in the context.
> 
> Does anyone know enough about the German bakers of Petersburg to say whether he would have worn his paper cap when baking the bread or selling it? Or would he have sold the bread at all? In England, at least, traditionally (I can remember this myself) the baker baked the bread and his wife sold it: we never saw him in the shop.
> 
> Perhaps the Pushkinisty can elucidate.
> 
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> 
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