Bojany

[anne marie devlin]

In internet use parlance a meme currently refers to an amusing (or not) picture with a caption.  See http://www.quickmeme.com/ for examples.  As far as I am aware they are usually original and have yet to become old standards.  What bayan seems to refer to are old jokes - as in the phrase the old ones are the best - that have become corny or cliches.  I don't think they can be referred to as urban legends as they are extreme stories that have entered the public psyche.  These usually refer to alligators in the toilet pipes or taxi drivers who drug you and remove internal organs.  
 
AM

> Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2012 13:42:24 -0500
> From: sak5w at VIRGINIA.EDU
> Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Bojany
> To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.UA.EDU
> 
> Boyan actually refers to a repeated anecdote, something unoriginal, whose punchline is well known to the audience, but which is presented as original or funny. The name derives from the word баян (bayan) spelled a la padonki. According to one theory, bayan was the musical instrument (a type of the accordion), mentioned in one such anecdote: Хоронили тещу. Порвали два баяна (Khoronili teshchu. Porvali dva bayana). The joke was repeated so often on the internet, that the word bayan became a generic name for all instances of such trite facetiousness and now conveys strong connotations of disapproval and frustration. I don't know if there is an English equivalent, other than such approximations as, say, "old hat." The word meme has a different history: lexically, the meaning of the word boyan is narrower than that of the word meme; stylistically, the word meme can and does occur in respectable publications, whereas boyan still belongs to the highly informal register of Russian. 
> 
> Sergey Karpukhin
> PhD Candidate
> UW-Madison
> 
> On Jul 20, 2012, at 12:41 PM, Riley, Maureen A CIV (US) wrote:
> 
> > Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> > Caveats: NONE
> > 
> > Judging by the definitions offered by one of the online slang dictionaries, it could be translated, in specific contexts, as "urban legend". 
> > 
> > Maureen Riley
> > DLI-Washington
> > 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [mailto:SEELANGS at LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of R. M. Cleminson
> > Sent: Friday, July 20, 2012 11:22 AM
> > To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.UA.EDU
> > Subject: [SEELANGS] Bojany
> > 
> > We will all be familiar with amusing (or in many cases not very amusing) pictures or gobbets of text that are reposted from site to site on the internet, but I did not know until today that in Russian they are known as бояны. I am now wondering whether there is an equivalent term in English. Does anyone know?
> > _____________________________________________________________________
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