Bojany

[Alina Israeli]

It should be spelled with a because it is the same root as баять,  
байка. In the olden days it used to be called анекдот с  
бородой. There was even a gesture in the generation of my grand- 
parents, which means a rather long time ago: you put a hand in the  
middle of the chest to show the height of a growing child. So it goes  
like this: kogda ja byl vot takoj (the hand at the chest palm down), u  
nego byla uzhe vot takaja boroda (the hand stays at the same place but  
the palm is turned up).

On Jul 20, 2012, at 2:42 PM, Sergey Karpukhin wrote:

> 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?
>> _____________________________________________________________________
>>
>> Predpoved pocasia na LETO: Letoviska, akvaparky, jazera najdete na http://letnepocasie.sme.sk
>>
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Alina Israeli
Associate Professor of Russian
LFS, American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave.
Washington DC 20016
(202) 885-2387 	fax (202) 885-1076
aisrael at american.edu

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