Ty/Vy oddities?

[Mark Nuckols]

Good example. Allez viens seems very comparable to the mixed form пойдёмте.
 
I'm also reminded now of the French 3 sg. impersonal pron. on, which in formal usage means "one" (as in "one does not say things like that") but informally can mean "we/you/they," all heavily context-dependent. On y va, (http://french.about.com/od/vocabulary/a/on-y-va.htm), can mean something like "Wanna go?/Let's go."
 
So now I'm starting to think Rada's залезай could be interpreted as "Let's get/climb in"--she's also standing outside the carriage when she says this. 
 
Paul Gallagher's hypothesis also sheds light on the matter--thanks! (BTW, I believe Rada counts as a Russian native speaker for the purposes of the film. Her use of Romani is probably bilingual code-switching, though none to sociolinguistically accurate, just meant to give her speech more flavor.)
 
Mark Nuckols
 
 
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 10:10:10 +0200
From: t.moran at NEW.OXON.ORG
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Ty/Vy oddities?
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.UA.EDU

There may be a remote parallel with how French expresses Come on, let's go.
If you're talking to somebody whom you address as vous, you say Allez venez.
But if you're talking to somebody whom you address as tu, you don't say Va viens, you say Allez viens - putting only one verb in the familiar form, not both. In this устойчивое словосочетание the word allez seems to have stopped being a verb and become a general-purpose exclamation.
I said it was remote ...
Terry Moran 
On 20 September 2014 05:31, Paul B. Gallagher <paulbg at pbg-translations.com> wrote:
Mark Nuckols wrote:




This discussion reminds me of a scene from /Табор уходит в небо/, in

which Rada (the lead female role), in the company of female friends,

persuades an aristocrat to allow her to drive his coach. She then

tells her companions, "Чаяле, залезай!" (Girls, climb in!) The mix of

Romani and Russian doesn't concern me, so let's just pretend she said

"Девушки, залезай!" with a nominative/vocative plural followed by a

second person /singular/ imperative.



To give it more context, she and the aristocrat (this is their first

meeting) had quickly switched from вы to ты. Given the differences

in class, gender and ethnicity, it seems inappropriate for the

setting of 1900. At any rate, perhaps Rada then re-establishes the

closer relationship with her friends by using the ты form when

addressing several of them.



That's just my speculation. Native speakers?




I'm not a native speaker -- and perhaps neither is Rada -- but I'd like to throw out the following hypothesis:



Just as вы can be used in the polite sense without regard to number, ты can also be used in the intimate sense without regard to number. Both pronouns have two purposes, and sometimes the intimate/polite contrast takes precedence. А вы (один) согласны? ;-)



I may have overdrawn the hypothesis; in my experience, the plural use of ты is much rarer than the singular use of вы (I find your example anomalous for the language but not for the character). But I still think it bears examination.



-- 

War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.

--

Paul B. Gallagher

pbg translations, inc.

"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"

http://pbg-translations.com



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