Casual linguistics

The Russian word plečo commonly means ‘shoulder, shoulder joint’, but ana- tomically it means the upper part of the arm (between the shoulder and the elbow), which in common usage is called predpleč’e; the latter word, in its turn, anatomically means ‘fore- arm, the lower part of the arm’. What ordinary people call mimoza (yellow flowers which are commonly sold in early spring), are biologically Acacia dealbata, whereas Mimosa pu- dica is a different flower altogether. Everyone mixes up the biodegradable cellofan ‘cello- phane’ made of cellulose with poliètilen ‘polyethylene’, a chemically derived plastic. The terms shizofrenija ‘schizophrenia’ and paranoja ‘paranoia’ are very often «misused». The results of an experiment involving more than 200 speakers are reported, the possible causes of the mismatch of common and professional usage are discussed, and ways of lexico- graphical representation of such words are proposed.

(from the paper on misused words)

Boris, the author of this citation, is collecting answers for the next one. About nuts. Nuts that are squirrel's fantasy. You can join and help. Yes, in English, too.

Foreigner's point of view

I've experienced it myself.

When I was learning English and Spanish and was asking weird questions (weird for those who learn a language in the childhood so think less about nature of concrete words).

I still see this around: today my friend tweeted that "die Vorsicht", caution in German, is feminine.

And then I saw the same but in reverse. The deepest thought about one Russian word, гулять - to stroll in any direction, both physically moving and mentally having good time.

Here is that nice article about this particular Russian word by Tyler who lived in Moscow for nine months and learned Russian. Enjoy:

http://tylerjonesinmoscow.blogspot.in/2012/12/blog-post.html

Weird phrases in Russian

Lately I've seen a couple of interesting things on the topic online somewhere in the social network deep. We laugh at these things ourselves but I guess it's worth laughing even from the foreigner point of view.

First, the children riddle. What word has three E in the row?
The answer is 'длинношеее', the adjective meaning 'one who has a long neck' and the neck is 'шея', spelling 'sheya'. No kid guesses right from the beginning. And it is really the only word having three E in succession.

Second, funny phrases.

'Косил косой косой косой' has three words which mean random things. This means 'the squint was mowing something with the skew scythe'. Or 'the rabbit was mowing something with the skew scythe' if you like this more because 'косой' can mean a lot of things. Ew.

'Пошли сходим' is not funny if you do not know Russian but if you do it is kinda weird: literally it's 'let's go to go' and in fact it's colloquial for 'let's go' only.

But the most exciting is 'Да нет' phrase. Or maybe 'Ну да'. Let's start with the former.

'Да' is yes and 'нет' is no but with a certain intonation (doubt or even mockery) 'Да нет' means 'I do not agree at all' and mostly is used in this way.

'Ну да' contains of 'ну' - well ('well' as starting a phrase and still thinking what to say) and 'да' - as you remember, this means 'yes'. OK, this one can BOTH mean 'OK, well, but I'm still not happy' (if you say it irresolutely) or 'do not even dream of it' (impudently or impatiently). The difference is in the intonation.

Third! There will be the third.

Meet Lewis Carroll who visited Russia and left the linguistic note in his diary. He wrote down the word 'defending' ('защищающихся') with transliteration. Are you ready?

'Zаshtshееshtshауоуshtshееkhsуа' it is.