Economy, stupid. Plural Instrumental.

— Чем преодолеть беды России? [How do we solve Russia's many problems?]

— It's the economy, stupid!

— Иконами так иконами! [Oh, with icons? All right, with icons then.]

Mephistopheles
by Mark Antololsky,
marble, Hermitage. 

This joke is making rounds on Russian social networks. It is based on the near homophony between the English word 'economy' and the Russian plural instrumental of 'icons' — eekónami. With only a slight difference in pronunciation in the accented 'o' in Russian.

I can only explain the sudden burst in the joke's popularity as a public's reaction to the increasing number of 'Orthodox activists's' attacks on objects of secular art in Russia. In one recent incident in Petersburg a 'cossack' team smashed a bas-relief face depicting Mephistopheles on a 1910 art nouveau building. (story and image here)

Hundreds gathered today at the site to protest and a large poster with the image of the bas-relief was put up to cover the empty space on the wall.    

Fyodor Shaliapin sings Mephistopheles's aria Le veau d'or from Charles Gounod's opera 'Faust'. It is this particular aria that made Mephistopheles into a popular icon in Russia:

Comp.

(New Russian)

Computer, in English usually contracted to PC or a Mac, if you are a mac fan, in Russian has become a comp — комп. It is a contraction from компьютер.

The o sound is distinct while the p struggles and appears distinctively pronounced when the word is declined and a vowel appears after the p, i.e. genitive - компа.

A search in the National Corpus of Russian Language shows a puzzling appearance of the word since 1820, probably in a different sense, but the current usage takes off in the naughties (see the diagramme here and examples here). My explanation is that in that decade the coinage, originally childspeak, had been increasingly adopted first by parents, who started using it themselves, and then, as the children of the 90s grew up, by the general public. Comp for computer became a widely used replacement for the full computer, both in spoken and written speech.

The word computer (компьютер) itself is of course from English. It has replaced the 50-60s word ЭВМ (электронно-вычислительная машина - electronic computing machine). What is fascinating about comp is that it appears to be an original home-grown Russian derivative. 'Comp' in English is used for a variety purposes, compilation, comparison etc., but not for a computer. (see this Wikipedia article)

See other Tetradki articles on new Russian by clicking here or on the Pushkin icon. Pushkin graphic by A.Anichkin.

The Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors.

Vitaly Churkin.
Photo: www.kremlin.ru

Western media is giving much coverage today to the Russian ambassador Churkin's UN press-conference where he used a curious phrase, 'the kingdom of crooked mirrors.' This quote is from the BBC report (follow the link to read in full and watch the video):

But speaking to the UN Security Council, Russia's UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin accused Western powers of distorting reality.

"Sometimes it reminded me of the kingdom of crooked mirrors because some members of the Council were not concerned about the fact hundreds of civilians are dying."

In case you are wondering what is this kingdom he was talking about, it is a reference to the Soviet fantasy film The Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors (1963, wiki here, watch the video below) based on the novel of the same title by Vitaly Gubarev (wiki about him). The translation is a bit awkward but that’s how the film was titled in English. ‘Crooked mirror’ is a literal translation of the Russian term “кривое зеркало” — distorting mirror as the ones used in ‘hall of mirrors’ attractions at fairs and carnivals. The Russian name for such attraction is “комната смеха” — ‘room of laughter.’ 'Crooked mirror' is also used figuratively to mean distorted reality or distortion.

In the film, a young girl Olya falls through the mirror and, together with her mirror image twin Yalo, accidentally finds herself in a magic kingdom where all mirrors are distorted to show the opposite of what is real. The girls who played Olya and Yalo are real-life twins. Characters in the film have talking names spelled backwards. 

The chase starts when the girls decide to save a boy called Gurd, drug (friend) spelled backwards, a glassmaker who refuses to make the lying mirrors for the rulers of the kingdom. He is beaten and chained to the top of the Tower of Death to die slowly. In the end the girls overthrow the tyranny, the mirrors are smashed and evil characters turn back into creatures that their names represent, for example, Anidág-Gádina (viper) into a snake, Abáje-Jábba into a toad, and king Yagoupop-Popugay into a parrot.

It’s a bright, cheerful film with lots of music, catchy phrases and exciting play on words. I loved it as a young boy and then introduced my own children to the film, who enjoyed it as much as I had.

There are recognisable motives from Carrol’s Through the Looking Glass, but Gubarev must have also found inspiration in Hans Christian Andersen’s Snow Queen. In Andersen’s tale, a troll makes distorting mirror that turns all good into evil. The mirror is smashed and shards are scattered all over the world. One gets into the little boy Kai’s heart. An animated Russian version of The Snow Queen was released in 1957 and has been a top children’s favourite ever since. (Wiki about the film here, it was restored and dubbed into English in 1990s.) 

The Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors:

Russian tongue-twisters

This is a feat of both Russian eloquence and orthoepy.

Try it if you are a native Russian speaker or a teacher of Russian, and you'd most likely stumble on one of the tongue-twisters that are used in this spoof news cast. I always trip on 'Шла Саша по шоссе и сосала сушки' — 'Shla Sasha po chausse i sosala sushki' — 'Sasha walked along the highway and gnawed on сracknels.' Шоссе is the Russian word for highway, from the French chaussée.

I am not sure if it's a Russian or Ukrainian production, could be either. (Read also 'Carla Bruni's Russian Tongue-Twister.')

Grrrh, Anna Karenina!

Just heard on the radio: Anna Kah-ree-nee-nah.

Goodness gracious, I'm dashed! She's never Rina, Sabrina, or Reenee.

It's Kah-reh-nee-nah. Same as in résumé. With the stress on -reh-.