Где?

First published 26 May 2019 @ sólo algunas palabras

Ну вот же прямо с нами в одном городе такое творится — ночи не спишь, всё выскакиваешь — где? Да вот же тут. Да вот тут, буквально.

Михаил Жванецкий, «Паровоз для машиниста»

Now that we know how to deal with time and date, let’s talk about place and space. Turns out, Russian employs all six (or seven) cases for these purposes.

This time, I’d like to start from the traditionally “last” case (in the table of cases), that is, prepositional, or rather, with locative, because this latter was originally the case used to indicate location. As discussed earlier, in modern Russian the locative, always used with prepositions of place в/во (in) or на (on), has largely merged with the prepositional case, which, apart from answering the question где? (where?), has other functions. What remains of locative are a few nouns that decline differently: cf. в лесу́ [Loc.] and о ле́се [Prep.], на мели́ [Loc.] and о ме́ли [Prep.].

Я в весеннем лесу пил берёзовый сок, С ненаглядной певуньей в стогу ночевал... Евгений Агранович

Бой в Крыму, всё в дыму. Anonymous

На двери́ висит замок. Anonymous

In addition to the same в and на, the prepositional case uses при (near, by).

В степях зелёных Буджака, Где Прут, заветная река, Обходит русские владенья, При бедном устье ручейка Стоит безвестное селенье. А. С. Пушкин, «Кирджали»

Давным-давно на белом свете... «Бременские музыканты»

The rest of prepositions of place, над (over), под (under), перед (in front of), за (behind) and рядом с (near), require the instrumental case.

Студёною зимой Опять же под сосной, С любимою Ванюша встречается. Леонид Дербенёв, «Кап-кап-кап»

«Пролетая над Череповцом, посылаю всех к такой-то матери...» Михаил Жванецкий, «Попугай»

The instrumental, without any prepositions, is also used to describe the path or trajectory:

Шёл я лесом, шёл я лугом Со своим хорошим другом. Николай Носов

А умный в одиночестве гуляет кругами, он ценит одиночество превыше всего. И его так просто взять голыми руками, скоро их повыловят всех до одного. Булат Окуджава

The same prepositions as used by the instrumental (под and за) and prepositional/locative (в and на) are employed by the accusative case as prepositions of movement. The prepositions через (across) and сквозь (through) also require the accusative.

Ехал Грека через реку, Видит Грека — в реке рак. Сунул Грека руку в реку — Рак за руку Греку цап! Скороговорка

The dative case is used to talk about the movement towards something or somebody and is obligatory after the preposition к/ко:

Неприметной тропой пробираюсь к ручью... Николай Добронравов, «Беловежская пуща»

Ко мне, Мухтар!

Dative is also used with preposition по to point to the target of some actions (as in «Опасный момент, удар по воротам, ГОЛ!!!») or express the movement along or on (the surface):

Вдоль по Питерской, по Тверской-Ямской, По Тверской-Ямской, по дороженьке... Народная песня

Ты по степи, ты по лесу, Ты к тропикам, ты к полюсу... Анатолий Д’Актиль, «Марш Энтузиастов»

Ничего на свете лучше нету, Чем бродить друзьям по белу свету. «Бременские музыканты»

As a preposition of place, по + dative is utilised in rather officially-sounding expressions like «проживать по улице», «проживающий по адресу» etc.

The genitive is used when we talk about the direction from somebody or something, as if that entity were a parent or a fatherland: из, из-за, из-под, от, с/со are all variations on the theme. Somewhat counterintuitively, the opposite, до (until, to) also requires the genitive.

Свет в городе давным-давно погас Ты танцуешь рок-н-ролл со мною в первый раз От Москвы до Ленинграда и обратно до Москвы Пляшут линии, ограды и мосты. Браво, «Ленинградский рок-н-ролл»

As do у, возле, около (near), вдоль (along), поперёк (across), мимо (past, by), and вокруг (around).

У самовара я и моя Маша, А на дворе совсем уже темно. Как в самоваре, так кипит страсть наша, Смеётся месяц весело в окно. Фанни Гордон, «У самовара»

— Мой конь притомился, стоптались мои башмаки. Куда же мне ехать, скажите мне, будьте добры? — Вдоль красной реки, моя радость, вдоль красной реки, До синей горы, моя радость, до синей горы. Булат Окуджава

You already know that expressions like «у меня», «у тебя» etc. are used in Russian to indicate possession. Such expressions are often used in combination with в/на + prepositional:

Я не знаю, как у вас, А у нас в Саратове В девяносто лет старухи Бегают с ребятами. Частушка

After living for a while in a place, we tend to make it “our own”: «у нас в Кембридже», «у нас за полярным кругом», «у нас на Канарах» and so on.

Can we use the nominative when talking about place or directions? Sure we can.

— Это что за остановка — Бологое иль Поповка? А с платформы говорят: — Это город Ленинград. С. Я. Маршак, «Вот какой рассеянный»

«Станция Речной вокзал — Поезд дальше не идёт.» Мирослав Немиров

Мой адрес — не дом и не улица, Мой адрес — Советский Союз! Владимир Харитонов

Speaking of addresses. Soviet-time postal addresses went from more general (country, republic, region) to more particular (street, house, apartment). To paraphrase the song quoted above,

My address is starts with neither a house nor a street, My address is starts with the U.S.S.R.

(for post from abroad, of course).

Now in Russia, like in the rest of the world, the addresses go from particular to general, and everything stays in nominative:

Фиолетовая улица, дом 33, квартира 16 село Странное Ненужный район Косоградская область

or, more often,

Фиолетовая ул., д. 33, кв. 16 с. Странное Ненужный р-н. Косоградская обл.

However, both in the Soviet times and after, there has been another way of writing down the address, usually in official documents:

Гражданин Невнятных Х. З., проживающий в квартире 16 дома №33 по улице Фиолетовой села Странное Ненужного района Косоградской области...

Here we can see a number of cases. The genitive dominates: once again, this address is like a Russian doll. The names of cities, towns or villages may be either left in nominative (города Москва, города Ленинград) or also changed to genitive (города Москвы, Ленинграда). The innermost doll, в квартире, is in prepositional. The type of street (по улице / переулку / проспекту / шоссе) is in dative, although the name of the street sometimes is left in nominative (cf. по улице Садовой and по улице Арбат) or, if it already was in genitive, it stays in genitive (по проспекту Вернадского). One can only hope this convoluted style becomes a thing of the past.

Case	Usage	Example
Nominative	addresses, advertisements, diary entries etc.	Москва, станция «Речной вокзал»
Genitive	from	из Москвы, с улицы Бассейной
	from (above)	с гор, со стены
	from (below)	из-под земли
	from (behind)	из-за поворота
	from... to...	от Москвы до Ленинграда
	around	вокруг озера
	near	у окна, около дороги, возле дома
	along	вдоль дороги
	across	поперёк дороги
Dative	towards	к лесу, к остановке
	along	по морю, по дороге
Accusative	in, into	в дом, в Москву
	to	на пляж, на улицу, в горы
	towards	на юг, на Москву
	on to	на гвоздь, на стену
	beyond	за реку
	under	под воду
	after	через две улицы
	through	через мост, через реку
Instrumental	over	над облаками
	under	под снегом, под крышей
	in front	перед входом, перед дверью
	behind, beyond	за поворотом, за окном
	near	рядом с окном
	trajectory	полем, тропой
Prepositional	in (inside, surrounded by)	в городе, в Москве, во ржи
	on (the surface)	на столе, на улице Бассейной
	near, by	при доме, при дороге
Locative	in (inside)	в лесу, в двери́
	(surrounded, covered, stained) with	в дыму, в крови́, в пыли́
	on (the surface)	на снегу, на двери́

Nuestro tiempo

a film by Carlos Reygadas

You think Tarkovsky is slow? Try Reygadas. I mean, during the three hours of Andrei Rublev a lot of stuff happens. Nuestro tiempo takes almost the same time for no good reason.

(The same could, or should, be said about Reygadas’ debut, Japón. I watched it many years ago on DVD and couldn’t finish it in one evening. I have to admit that I didn’t remember the name of the director and discovered that it was the same Reygadas only after seeing Nuestro tiempo.)

This movie is miles away from Todos lo saben — yet, on another plane, uncannily similar to it. Another real-life couple, this time complete with their real-life children, playing a variation on themselves. Another totally unexpected predictable MFM triangle. Worst thing of all: in both cases, I couldn’t care less about the trio of protagonists.

Why, o why? The theme of infidelity (and fidelity, for that matter) in an ostensibly open relationship well could have been dealt with grace, sensitivity and humour. No such luck here. Maybe that was the idea, but we don’t see much of the affair of Ester with “gringo” Phil. Maybe the affair itself is not particularly interesting to Reygadas. Maybe. But the inability of Juan, who is posing as an open-minded, generous, gentlemanly intellectual, in reality your common or garden superpossessive macho man (a renowned writer turned fighting bull breeder — seriously?), to deal with this, is not that fascinating either.

Yet there is a lot of beauty in the movie. The photography by Adrian Durazo and Diego García is magnificent. I can understand why Ester fell in love with the part of the country where their rancho is. I can also understand why she’s got dead bored there. The long opening sequence of children playing outdoors and teenagers having a good time nearby is wonderful. Also, it does not lead anywhere: we won’t see most of them ever again. And that’s great. Getting rid of all scenes with boring protagonists would cut the film down to about one hour. It could be as good as Braguino then.

La Historia de Pingru y Meitang

by Rao Pingru, translated by José Antonio Soriano

I fell in love with this book — or rather with its cheerful, art naïf illustrations — the moment I saw it in the library. Now I finished reading and it didn’t disappoint. Did Pingru also fall in love with Meitang like that, the moment he saw her for the first time? Most probably not. Which makes their story even more amazing. What started as a “normal”, that is, arranged, marriage, lasted for sixty years, literally till death did them part. By then 86, Pingru started to work on what became Our Story. At the time, he did not think of publishing it: “When my wife died, I wanted to tell the story of our life to my children and grandchildren. Nothing more”, he says.

In 1958 Pingru was sent to a labour camp in for “re-education”. The government officials tried to persuade Meitang to divorce him. She flatly refused. Pingru stayed in the camp until 1979. The book concludes with some letters of Meitang to Pingru from that period. In spite of their largely mundane content (family, weather, expenses, food etc.), every single one is a letter of love.

Todos lo saben

a film by Asghar Farhadi

One of (many) great things about our library is that they have free film screenings every Tuesday. Thanks to the library, I watched great if rather obscure films such as Hrútar and Yes, we fuck! as well as “almost new” (i.e. recent but not in the theatres anymore) ones including Un monstruo viene a verme and, well, this one.

I went to see it knowing little more than the song, Se Muere Por Volver by Javier Limón. Not bad at all, but could have been so much better if it did not descend into a Bollywood-style melodrama. Most of the time, “Pé” is overplaying so that you almost hear her fellow actors rolling their eyes. And how on earth is possible that the character of Javier Bardem is one of the last to learn that he is the father of a, wait a minute, sixteen-year-old girl while, as the title states, everybody (else in the village) knows? Then, when you expect another twist and turn, the movie just ends.

Animayo Gran Canaria 2019

I’ve never been to Animayo before, so this year I decided to give it a try. The pass for the whole festival costs €75 for general public and €50 for students, teachers and unemployed, while individual masterclasses are €15 per session (free for pass holders) and workshops €20 (50% discount for pass holders) — still, a lot of money. However, there were enough free activities to keep anyone occupied. I, for once, spent four evenings in a row watching animation for free.

Sección Oficial Internacional a Concurso I

I went to see the first (of four) sessions of the official animated short competition in Centro Cultural CICCA. As the inauguration of the festival was taking place in the same auditorium immediately before, the screening started half an hour later than scheduled. Luckily, there was no shortage (pun intended) of Tirma chocolate wafers (also free) piled at the reception to sustain the animation aficionados, myself included.

(The other three sessions took place at Teatro Guiniguada where, I expect, everything was on time. At least this was the case with three feature films described below.)

The programme included nine short films that evening. We were given a ballot to vote for the Audience Award. Difficult choice! I liked Grandma’s Pie and Bloeistraat 11 very much, but my absolute favourite was Five Minutes to Sea.

1. Alef b’Tamuz by Yael Reisfeld
2. Echo by Borisa Simovic and Kosta Rakicevic
3. Crow: The Legend by Eric Darnell
4. Five Minutes to Sea by Natalia Mirzoyan
5. Reboot by Ellen Osborne
6. Bloeistraat 11 by Nienke Deutz
7. One Small Step by Andrew Chesworth and Bobby Pontillas
8. Grandma’s Pie by Camilo Castro and Ricardo San Emeterio
9. Hybrids by Florian Brauch, Matthieu Pujol, Kim Tailhades, Yohan Thireau and Romain Thirion

تهران تابو / Tehran Taboo

a film by Ali Soozandeh

After reading the synopsis, I had my doubts if I wanted to watch it. Make no mistake, Tehran Taboo is a dark film. It makes Persepolis feel light and cheery. But then, even 40 years after the “Dark Revolution”, Iran must be a rather dark place. Especially for women. Paradoxically, or maybe not, it is the women who are the light of this movie.

映画 聲の形 / A Silent Voice

a film by Naoko Yamada

I missed this anime last year when it was screened in Monopol, so here was another chance. Stylistically somewhere between Only Yesterday and Your Name, A Silent Voice manages to deal with the themes of bullying and suicide in a sensitive way without being dead serious. I found the protagonists, Shōko and Shōya, not too convincing (unlike Shōko’s younger sister Yuzuru and Shōya’s little niece Maria). Also, as Tamara noted, the film could have benefitted from being shorter.

Jeszcze dzień życia / Another Day of Life

a film by Raúl de la Fuente and Damian Nenow

Based on Ryszard Kapuściński’s 1976 novel of the same name, this is a powerful war film combining cutting-edge animation with documentary footage. Long-time Kapuściński fans, Raúl de la Fuente and producer Amaia Remirez travelled to Angola to look for the book’s surviving protagonists, so we meet real-life Arturo, Farrusco and Luis Alberto some 40 years after the events. If you feel a bit confusão, that’s probably meant to be. And you can’t help falling in love with Carlota. Bring your handkerchiefs.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

by Oliver Sacks

After re-reading, earlier this year, Sacks’ brilliant Musicophilia, I finally got to this book. Considered by now a classic (at least, the 2015 paperback edition appears in “Picador Classic” series, so it must be one), it’s a fabulous read. Although the book was first published not that long ago, in 1985, I find the language noticeably dated, while the words such as defective, hysteria, idiot, moron, retardate, retarded, simple, with or without quotation marks, just make me cringe.

Like Musicophilia, The Man Who... is a collection of case studies which are more like short stories that could be enjoyed in any order. For me, A Passage to India is the most poignant and most beautiful chapter in the book.

The Twins deals with two autistic savants who spend their days playing a strange game of exchanging six-digit numbers.

I already had a hunch — and now I confirmed it. All the numbers, the six-figure numbers, which the twins had exchanged were primes — i.e., numbers that could be evenly divided by no other whole number than itself or one. Had they somehow seen or possessed such a book as mine — or were they, in some unimaginable way, themselves ‘seeing’ primes, in somewhat the same way as they had ‘seen’ 111-ness, or triple 37-ness? Certainly they could not be calculating them — they could calculate nothing.

I returned to the ward the next day, carrying the precious book of primes with me. I again found them closeted in their numerical communion, but this time, without saying anything, I quietly joined them. They were taken aback at first, but when I made no interruption, they resumed their ‘game’ of six-figure primes. After a few minutes I decided to join in, and ventured a number, an eight-figure prime. They both turned towards me, then suddenly became still, with a look of intense concentration and perhaps wonder on their faces. There was a long pause — the longest I had ever known them to make, it must have lasted a half-minute or more — and then suddenly, simultaneously, they both broke into smiles.

They had, after some unimaginable internal process of testing, suddenly seen my own eight-digit number as a prime — and this was manifestly a great joy, a double joy, to them; first because I had introduced a delightful new plaything, a prime of an order they had never previously encountered; and, secondly, because it was evident that I had seen what they were doing, that I liked it, that I admired it, and that I could join in myself.

They drew apart slightly, making room for me, a new number playmate, a third in their world. Then John, who always took the lead, thought for a very long time — it must have been at least five minutes, though I dared not move, and scarcely breathed — and brought out a nine-figure number; and after a similar time his twin, Michael, responded with a similar one. And then I, in my turn, after a surreptitious look in my book, added my own rather dishonest contribution, a ten-figure prime I found in my book.

Hard or soft?

First published 3 May 2019 @ sólo algunas palabras

If you ever came across the concepts of hard and soft c or hard and soft g you may have wondered, like me, why on earth they are called so. I know, I know, the same character may represent two (or more) distinct phonemes, but this happens with many other letters all the time. And what exactly is hard and what is soft? These phonemes are just different.

In many languages, the hard c is the one that is pronounced as the voiceless velar stop /k/, as in the English word cat. In English, the soft c is pronounced as the voiceless alveolar sibilant, /s/, as in face. In Italian, the soft c is the voiceless postalveolar affricate /tʃ/, as in ciao, and in Peninsular Spanish it is the voiceless dental fricative /θ/, as in cero. Similarly, the hard g typically is the voiced velar stop /ɡ/ as in get , while the soft g could be either the voiced postalveolar affricate /d͡ʒ/ (English gentleman, Italian giallo), voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/ (French genre, Portuguese girassol), or voiceless velar fricative /x/ (Spanish gemelo).

As mentioned earlier, consonants in Russian also could be either “hard” (твёрдые) or “soft” (мягкие). This “hardness” / “softness”, however, is a totally different concept from that of “hard / soft c / g” and, believe me, it makes much more sense. To start with, when there is a hard/soft pair, we are talking not about two unrelated consonants but two “flavours” of the same basic sound. In phonetics, the process of “softening” is called palatisation, which means that the back of the tongue is touching the palate. Is that important? Yes! The subtle difference in pronunciation may lead to complete change of meaning, as could be demonstrated by minimal pairs быть / бить, об / Обь, воз / вёз, вол / вёл, кров / кровь, клад / кладь, вяз / вязь, лаз / лазь, был / быль, кол / коль, лыс / лис, лук / люк, мел / мель, мол / моль, мыл / мыль, пыл / пыль, угол / уголь, мал / мял, мыл / мил, вон / вонь, кон / конь, нос / нёс, пена / пеня, пыл / пил, рад / ряд, раса / ряса, хор / хорь, вес / весь, сом / сём, суда / сюда, ест / есть, жест / жесть, мат / мать, томный / тёмный, фон / фён etc.

The “softening” of Russian consonants before so-called iotified vowels (е, ё, ю and я) is often transliterated in English with letters y or i, which is both understandable (given that the very letters are transliterated as ye, yo, yu and ya, respectively) and unfortunate. Many people who learn Russian reading transliterated texts end up mispronouncing the soft consonants. Also, there is no difference between palatisation of consonants followed by iotified vowels and those followed by и. That IPA had adopted a superscript j as a “softener” symbol (as in /bʲ/ for soft б etc.) instead of developing the proper characters for palatised consonants does not help either. The softening achieved with the soft sign ь, especially that of terminal consonants, sometimes is marked with an apostrophe ’ but often is not transliterated at all.

Согласная Consonant	Твёрдая Hard	Мягкая Soft
б	забыть	забить
в	кров	кровь
г	гэта	гетто
д	клад	кладь
з	вяз	вязь
к	укор	ликёр
л	пыл	пыль
м	мыло	мило
н	кон	конь
п	спать	спят
р	вихры	вихри
с	вес	весь
т	шест	шесть
ф	фарфор	шофёр
х	блоха	блохи

Your Russian textbook most likely tells you that the consonants ж, ц and ш are always hard (even if followed by soft sign) while й, ч and щ are always soft. However, I see no intrinsic reason why ж and ц cannot be palatised. For instance, some Russian speakers pronounce words like вожжи /'voʑːɪ/, дрожжи /'droʑːɪ/, жужжать /ʐʊ'ʑːætʲ/, заезжий /zɐ'jeʑːɪj/, позже /'poʑːe/ and even дождь /doʑː/ with soft ж. Although I can’t think right now of any “native” word utilising the soft ц, many Russian speakers can easily pronounce Ukrainian surnames such as Грицюк or Цюрупа. As for ш, its palatised version is щ. As is the case with other consonant softening, replacing ш with щ changes the meaning dramatically: cf. плюш / плющ, чаша / чаща, or шит / щит.

If the word finishes with either “always hard” or “always soft” consonant, what’s the point of using the soft sign at all? We have the same (hard) ж in both ёж and рожь, same (soft) ч in врач and ночь, same (hard) ш in both душ and сушь, same (soft) щ in лещ and вещь. Well, I think this is due to spelling regularisation of nouns: the soft sign, where present, is there simply to indicate that the noun belongs to the third declension. The soft sign is also found in the reflexive verbs infinitive ending -ться, as opposed to the third person present -тся, although both are pronounced /t͡sə/ (cf. нравиться and нравится, бояться and боятся).