Russian Word of the Day

One of the Russian words for shoe is туфля. Note the genitive plural:

The word is mostly used in the plural:

Of course, it is possible to use the word in the singular:

Young women in Russia are much more likely to wear high-heeled shoes than their US counterparts. If a woman is young and sexy in Russia, then by heaven she is going to dress to kill. The picture below captures a commonplace: here are the feet of a lovely young woman next to the feet of her boyfriend.

It's funny, really. If ever there was a country where sensible shoes would be... well... sensible, it is Russia. There are cobblestone streets, dirt streets, uneven asphalt streets, and potholes the size of Kilauea, all of which can twist your ankle and break your leg at a moment's notice. Young Russian women conquer them all in high-heeled shoes.

The most common words for blouse in Russian are кофта and блузка. The former is a perfectly second-declension noun, and the latter is affected by a spelling rule and has a fill vowel in the genitive plural:

Some sample sentences:

Russian Wikipedia makes the following statement:

I suppose theoretically that might be the case, but nowadays кофта is used fairly generically for a woman's top in casual conversation and is essentially the same thing as блузка. (Do a quick search for the word on images.google.com if you don't believe me.)

Last week when I googled кофта, I came across a slightly vulgar Russian poem about a blouse that had me rolling on the floor laughing my academic credentials off. It suddenly struck me that it would be a great opportunity for a little translation practice… or better yet, a translation contest! I quickly threw together an English version just to be sure it could be done effectively: yes, it can. So here we go:

Translation contest and rules

• Translate the poem into English.
• E-mail it to me using the contact link at the bottom of this page.
• All entries received by 11:59 p.m. on May 28th, 2010 will be considered.
• I will send $10 by regular mail to the person who sent me the version I judge to be the best translation.
• People from all countries are welcome to apply as long as you have a postal address to which I can send the $10 if you win.
• All entries will be posted to the web the first week of June so readers can compare translation tactics.

My grandmother used to have a big box of jewelry. It was always carefully placed on the second shelf of her armoire. When I was little, I loved playing with it, pretending I was an exotic princess. I have no idea why my grandmother trusted me with her little treasure box. Frankly, if I were her, I’d think a dozen times before letting me play with it; the fact that I never lost any of it could only be pure luck. There were so many nice, almost antique, pieces in there: earrings, rings, bracelets and beads. But what I liked the most was a tiny pendant with a blue rock and a golden setting. There was something so exquisite about it, my inner princess simply had to have it! After my grandmother passed away, my mom kept the jewelry box. I am not even sure what happened to it after we moved to the US. I have been trying to find a picture similar to the pendant I remember. The picture above somewhat resembles it but certainly doesn’t do it true justice.

In Russian a pendant is кулон, which is a noun of masculine gender. Its diminutive is кулончик. In fact, if I were to talk about my grandmother’s pendant in Russian, I would most likely use кулончик to emphasize its small size as well as its fragility.

One way to say “to wear” in Russian in the sense of “to wear clothing” is носить/поносить. Note the consonant mutation in the я form:

The imperfective verb can mean either “to wear regularly” or “to wear over a long period of time”; it is not usually used to ask about what someone is wearing today or at the moment.

The perfective verb means “to wear something for a while”:

¹ From Иностранка by Sergei Dovlatov. I love Dovlatov. He was one of the few writers of the Soviet era who wrote with humor. I actually wrote a paper about him once—not a very good one—and delivered it at a conference which he was attending. He stuck his head in the door… but he left when he realized I was speaking in English. We chatted afterwards for a few minutes. Alas, he died before I had another opportunity to get to know him better.

Heaven knows why, but the other day I took an online Russian test and was dismayed to discover that I didn't know the Russian word for hairpin. You may wonder why I was dismayed. After all, why does a foreign man need to know that word when he is never going to wear one in his hair? But the way I figure it, some day I might be thrown into a Russian prison and have to macgyver my way out of there. Who knows what tools I might have to use in the process? So “hairpin” is a perfectly sensible word for me to know. By the way, it turns out to be шпилька, and the genitive plural is шпилек.

Sample sentences:

Types of шпильки

Шпилька actually has a dozen other meanings as well. For instance, it is sometimes used to mean cotter pins, which is not too surprising considering their shape, as well as other cylindrical items that hold metalwork together. It also means stiletto in the sense of a tall thin heel on a high-heeled show. From that it's not surprising that a girl-band took on the name Шпильки “The Stilettoes.” And it can also be used to mean a jibe/dig/snide comment: