Здравый смысл

by Don  

The Russian phrase for common sense is здравый смысл.

Я делала всё просто наоборот здравому смыслу. (source) I did everything contrary to common sense.
Женщины не пользуются здравым смыслом. (source) Women don't make use of common sense.
Главное — руководствоваться здравым смыслом. (source) The important thing is to be guided by common sense.
Чтобы держаться здравого смысла, надо его по крайней мере иметь. (source) In order to adhere to common sense, you have to have it in the first place.

3 comments

Comment from: Christine [Visitor]

I just came upon this site. It is very interesting, but:

“Women don’t make use of common sense.” Really? Come on … This the XXI century and this kind of sexist statement has no place in a quality educational endeavor.

Christine, thanks for your comment. I will allow myself to disagree with you. If you look over the sample sentences on this site, you will find that some are sensible, some are silly, some are old fashioned, some reflect various subcultures of the former Soviet Union, and some are made to be grammatical but simultaneously to trigger one’s sense of the absurd; some are meant to trigger one’s sense of pity or one’s sense of humor or one’s sense of revulsion. This is due to my observation that good language teaching always engages the emotions. Those emotions do not always have to be rational. And when one deals with Russia in particular, many sentiments that are considered backwards by progressive Americans are still entirely common in Russia. That particular sentiment that you mentioned is very common among a certain subset of Russian males, and if it succeeded in arousing emotion in you when you read it, then it met my goal of engaging emotions. The sample sentences are never meant to be an expression of the attitudes of any of the blog’s authors.

Peace, joy and light to you, Don Livingston.


09/01/13 @ 07:23
Comment from: Shady_arc [Visitor]

Of course. “Наоборот” is an adverb with no government, as far as I know. It may be used as a translation for “contrary” in phrases like “quite the contrary” or as an introduction phrase “On the contrary, …". It is also used in “… и наоборот” ("… and vice versa.")

“Вопреки” (technically, a preposition) is the correct Russian counterpart for your sentence, which has a “contrary to” in it.

06/28/11 @ 09:51
Comment from: Andrey [Visitor]

“Наоборот здравому смыслу” sounds very odd. Googling shows that it is used by Dostoevsky, but you get ~1000 results on that phrase vs ~2 million on “Вопреки здравому смыслу".

06/27/11 @ 02:02


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