Text 120, 52 rader
Skriven 2004-11-15 11:06:07 av Ardith Hinton (1:153/716.0)
     Kommentar till text 99 av Aleksej R. Serdyukov (2:5020/24000)
Ärende: Song Names
==================
Hi, Aleksej!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

AH>>  Hmm... very interesting!  I presume the addition of "-niy"
AH>>  in Russian indicates that the word is an adjective.

ARS>  Yes, masculine (default gender for adjectives) adjective.


          Ah... so the word has been used often enough, over a period of time,
to take on a Russian inflection.  That may be an important clue....  :-)



AH>>  I'm curious as to how "kosher" came into Russian....  :-)

ARS>  As I heard, Jews are everywhere. ;-)


          Uh-huh.  I understand there have been Jews in Russia for more than a
thousand years, and they've probably contributed words to the Russian language
just as they've contributed words to the English language.  Maybe that's about
all there is to it in most cases... the people of xxx adopted words from their
neighbours, the people of yyy did likewise, and both ended up with some of the
same words.  But nowadays one's neighbours may live much farther away....  ;-)



ARS>  Though I'm not sure I know this word not only from Fidonet.
      |Seems to me, from your later clarification, that the second
      "not" is superfluous.  That's how I interpreted the sentence.


          I think you've hit the nail on the head right there!  People usually
don't remember where or how they first encountered a given word.  Years ago, I
might have said "according to Hoyle".  I stopped using this expression because
... although it's still listed in my most recent dictionaries... I was getting
blank looks from a lot of younger adults.  I don't recall now when it occurred
to me to use "kosher" to convey the same idea.  I've been doing this for quite
awhile, though... probably at least a decade.  According to the book I've been
reading, the Jewish people use "kosher" in a broader sense too... but I didn't
realize that at the time.  From the standpoint of etymology the word came from
Hebrew.  From the standpoint of practicality others found it useful because it
conveyed the intended meaning more effectively than whatever alternatives they
had in their own native language.  But as for the rest, it's a mystery.  Maybe
the word already existed in Russian but was seldom used until Russians who had
modem buddies in North America saw them using it as well... I don't know.  :-)




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+
 * Origin: Wits' End, Vancouver BC, CANADA [604-266-5271] (1:153/716)