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Re: conlangers of the world, create!

From:Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Wednesday, May 2, 2001, 20:19
At 10:19 am -0700 2/5/01, Frank George Valoczy wrote:
[snip]
> >In my mind the USSR and the rest of the "Bloc of Peace" (as we were taught >in school there...) will always be associated with this slogan...
Yes, but here the slogan doesn't carry the same association - if anything it harks back in some people's minds to the idealistic socialism of late 19th century, before the Bolsheviks perverted such words. We knew the slogan - Workers of the world, unite! - as schoolboys & barely thought of the USSR at all. But we also changed the words slightly: "Shirkers of the world, unite!" - Oh, happy days :)
>> >> >that's not right and should be >> >"of all countries" as Russian has /proletarij vseh stran, sojedinnates'/ = >> >"workers of all countries, unite" >> >> Yes, but _proletarij_ are surely "members of the proletariate" which is by >> no means synonymous with "workers" (except, maybe, in Marxist propaganda). >> > >Yes, you are correct; but it would also sound a bit dumb to say >"rabotnitsi vseh stran..."
I guess no more dumb than "Proletarians of all countries...." would sound in English, in fact.
>> BTW ain't the Russian for "worker" _rabotnik_ ? Or have I misremembered? >> My Russian's a bit rusty, I'm afraid > >Yes.
Good - my memory still holds at my advanced age :) Ray. ========================================= A mind which thinks at its own expense will always interfere with language. [J.G. Hamann 1760] =========================================

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Frank George Valoczy <valoczy@...>