Re: conlangers of the world, create!

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.

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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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