Tasks and riddles

Once upon a time, I came up with a linguistic problem that I still immodestly find very elegant. It sounds like this: you need to translate the word inde from Old Russian into Latin. But this is not a task for linguists. Otherwise, I then wished it on my colleague and friend Seryozha Krylov, and he, of course, did not have difficulty answering, but also did not appreciate the beauty of the game. When I began to explain what the matter was, he said: “Yes, I just translated...”. This means, of course, that it is necessary to translate analytically, without knowing one language or another. Nothing is required here except familiarity with the Russian language and some general cultural information.

First you need to guess what inde means. This is not difficult to do, because this word, like many other pronominal words, is composed, as if from a construction set, from completely isolable elements. Let's look at the interrogative words of the Russian language: someone, to-a-koy, to-uda, when, how many, which. All this is just words. True, in some the k is disguised: whose (here the alternation of k/h, like a hand/hand), where (k-de, d is simply conveyed in writing here the voicing of our k before ). But many demonstrative words start with t: that, such, there, then, etc.

By the way, in English it’s similar: interrogative wh-words and demonstrative th-words (what?, why?, where?, which?, this, there , etc.) Now let’s compare the pairs: where-there, sometime-then, what-so-so. It is clear that their second parts are the same. This is a little less obvious in the case of where (as we already know, this is where) and here (this is s-de-s). Z - this is, in fact, the voicing s before d is conveyed in writing. This is the same demonstrative s as in the word sei. Well, the ending is a little confusing, but still we now see that it is about the theme of place. And looking at our inde, we understand that it consists of what is already clear to us -de and in-, generally completely clear. In is as in the words different, otherwise. So, inde means in another place. For example, in Italian it is very similar: dove? - where, and altrove - inde. Elsewhere, that is.

It is a pity that in modern Russian there is no word inde. Because of this, it is completely impossible to properly translate into Russian the title of M. Kundera’s novel, which in English sounds like “Life is Elsewhere.” In German there will be the word anderswo, in Italian we already know altrove. And we are complete orphans - but how nice it would be: “Life in India.”

Now let's move on to the second part of the problem: how to translate this into Latin? Here such a way of reasoning will not help us if we are unfamiliar with Latin pronouns. Here you have to dance because many Latin words are used in different languages. And there is such a very famous word that literally means “in another place.” The person was in another place when the crime was committed, so he could not have committed it. Did you guess it? Of course it's an alibi. The word alibi, by the way, also falls apart well.

I remembered the old problem because I was again thinking about various kinds of games with pronoun words. And I thought about it because of a friend who was visiting me at my dacha. A friend began to complain about how annoying the new word was in any way. I sadistically asked how she felt about the polyubas and polyube options. She shuddered.

Well, polyubas and polyube are okay, these are really purely slang options. But the word in any way (there is also a spelling variant in any way, but it contradicts the rules of Russian spelling, since words in po-.om/him or -ski are written with a hyphen: in my opinion, in a friendly way) puzzles me.

The fact is that, if you look at it, the meaning of this word is very necessary and useful. It corresponds to the popular English anyway, without which it is generally difficult to speak English and which is often used as a filler word. In this capacity, it helps to cut off the previous part of the conversation and makes it possible not to worry too much about how what you are going to say is logically connected with the previous one. In its full meaning, anyway is close to the Russian phrases anyway, one way or another, in any case, but much more compact and expressive. And so I think that this, in any case, appeared as an analogue of such cumbersome combinations. In general, Russian any is close in meaning to English any. Their meaning is to indicate an unlimited range of assumptions.

Often , in any way and polyubas, it is translated as “necessarily, certainly” (I’ll call back polyubas - i.e. I’ll definitely call). However, it definitely contains a hint of some kind of promise. Here the modality is slightly different, rather epistemic: no matter how events develop, this will be so.

So here it is. The right word. By the way, this is indirectly confirmed by the fact that a little earlier (it seems) the word “ everything” appeared in a very close meaning (Well, by five I’ll have time to do everything). It seems with some St. Petersburg flavor. Now, in any case, apparently, everything has completely won . I say “seems”, “seems to be”, because such things are very difficult to keep track of. However, there is an invaluable source of such information - the “Urban Dialects” forum, where, by the way, everything is also written about in any and every way ( http://forum.lingvo.ru/actualthread.aspx?tid=91705 ).

So, here's what I'm interested in. The word anyway, which appeared at least ten years ago, has spread very widely, and this is understandable to me. But what’s a mystery to me is why the vulgar scent just won’t disappear from it (with all the possible nods to regional variants of the literary norm). After all, my friend is not alone: ​​I constantly hear from intelligent acquaintances statements like: if you compile my personal dictionary of words that I hate, then the first word in it will be the word anyway. And here’s what a certain Yuri Ryabinin writes to us in the newspaper, excuse me, “Zavtra” (the article is called: “Not in any way, but in Russian!”): “Quite many began to use the expression “in any way” instead of “in in any case", "in any case", "certainly". The announcer says: “Zenith needs one more goal anyway.” A girl with a bare stomach on the subway shouts to her friend: “We’ll meet tomorrow anyway!” - here it is, the real one, triumphantly marching across our vast one-sixth American-Ofen dialect of the former Russian!

I admit, I myself not only hate this word, but I don’t use it. Why did the touch of vulgarity stick so firmly to it, although in its meaning, as we see, there is nothing like that? Words change color. Here's a word like - it actually came almost from the speech of the brothers, and was picked up by intellectuals as a sweet soul, first as a quotation, and then from themselves. And here you go. In general, this is unknown to science. Science is not in the know yet.