V. I. Dahl considered their use in speech usage as a criterion for selecting material for his collection of Proverbs of the Russian People. It is noteworthy that in modern communication proverbs, as before, are used quite intensively, but some of them, which were popular in the XIX century, are now unknown to native speakers of the Russian language. What are the reasons for forgetting?
One of the main functions of proverbs in speech is their didacticism, edification. Any proverb can be prefaced with the words: "It should be remembered that...". In addition, it remains a proverb only as long as its internal form is "transparent". The proverbs "If you like to ride, love to carry sleds"; "Chickens are counted in the autumn"; "Fish is fishless and crayfish" and many others are understandable, since all the words that make up them are clear.
It hinders the comprehension of a stable phrase and removes it from the language appeal by "obscuring" the figurative basis: "The content of a proverb is always motivated. The loss of motivation of proverbial content leads to the loss of the proverb itself" (Tarlanov Z. K. Russian proverbs: syntax and poetics. Petrozavodsk, 1999, p. 39). So, among the sayings that have gone into the passive reserve, we can include the proverb "Yell - do not play the pipe". In the minds of Russian people today, the verb yell is primarily associated with the colloquial designation of a loud cry. The proverb initially compared playing the duda, a musical instrument, not with a loud (and, apparently, unpleasant) sound, but with the hard work of a farmer: yelling meant "plowing".
The proverb "Smoking is not smoking, so that the horns are in the ground" can also be misinterpreted by modern native speakers of the Russian language, since smoking colloquially means " smoking, taking a drag on a cigarette, cigarette, etc.". In the XIX century, one of the meanings of the verb to smoke, a member of the specific pair to smoke-to smoke, was " to get drunk"thus, smoking was synonymous with the verbs carouse, feast. In both of these examples, we are dealing with the loss of one of the homonyms and therefore a false interpretation of the proverbial image.
But not only words with homonyms could leave the active stock, for example: "Who builds, and who dawns" (ruins); "Take your time
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to weave, look in the berdo "(part of the loom); "Any brashno (food, food) larynx will judge", etc.
The meaning of the proverb "Sang like a mosquito, and sat down like a tomar" is almost completely unclear, only an appeal to dialect speech clarifies the meaning of the phrase. In the "Explanatory Dictionary" of V. I. Dahl with the Siberian mark, it is indicated that this word serves as the name of an arrow with a blunt bone tip, used for hunting sable, marten, ermine (Dahl V. I. Explanatory Dictionary of the living Great Russian language: In 4 volumes, Moscow, 1984. Vol. IV. P. 414; further only volume I page).
Obviously, the image of the above proverb is created on the juxtaposition of the thin squeak of a mosquito and the defeat of an arrow. The reason for confusing the arrow with a mosquito, apparently, was the high-pitched soft sound they made in flight. A mosquito flies, lands on the body of an animal or person and bites. The arrow flies and reaches the target-the victim that it hits. The proverb expresses the idea that a very harmless beginning of an action does not correspond to its dramatic conclusion, but because of the ambiguity of the word tomar, it was almost never used in speech. It may be true that the saying was never included in the circle of units of the literary language, but existed only in the dialect, from which it was drawn by V. I. Dahl.
The fate of such turns recorded by V. I. Dahl is similar, as: "They beat the windlass and tell you to eat conifers"; "For service - ispolat, for guilt-potazat"; "Sorochi not sorochi, but without a ruble to be"; "Kubra on Kubra soup cooked, and, having come, Vakula yes vyhlebal" (there are also variants in which instead of the name Vavila there are common nouns kubra, bukara, and the verb vyhlebala is used in them in the form of a feminine gender); "Get lost, pletyukha, and with the edge"; "By the beard you would be in the water." It is easier for others to restore the internal form, which means that the meaning of the first three proverbs is understood. In V. I. Dahl we read: Zawek - "nape, neck, nape" (1,561); conifer - " something coniferous, from a resinous, needle-like tree "(IV, 545). So the proverbs are about the life of a forced poor man who is beaten and forced to live half-starved.
In the second proverb, there are now uncommon borrowing from the Greek language ispolat - " praise, glory "(II, 55) and outdated potazat - "to beat, beat, drag; <...> to scold, scold" (III, 352). Consequently, the proverb recommends giving a person what they deserve; for a good service - to praise, and for a negligent one - to punish.
Shift - "scratch your tongue, talk sharply" (IV, 275). Then "Sorochi not sorochi, and without the ruble to be "means" do not argue reason, and the money will have to give."
In relation to the saying "Kubra on Kubra soup cooked, and came Vakula (kubra, bukara), yes vyhlebal" you can give a few suggestions-
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false etymologies in accordance with the marked lexical variation of its existence. Common in the interpretation of all options is the main thing: someone deprived the other (s) of what was expected, using what was not intended for him. In its purest form, this interpretation has a variant with the name Vakula. The word kubra is recorded by the scientist as Novgorod "naughty, prankster, prankster". In the same article, there is a verb kubrit - " kur. carouse, get drunk "(II, 210). Therefore, in the variant "... having come, kubra yes sipped "you can see the shade:" another reveller drank something that was not intended for him."
It is more difficult to extract the exact interpretation of the variant with the word bukarah. Dahl does not have an interpretation of it, but there is a similar and possibly related buka, which the lexicographer described as" unsociable, bearish, unapproachable, harsh, and sullen " (1: 138). It could be assumed that in bukar-ar (a) acts as a sign, cf. beetle-zhuchara, wolf-volchara, but the lack of alternation-k- /h - in the word bukar is doubtful. "Dictionary of Russian folk dialects" records the verb bukarit, one of the meanings of which is "to be angry (about animals)" (Dictionary of Russian folk dialects. Issue 3. L., 1968. P. 263). In this situation, bukar can mean an angry, angry, like an animal, person, then a new connotation is added to the general meaning of the proverb: someone wanted to go out and have fun with his friend, but suddenly they were interrupted by someone else, aggressive.
However, the interpretation of both of the latter variants contradicts the form of the predicate: it appears in the form of the feminine gender, as, by the way, and the verb varila, consistent with the subject kubra. It seems reasonable to assume that the words kubra and bukar appear in the proverb with the meaning of collectivity. In the Russian language, the idea of a group of people is often embodied in feminine nouns in-a (- I), regardless of whether they are originally Russian or borrowed: detvora, shushera, nemchura, etc. Some of them were created suffix-free from the verbs: team команд to command, obsluga ← to serve, servant ← to serve, security ← guard. Probably, the nouns considered here could have followed a similar path: kubrit "carouse, get drunk" → kubra "carouse, drunkenness "→ kubra" participants in carousing, drinking parties"; bukarit "get angry" → bukar "anger, discontent" → bukar "angry, angry people, brawlers". This explanation removes the contradiction between the interpretation of the meaning of the proverb and the meaning of the predicate form. And the variant with the name Vavila, apparently, appeared later than the others, when the collectivity of the nouns kubra and bukar ceased to be realized.
The obscuration of the internal form can also be caused by an extralinguistic factor - the fact that a significant part of native speakers
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she has lost the relevant background knowledge of the cultural plan, or even initially did not have it. For example, the lexically and logically clear proverb "By the beard he should have been in the water long ago" is still incomprehensible to a modern native Russian speaker. The second, more extensive version given by V. I. Dahl does not clarify the meaning either: "You should be in the water on your beard, but they don't let you have a mustache."
To understand the meaning of this proverb, we have to turn to the role of the beard and moustache in the schismatic faith. It was these details of the male appearance, as the schismatics believed, that allowed the believer to have the image and likeness of the Lord. It was no accident that the following saying was common among them:"The image of God is in the beard, and the likeness is in the moustache." With reverence for the face of the Savior, they considered: "To shave a beard is to spoil the image of Christ." From their point of view, the presence of a beard served as a kind of pass to the Kingdom of heaven: "Without a beard, they will not be allowed to enter paradise", and since eternal life after death is more expensive than temporary stay among people, the schismatics preferred to sacrifice their lives rather than lose their beard: "Cut our heads, do not touch our beards".
The beauty of the appearance was associated with a mustache and beard of a special shape, because the devil also had the same attributes of appearance. Therefore, the proverb "Apostolic beard, and the devil's whisker" appeared.
And, obviously, the meaning of the proverb "By the beard you should be in the water, but the mustache does not let go" is this: with a beard you resemble John the Baptist (therefore, you claim to be treated as a saint), but the mustache betrays your devilish nature. The proverb describes a hypocrite, a pretender, whose speech is at odds with the deeds-remember also the proverb " According to the beard of Abraham, and according to the deeds of a Boor."
So, the appeal to the Russian proverbs presented in the collection of V. M. Dahl convinces: one of the main reasons for their obsolescence is the loss of relevance of images that create the basis for the internal form of these sayings. Some of them are not only unknown, but also simply incomprehensible to native speakers of Russian due to the fact that the words included in them are either completely lost in the national language, or exist only within dialects.
Rostov-on-Don
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