Month: February 2023

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That’s what it turned out to be // That’s what it turned out to be

– Nikolai, what is your job?

– I’m a locksmith.

– Oh my, that must be insanely interesting! All these rasps… cores… chisels… flange fittings… flaring… thread for couplings… locking with a gauge plug… You know, I don’t understand any of this…

“And if there’s but one goal

In joy and in sorrow,

Then he who did not falter

And did not abandon cheer,

Will find his own land.”

It was a good concert

Do you remember, there was such a lensa

You need to follow this dog around all day with a camera

Sometimes he wants to be photographed, sometimes he doesn’t

Ah, just the day before yesterday it was 26 degrees…

Tomorrow I need to choose one of these books, and I’m torn which one. This is my plan for the year. Who has read what?

I encountered an interesting and quite complicated topic. There are three words: motherland, fatherland, homeland. Translations—motherland, fatherland.

It turns out that “motherland” is a pseudo-Russianism, existing only at the intersection of Russian and English languages.

The word it translates, “motherland,” generally corresponds to the English “homeland” in how and when it is used—except that it is used slightly more often, so sometimes when translating from Russian to English, it is better to rephrase it as something like “our land” or “his/her native country” depending on the context.

The most important thing is that this is not a special term for Russia; it can refer to anyone’s motherland anywhere.

So where did the word “motherland” come from?

Apparently, it was a rare English synonym for “motherland” that then became associated with Russia thanks to the images of the Motherland during World War II; the expression, in turn, became a method by which domestic Soviet wartime propaganda solved the problem of addressing pre-Soviet patriotism without mentioning the country as “Russia.”

From here arose an interesting thing: “motherland” began to be taught in Russian schools as a common English equivalent to “motherland,” along with other quirks of Russian school English, such as “library named after Lenin” (for what in more authentic English would simply be “The Lenin Library”).

And then it was re-imported into the English language as this illusory “word that Russians use to denote Russia as a homeland,” which, again, has no real equivalent in the Russian language.

As a result, you will hear both Russians and non-Russians use “motherland” in English, but the meaning isn’t quite the same.

A Russian using “motherland” is likely a beginner to intermediate English speaker, mistakenly thinking that it is a common English equivalent for “motherland,” i.e., “Homeland.” Similarly, a beginner English speaker whose native language is German might call a mobile phone a “handy.”

Ultimately, “motherland” was born from interlingual confusion, perceived in Russia as a common English word denoting the homeland, and outside Russia as the equivalent of some special Russian word that does not actually exist.

By the way, the word “fatherland” is generally associated with the Nazi regime in English-speaking environments, where it was used particularly often.

(Learned from Reddit)

Interestingly, only 1.3% of the U.S. population is engaged in farming. These farms produce goods worth $200 billion. Out of that, $177 billion is for export. In other words, 1.3% of the population feeds themselves and the remaining 98.7% and there’s still an eightfold reserve left.

I looked at the data for Belarus – 7.2% of the population exports goods worth $6.6 billion. In Russia in 2015, it was 9% and $25 billion.