Tag: Culture

Gender Stereotypes in Global Symbolism: A Russian TV Perspective | August 15 2025, 14:43

They say this is broadcast on central TV in Russia. I don’t know what they mean by that, but here’s what I thought: people in the clip represent countries, and their gender choice is not random. When they want to depict Russia as a person, they somehow always choose a girl in a kokoshnik, and not a church-going man with a beard like Rasputin or Ivan the Terrible. You might say, well, the word “Russia” is feminine, just as the word America is, but when depicting America, you get some Superman or at least a capitalist like Uncle Sam. Yes, you might say, there’s the Statue of Liberty. True, but in such clips for some reason they don’t put a girl with a seven-point crown as America, and a warrior on a horse as Russia. It’s the other way around.

Though, one would think, girls shown in such a position in commercials are clearly in a submissive role to someone bigger and stronger. It’s interesting if such a clip was made in the USA, it would surely be the opposite — the USA would definitely be represented by a strong woman in a seven-point crown (not a girl), and Russia by some aged man, definitely in a warm tulup and a hat with ear flaps. But surely there would have arisen the question “who then leads whom” and the clip would just not have been released.

One might also recall that Russia is called “Mother Russia” (motherland), whereas for example in Germany it is established as Fatherland (Vaterland). France is definitely associated with the feminine — often depicted as Marianne (La Marianne), the United Kingdom symbolized by the figure of Britannia. Ukraine is definitively feminine, and sadly, the country currently has a serious gender imbalance. As for Mexico, it would surely be depicted as a man with a guitar.

From Miniare to Miniature: The Evolution of Book Illustration | August 14 2025, 14:52

How interesting, the word “Miniature” turns out not to derive from minimus (Latin), meaning “smallest”, but from miniare, meaning “to color with cinnabar or red lead”.

The word is connected to the practice of book illustration in the Middle Ages. You have probably seen images of medieval manuscripts with dense black text and a large, decorated initial letter. In the earliest bound books, they were not so ornate—just a big letter, colored red to stand out. In Italy, the verb miniare referred to the stage of painting red initials, usually left until last, and the art of illustration itself was called miniatura.

Over time, these initial decorations became increasingly complex, evolving into fully developed scenes with little figures, animals, and buildings. But, of course, since the scenes had to fit into the corner of a page, they were very small. And therefore, because a miniature in a book was like a tiny painting, the meaning of the word expanded—it came to denote any small version of something larger.

Nostalgic Games of Paper Battles and Guesses | August 14 2025, 12:45

I remembered how many hours I spent in class playing various games on paper like “Battleship”. So much paper was used up in childhood for all that! Everyone knows Battleship, but can you recognize the games in the attached pictures? There were more games, but I think I only played these. There was also a game where you see who can make more words from the letters of one long word, but that’s really for introverts 🙂

Exploring Must-Have Russian Books for Science and Art Lovers | August 10 2025, 14:01

Can you recommend some interesting books to bring (or order) from Russia to the USA, considering my interests (popular science, primarily local non-translations from English, as I can read the originals in English, and perhaps drawing) and various other intriguing things (see part of my collection)?

Exploring the Intrigue of 657 New Words in the Russian Orthographic Dictionary | August 08 2025, 18:46

657 new words were added to the RAN orthographic dictionary — for instance, “smoothie,” “TikToker,” “powerbank,” and “SVO.” I decided to check out their complete list. Let’s head to the Akademos website and type “2025” in the search.

(Putin’s advisor wrote that “SVO” is correct, but anglicisms are unnecessary. In my opinion, anglicisms are perfectly fine, but with everything else — they truly break the Russian language. Check it out)

Noble-metallic, Bodrich-style and Radimich-style, Byzantinizing, suitable-for-vine-growing, humanizing, icy-frosty, two-strap, Dregovichanka, jacaranda, children-foreign-phoned, “Devo: Virgin Mary Devo” (that’s an entry in the dictionary), fear-of-women, back-of-the-chair, koin, literature-centricity, petty-little-thing (is it describing a woman or a coin?), over-door-woman, Nibelung-esque, nonillion (I guess needed for fining Google), deaeration, Palaiologos and Pantalone, varicolored, petrosphere, to preexist, family-preservation, strongly-fleeing and moderately-fleeing, scrambled.

Interestingly, there is an entry “firmly promised,” written with a space inside.

And there is Sloboda Ukraine there.

There’s offline-messenger! and proxy-list. And torrent-client.

In 2025 “FIFA (International Federation of Association Football)” and “Dictionary of Modern Russian Literary Language” were added to the orthographic dictionary. There’s separately, “Doomsday: Doomsday plane”

There’s taphophilia — a fascination with cemeteries.

And there is philosemitism. As I understand it, it’s the same as Judophilia — manifestations of interest, respect for the Jewish people, their historical significance, and a positive appraisal of the influence of Judaism in history. Where do they even get such words?

Added to the dictionary were west-northwest-er (apparently, a direction slightly west of northwest) and west-southwest-er.

There’s late-developing and later-developing.

If you go on a diet, know that there’s a word for de-fatting. And then there’s a chance that you’ll become an ectomorph — also a word in this dictionary.

There are also drone and pilot-borehole.

Yet among the new words of 2025 there’s “coup d’état”.

Concert Weeks: From Pink Martini to Postmodern Jukebox | July 30 2025, 03:40

I have two weeks of concerts. Today — Pink Martini! Next week Postmodern Jukebox, and this past weekend was a great piano concert (Beethoven, Shostakovich, Chopin, Rachmaninoff at the Washington Piano Festival). Facebook cuts out the sound from concert recordings, so I’m attaching a cool video that’s already been cleared (or missed) by Facebook from some Pink Martini performance, featuring Thomas Lauderdale with Hunter Noack, who is either his wife or husband, and I’ll try to add my own in the comments

Faces of Language: Understanding the Human and Animal “Face” Across Cultures | July 25 2025, 16:35

I read about a fly on my windowsill, it’s a predatory critter, and its face is described on Wikipedia. Just like that, face. It got me thinking, is the word “face” applicable to animals other than humans (let’s skip the discussion of whether the term animal applies to humans). On the same Wikipedia, but on the face page, the face is only human. Yet, it is written that in professional terminology (veterinary, ornithology, entomology) it is quite appropriate to speak of the “facial part of the head” of an animal. For example, ornithologists at Cornell University use the term “face” specifically in descriptions of owls. Well, fine, we have a face, others have a snout. And birds? A snout in feathers? A beak is something else entirely.

In English too, by the way, things are not so simple. Even a cube has faces. In other European languages, the boundary between a human “face” and an animal one is more or less clearly drawn. Italians use faccia only for humans and muso for animals; faccia for a cat or dog would be inappropriate and even offensive. In French, visage usually means “human face,” and for animals, it’s gueule, museau, tête, etc. In Polish, there’s twarz for people and pysk/morda for beasts; moreover, the word morda in relation to a person is a crude insult (and in Russian too, only adding nationality to it). In Scandinavian languages (“ansigt” in Danish, “ansikte” in Swedish) “face” is also almost always human.

There’s also the word “physiognomy.” Interestingly, it only later came to denote a face. Essentially, this word means “the study of facial features to determine character.” It consists of φύσις (physis) – “nature, essence, character” and γνώμων (gnomon) – “indicator, determining.”

And then I remembered the word “unflattering.” Strange word, right? How can a conversation be unflattering? Turns out, its definition is as follows: “not based on flattery, the desire to please someone; impartial, fair.” So formally, Vitsyn could exclaim, “long live the most unflattering court in the world!” I’m not joking, for example, Saltykov-Shchedrin writes: “At the present time, in all corners of Russia, even the most backward people are beginning to recognize the vital need for a lawful and unflattering court.” “I must confess, I was very nervous, handing my brainchild over to the unflattering judgment of the editorial staff” (D. N. Mamin-Sibiriyak, “Features from the Life of Pepko,” 1894).

Actually, an interesting word. In Russian, its only decent synonyms are snout, mug, phiz, physiognomy, dial, and very memorable indecent ones.

Rediscovering Peder Severin Krøyer: The Overlooked Impressionist | July 23 2025, 22:40

I haven’t posted anything about artists in a while. Today, I want to talk about an Impressionist you’ve probably never heard of, yet he deserves to be ranked alongside Degas, Manet, Monet, and Renoir. His name is Peder Severin Krøyer, a Danish painter from the second half of the 19th century.

Interestingly, a film about his wife, Marie Triepcke, was released in 2012. She was considered the most beautiful woman in Europe, and he — at least in Denmark — the most talented painter. She was an artist too, but eventually stopped painting entirely in his shadow. According to some sources, not without the influence of her brilliant husband, who actively convinced Marie of her lack of talent.

Posts like this are grouped under the hashtag #artrauflikes, and on beinginamerica.com in the Art Rauf Likes” section you can find all 152 entries (unlike Facebook, which forgets — or ignores — nearly half of them).