 In a Word |
You're lying in bed in your freshly laundered pajamas, and your lovely Russian-language wife enters the bedroom, kisses you below your receding hairline and then, just as she is about to step out, says "Bye U Bye" with the utmost of feminine affection. The infantile smile fades from your chubby face and rekindled memories of childhood bliss shatter in despair: Where is she going at this time of night?
Relax, cowboy! "Bye-U-Bye" is not a mispronunciation of the phrase we use in English to part with children (i.e. "Bye Bye") but the Russian equivalent of the equally kiddy phrase "Nighty Night." For you Russian speakers, this phrase should not be shortened to simply "Nighty," which in English is short for "nightgown" or Russian "penyuar." If you repeat this word in succession after lights out (Nighty Nighty), someone might think you have a fetish for negligee or - if you're a female speaker - that you are pestering your bedmate for a sexy new nightgown. A really sexy "penyuar" would be called in English a "Naughty Nighty."
But let's assume for a moment - purely theoretically of course - that the loveable lass described above is not your wife but someone you invited home late night from the Internet cafe to show off your new sheets. Remember the SandMan of English fairy tales who puts children to sleep by dusting their eyes with magical grains? Well, in the former Soviet Union this character is all too real and usually a female who uses a much more modern substance to achieve the same goal. She is referred to as a "Klofelinshchitsa", or (excuse the creative translation) "Miss Mickey Finn". You don't have to leave her anything under your pillow. She or the two guys who she calls up to drop by your flat while you're out for the count will find everything they need on their own.
Whether early Slavs also had their version of the Sandman or it is simply a coincidence, modern Russian words that relate to "sleep" use the same root for "sprinkle." For example, "On prosypaetsya" could mean a man is waking up (to find his flat cleaned out) or that some powdery substance (like a tranquilizer) is sprinkling from a packet (and possibly into one's drink). Of course, the usual word for slipping one a Mickey Finn would be "Nasypat," but you get the idea.
Another sprinkle-sleep combination begins with the prefix "U": "Ya Usypil yevo" means "I lulled him to sleep", and "Ya Usypal yevo senom" means "I strewed straw on his body," but "Ya Usnul" means "I fell asleep." Thus, using a single linguistic root, a Russian speaker can take you out of action, bury you, and go home to get some sleep before thinking up an alibi for the police in the morning. Now that's efficiency!
If our treacherous "Klofelinshchitsa" oversleeps after a hard night's work, the word "perespat" is used. If, on the other hand her victim cleverly avoids drinking the Mickey Finn, and she ends up having to do what he invited her home for in the first place, the word "perespat" would nevertheless be used to mean what is called in English a "one-night stand."
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Read also previous issue' articles:
Neither a Borrower
Just Don't
Hot or Not
Animal Farm
Hi on Health!
Just Beat It
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