I woke up last night wanting a drink of water, and it popped into my head to wonder what the Russian word for 'thirsty' was. I drew a blank, which alarmed me. 'Hungry' is golodnyi, 'thirsty' is... ? It wasn't just that the word temporarily escaped me, which happens now and then; it was as if there were empty space where the neurons containing that word should be, which was alarming. I got my drink and headed for the bookshelves. It turns out (as I knew perfectly well, somewhere in there) that there is no Russian word for 'thirsty'; you say you want to drink (which is what came to my mind when I was scrabbling for the adjective: khochetsya pit'). Isn't that an odd asymmetry? 'Hungry' and 'thirsty' seem like such a natural pair; it's like having a word for 'left' but not 'right.' Language is stranger than is dreamt of in Chomsky's philosophy.
Addendum. In the comments section Avva brings up the symmetrical absences of solnechnyi zaichik (meaning 'reflected sunlight (e.g., on the wall)'; the Russian translates to "sun bunny") in English and of "dust bunny" in Russian; for those who read Russian, there is a discussion of the subject in progress at his site.
I'll have you know I was flabbergasted to find out English has no single word or convenient idiom for "solnechnyj zaichik".
Posted by: Avva at December 6, 2002 12:56 PMTrue, and it's worse than the situation I described, because of course Russian handles thirst perfectly well, just without an adjective, whereas in English you point and say "Look at the... that... those.... Isn't it lovely!"
Posted by: language hat at December 6, 2002 03:06 PMWould one of you kindly make an attempt (however feeble) at "solnechnyj zaichik" for those of us out of the loop?
Posted by: Songdog at December 6, 2002 06:05 PMSorry about that! Solnechnyye zaichiki are bits of reflected sunlight.
Posted by: language hat at December 6, 2002 06:16 PMWell, English got its revenge with "dust bunnies". Although perhaps they're somewhat less lovely to look at ;)
Posted by: Avva at December 7, 2002 11:04 AMI should explain that solnechnyi is the adjective from solntse 'sun' and zaichik is a diminutive of zayats 'hare' (stress on the first syllable in all these words), so that the English equivalent would be "sun bunnies." Alas, it doesn't exist in this context.
Posted by: language hat at December 8, 2002 09:29 AMToo bad; I quite like it. Thanks for the translation!
Posted by: Songdog at December 9, 2002 02:11 PMMe too. Hey, let's start using it! Whenever you see them, say to the person you're with "Look at those sun bunnies!" We could end up introducing a valuable new lexical item into English, as well as making it slightly easier to learn Russian...
Posted by: language hat at December 9, 2002 03:58 PMI could swear I've read the word "sunshard" to refer to broken-up (but not diffracted) sunlight. Can't name a source, though (could even be a fever-dream).
Colloquial Russian doesn't have a word for thirsty. Literary Russian has zhazhdushchiy and alchnyy.
Yesterday I discovered a 1960s song about Brezhnev by the poet-songwriter Yuly Kim, which has the words "Moi brovi zhazhdut krovi" (my eyebrows are thirsty for blood); it will be somewhat awkward, but you could also say "Moi brovi, zhazhdushchiye krovi, ochen' pyshnyye" (my eyebrows, which are thirsty for blood, are very luxurious).
I think you can also say "alchnyy do slavy" (thirsty for fame) and other figurative expressions with alchnyy/alchnaya/alchnoye/alchnyye.
That was me.
Posted by: Ilya Vinarsky at January 5, 2003 12:28 PMAnother odd assymetry:
Russian has a native Slavic word for both the male and the female sexual organ. English has a native Germanic word only for the female one.
asymmetry
Posted by: Ilya Vinarsky at January 8, 2003 02:11 PM"Cock" and "prick" are both native Germanic; I think the difference is rather that Russian has a single (colloquial) word whereas English (for whatever reasons) has several, none clearly preponderant. But in general Russian has a much richer stratum of obscene language than English.
Posted by: language hat at January 8, 2003 03:27 PMThe thing I'm still confused by in French is how there can be no word for "kick" or "to kick". "To kick" is "donner un coup de pied".
Posted by: Michael Davies at January 15, 2003 01:53 AM