#russian is like the slavic default and it's fine i guess but it really makes me go :O when i see any other slavic or eastern european chara

[roarinsaurus]

it's so cool to see a character who's czech in stargate atlantis actually. any other show would have that character be russian among the other "default" nationalities like american, british, canadian but apparently they changed zelenka to be czech when they cast david nykl and it's just nice because you don't get to see that often in english media

#jay chatter #russian is like the slavic default and it's fine i guess but it really makes me go :O when i see any other slavic or eastern european chara #zelenka is the only czech character in english tv i know of. #list of hungarian characters is just a bunch of people from a series called underworld and then dracula apparently #i thought he was romanian but okay. most famous hungarian character i know maybe

[fanficclub]

So, I’ve watched Shadow and Bone.

I know there is a book series, and the story is almost surely better there, but I am wary of reading a book about a fictional russian empire right now...

But ignoring all that, let’s talk about the russian and “russian” words in the story!

(spoilers ahead, I suppose)*

First, a mild one, but “Grisha” is a name, and it’s pretty common - a short form of Grigoriy. It’s alright, just a bit amusing)

As we are on topic of names, the surname “Morozova” is perfectly fine. And when you say, for example, “Morozova amplifiers” it sounds natural, because in russian, the words, including surnames, are inflected depending on the question they answer - in this case, “whose?”. The problems begin, when we start using the surname in the default form. You see, in russian, like in many slavic languages (Ukrainian included), all words have a gender: female, male, or neutral. And because the words of a certain gender often have a similar structure, we assign a gender to certain surnames as well. For instance, Kostenko (Shevchenko, Prokopenko) would have no gender, because it ends with -ko, but Ivanov (Trunov, Popov) has a male gender, because of the consonant at the end (not a hard rule). The surnames that are not neutral come in pairs, with a female and a male form:  Ivanova-Ivanov, Trunova-Trunov, Popova-Popov. So when a man has this surname, he gets a male version, and when a woman has it, she gets the female one.        So, back to the book: you probably already guessed, but Morozova is a female surname. When a man has this surname, it becomes Morozov. So, Baghra Morozova and Aleksander Morozov.

Up next, “merzost”. This one is nice, though I don’t know why ancient knowledge of spells would be called  “vileness”, “nastiness”, and “filthiness”. I’m sure it is clear in the books.

Talking about magic, “nichevo’ya” makes only half a sense. “Nichevo” literally means “nothing”, so good here, but “ya” means “I”, and, besides that, you would never put these words in this order, and you would certainly not merge them together in one word. Idk what was the purpose of this addition.

The different Grisha classes only sound vaguely russian, but are not actual words, so I’ll skip them. Perhaps I’ll only say that since they all end in -ki, they are plural: Corporalki, Etherealki, Materialki. So a singular of these would probably be Corporalek or Corporalka - but again, these are not words, so I’m guessing.

”Volcra” is, I think, just a new word. It doesn’t really sound russian. 

I gathered that the First army are often called “otkazatsya”, and I’m not sure why. First of all, it’s not a noun or an adjective - it’s a verb. It means “to refuse/renounce/disavow”. Maybe the point was that they are refused the powers by the universe, but the connection is very shaky. And why a verb?..      They could use, for example, “brosheniy” - meaning “the one that got abandoned”. 

The ship name “Volkvolny” is actually two words: “volk” and “volny”, meaning “the wolf of the waves”. A good name, I think. 

Seeing a guard being called “oprichniki” made me cringe, mostly because it reminded me that Ravka takes after the russian empire (how terrible).

”Kefta” is not a russian word. However there is, I just learned, a Turkish dish called kefta or kefte:) Here, I think the author meant “kofta”, which is a general word for a piece of clothing like a sweater with buttons at the front, but changed one letter for fun. In the show, they kind of look central Asian, so I thought the word is specific, but no. And wouldn’t it be nicer, if Ravka was a country based on central Asia, rather than the empire that occupied it...

These are all words I can remember now, feel free to tell me if I missed something. I am honestly a bit baffled by all the inconsistencies. Could they not hire one(1) russian speaking person to look over the script?

*I am not russian, thankfully, but I live in the territory it former occupied, so I speak the language.

#shadow and bone #grishverse #the grisha trilogy