Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Russian equivalent of 'a songstory' word - Mistakes

Six days ago a proudly stated here about finding an equivalent of "a songstory" word in Russian language. Then I relaxed. But today I woke up with another candidate. You can kill me but I won't be able to remember what did I see there in my dream, but this new word has sat deep in my mind; on my way to work I was trying to remember all those arguments that stood pros for my first variant, and re-read that post of mine upon arrival to the office and now it seems to me that I have found at least three mistakes in my reflections.

1. Somehow I tied myself to "повество-" root that was suggested by the variant found on the Web. Yes, it seems more poetical, more melodious than "сказ-", but both words "повесть" and "рассказ" equally appear to be analogues of "a story".

2. Having once again thoroughly read the English original (as if I didn't do that before!) I understood that my approach of reading the word backwards has changed the essence. Songstory.... First song, then story. "song""story" is what should have been emphasized, and "story""song" is an adjective here. But I emphasized the process of singing, with just a shade of narrative applied. As a result I got "narrative singing", but it should be opposite: a narrative (story) that is being sung.

3. Finally, I suppose I was wrong in introducing the nature of a songstory as "the story finds its meaning (or starts living) when being sung". But we see the pictures as I read the lyrics, don't we?

To be short, I think I've had overphilosophized. I should not have changed anything, I should translate in a simple and easy way. For example:

a song - "песня"
a story - "рассказ", "история".
a songstory - a composite word, two roots used, the latter is the main one (story), the former just defines the nature (song-, as adjective).
"о" and "е" - two connective vowels in Russian. I am not yet sure whether I can successfully use "о", but if "е" is used.... "песн-е-сказ" is what we get.

But some worm is gnawing me: what if I wake up someday next week with another variant?

I need a judge to judge me. Judge would do it better....

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