| Author |
Message |
qquito
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 4:05 am
Post subject: Burlack or Boatmen? |
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Hello, all:
The "Volga Boatmen's Song" is a famous Russian song. In the insert of
the CD of the Red Army Choir, the song is alternatively called "The
Volga Burlack's Song".
The "Burlack" does not seem to be an English word. Is it a
transliteration of the Russian word for "boatmen"?
The "boatmen" in the title of the song specifically refers to those men
who, while walking on the banks of the Volga river, pull the ropes that
pull the boat on the surface of the river.
--Roland |
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Skitt
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 5:01 am
Post subject: Re: Burlack or Boatmen? |
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qquito wrote:
| Quote: | Hello, all:
The "Volga Boatmen's Song" is a famous Russian song. In the insert of
the CD of the Red Army Choir, the song is alternatively called "The
Volga Burlack's Song".
The "Burlack" does not seem to be an English word. Is it a
transliteration of the Russian word for "boatmen"?
|
Yes. It is also sometimes transliterated as "burlak".
| Quote: | The "boatmen" in the title of the song specifically refers to those
men who, while walking on the banks of the Volga river, pull the
ropes that pull the boat on the surface of the river.
|
Right.
--
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
www.geocities.com/opus731/ |
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Skitt
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 5:43 am
Post subject: Re: Burlack or Boatmen? |
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Skitt wrote:
| Quote: | qquito wrote:
Hello, all:
The "Volga Boatmen's Song" is a famous Russian song. In the insert of
the CD of the Red Army Choir, the song is alternatively called "The
Volga Burlack's Song".
The "Burlack" does not seem to be an English word. Is it a
transliteration of the Russian word for "boatmen"?
Yes. It is also sometimes transliterated as "burlak".
The "boatmen" in the title of the song specifically refers to those
men who, while walking on the banks of the Volga river, pull the
ropes that pull the boat on the surface of the river.
Right.
|
BTW, the Russian spelling is .
--
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
www.geocities.com/opus731/ |
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Jim Lawton
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 1:09 pm
Post subject: Re: Burlack or Boatmen? |
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On Tue, 11 Oct 2005 16:43:34 -0700, "Skitt" <skitt99@comcast.net> wrote:
| Quote: | Skitt wrote:
qquito wrote:
Hello, all:
The "Volga Boatmen's Song" is a famous Russian song. In the insert of
the CD of the Red Army Choir, the song is alternatively called "The
Volga Burlack's Song".
The "Burlack" does not seem to be an English word. Is it a
transliteration of the Russian word for "boatmen"?
Yes. It is also sometimes transliterated as "burlak".
The "boatmen" in the title of the song specifically refers to those
men who, while walking on the banks of the Volga river, pull the
ropes that pull the boat on the surface of the river.
Right.
BTW, the Russian spelling is .
|
Very nice if you've got the right font - what I'm seeing is, well, maybe you can
see it now, it's like "aOOIAE" with a raft of diacritic marks.
--
Jim
the polymoth |
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Martin Ambuhl
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 1:30 pm
Post subject: Re: Burlack or Boatmen? [UTF-8, was ISO-8859-1, was koi8-r] |
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Jim Lawton wrote:
| Quote: | On Tue, 11 Oct 2005 16:43:34 -0700, "Skitt" <skitt99@comcast.net> wrote:
BTW, the Russian spelling is âÕÒÌÁË.
Very nice if you've got the right font - what I'm seeing is, well, maybe you can
see it now, it's like "aOOIAE" with a raft of diacritic marks.
|
Silly Skitt posted using koi8-r; you used ISO-8859-1. Does your Forte
Agent trialware do better with UTF-8?
> BTW, the Russian spelling is Бурлак. |
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Jim Lawton
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 2:22 pm
Post subject: Re: Burlack or Boatmen? [UTF-8, was ISO-8859-1, was koi8-r] |
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On Wed, 12 Oct 2005 07:30:05 GMT, Martin Ambuhl <mambuhl@earthlink.net> wrote:
| Quote: | Jim Lawton wrote:
On Tue, 11 Oct 2005 16:43:34 -0700, "Skitt" <skitt99@comcast.net> wrote:
BTW, the Russian spelling is .
Very nice if you've got the right font - what I'm seeing is, well, maybe you can
see it now, it's like "aOOIAE" with a raft of diacritic marks.
Silly Skitt posted using koi8-r; you used ISO-8859-1. Does your Forte
Agent trialware do better with UTF-8?
|
Possibly - and you're quite right, it's probably the encoding and not the font.
The rewards I would get from seeing the occasional bit of Russian or Greek
correctly rendered would not recompense me for having to do even one more
technical tweek.
--
Jim
the polymoth |
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Wayne Brown
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 5:59 pm
Post subject: Re: Burlack or Boatmen? |
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qquito wrote:
| Quote: | Hello, all:
The "Volga Boatmen's Song" is a famous Russian song. In the insert of
the CD of the Red Army Choir, the song is alternatively called "The
Volga Burlack's Song".
The "Burlack" does not seem to be an English word. Is it a
transliteration of the Russian word for "boatmen"?
The "boatmen" in the title of the song specifically refers to those
men who, while walking on the banks of the Volga river, pull the
ropes that pull the boat on the surface of the river.
--Roland
|
The problem is that "boatman" probably isn't an adequate translation of the
Russian word "burlak," and the CD makers felt the need to come up with an
addition. A boatman in English is usually a man who operates, works on,
rents or sells boats. The Russian word "burlak" started out in the 16th
century designating a peasant who wandered through Russian in search of odd
jobs. Later it came to be used for peasants who found jobs on rivers,
including work *on* boats. But then, between 1870 and 1873, Ilya Repin
painted his famous picture "Burlaki na Volge" (Burlaks on the Volga)
portraying laborers who *pulled* boats up the Volga. It's that picture that
comes to mind when Russians hear the word "burlak" because every Russian
schoolchild has seen it; therefore, dictionaries published in Russia have
often translated the word as "barge hauler," which in my opinion sounds odd
in English. The Russian title of the song is "Ey, ukhnyem." "Ukhnut'" is a
difficult word to translate; in this sense it designates the sound of
exertion one might utter when pulling something very heavy. My rough
translation of the Russian title would be "Hey, Heave Ho!" The drudgery of
the burlaks is mirrored in the Russian idiom "tyanut' lyamku," literally to
pull a strap, which means to toil or to drudge. "Lyamka" is the strap the
"burlaks" used to pull boats. Those straps are clearly visible in Repin's
painting hanging in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. Here's a link to
the painting:
http://tinyurl.com/9ceyq
Regards, ----- WB. |
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Mike Lyle
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 9:38 pm
Post subject: Re: Burlack or Boatmen? |
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Wayne Brown wrote:
[...]
| Quote: | The problem is that "boatman" probably isn't an adequate
translation
of the Russian word "burlak,"
[...]
peasants who found jobs on rivers, including work *on* boats. But
then, between 1870 and 1873, Ilya Repin painted his famous picture
"Burlaki na Volge" (Burlaks on the Volga) portraying laborers who
*pulled* boats up the Volga. It's that picture that comes to mind
when Russians hear the word "burlak" because every Russian
schoolchild has seen it; therefore, dictionaries published in
Russia
have often translated the word as "barge hauler," which in my
opinion
sounds odd in English. The Russian title of the song is "Ey,
ukhnyem." "Ukhnut'" is a difficult word to translate; in this sense
it designates the sound of exertion one might utter when pulling
something very heavy. My rough translation of the Russian title
would
be "Hey, Heave Ho!"
|
Not the traditional "Yo-o, heave-ho!" which accompanied one of my
early piano lessons?
| Quote: | The drudgery of the burlaks is mirrored in the
Russian idiom "tyanut' lyamku," literally to pull a strap, which
means to toil or to drudge. [...]
|
Great stuff! Thanks for the trip. OED has "bargeman": "...one of the
crew or rowers of a barge", which I could happily extend to haulers.
But what occurs to me is that this hauling was done in this country
by _horses_: why did the Russians use humans?
OishT. Salters used to hire out camping punts: bigger than ordinary
ones, they had folding steel supports you could slot in to carry a
canvas cover to sleep or fornicate under. They always issued not just
a pole and a paddle or two, but also a tow-line with a padded loop at
the end to put over your shoulder and under your waterside arm.
--
Mike. |
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John_Kane@tricolour.queen
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 9:54 pm
Post subject: Re: Burlack or Boatmen? |
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Mike Lyle wrote:
| Quote: | Wayne Brown wrote:
[...]
The problem is that "boatman" probably isn't an adequate
translation
of the Russian word "burlak,"
[...]
peasants who found jobs on rivers, including work *on* boats. But
then, between 1870 and 1873, Ilya Repin painted his famous picture
"Burlaki na Volge" (Burlaks on the Volga) portraying laborers who
*pulled* boats up the Volga. It's that picture that comes to mind
when Russians hear the word "burlak" because every Russian
schoolchild has seen it; therefore, dictionaries published in
Russia
have often translated the word as "barge hauler," which in my
opinion
sounds odd in English. The Russian title of the song is "Ey,
ukhnyem." "Ukhnut'" is a difficult word to translate; in this sense
it designates the sound of exertion one might utter when pulling
something very heavy. My rough translation of the Russian title
would
be "Hey, Heave Ho!"
Not the traditional "Yo-o, heave-ho!" which accompanied one of my
early piano lessons?
The drudgery of the burlaks is mirrored in the
Russian idiom "tyanut' lyamku," literally to pull a strap, which
means to toil or to drudge. [...]
Great stuff! Thanks for the trip.
|
Yes that was most interesting. Thanks
| Quote: | OED has "bargeman": "...one of the
crew or rowers of a barge", which I could happily extend to haulers.
But what occurs to me is that this hauling was done in this country
by _horses_: why did the Russians use humans?
|
Probably for any number of reasons but some that appear likely are:
A) Men are cheaper than horses? Unless they were actual serfs there
would be no capital cost.
B) Reduced maintanence costs. Horses eat a lot, don't do their own
cooking, need drivers, and skilled tradesmen such as farriers, and
harness makers. The Burlaks can forage and feed themselves and so on.
C) Probably no need to maintain the human workforce over the winter
whereas buying and disposing of large numbers of horses each season
would likely be a logistical nightmare yet maintaining teams over the
winter would be costly in supplies and manpower. Remember Russian
rivers will freeze for months each winter and one is likely to have
little else to do with a herd of heavy workhorses in the winter. In, I
assume, the UK this is not such a problem.
Clip ----------
John Kane
Kingston ON |
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Skitt
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 11:24 pm
Post subject: Re: Burlack or Boatmen? |
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Wayne Brown wrote:
| Quote: | qquito wrote:
The "Volga Boatmen's Song" is a famous Russian song. In the insert of
the CD of the Red Army Choir, the song is alternatively called "The
Volga Burlack's Song".
The "Burlack" does not seem to be an English word. Is it a
transliteration of the Russian word for "boatmen"?
The "boatmen" in the title of the song specifically refers to those
men who, while walking on the banks of the Volga river, pull the
ropes that pull the boat on the surface of the river.
The problem is that "boatman" probably isn't an adequate translation
of the Russian word "burlak," and the CD makers felt the need to come
up with an addition. A boatman in English is usually a man who
operates, works on, rents or sells boats. The Russian word "burlak"
started out in the 16th century designating a peasant who wandered
through Russian in search of odd jobs. Later it came to be used for
peasants who found jobs on rivers, including work *on* boats. But
then, between 1870 and 1873, Ilya Repin painted his famous picture
"Burlaki na Volge" (Burlaks on the Volga) portraying laborers who
*pulled* boats up the Volga. It's that picture that comes to mind
when Russians hear the word "burlak" because every Russian
schoolchild has seen it; therefore, dictionaries published in Russia
have often translated the word as "barge hauler," which in my opinion
sounds odd in English. The Russian title of the song is "Ey,
ukhnyem." "Ukhnut'" is a difficult word to translate; in this sense
it designates the sound of exertion one might utter when pulling
something very heavy. My rough translation of the Russian title would
be "Hey, Heave Ho!" The drudgery of the burlaks is mirrored in the
Russian idiom "tyanut' lyamku," literally to pull a strap, which
means to toil or to drudge. "Lyamka" is the strap the "burlaks" used
to pull boats. Those straps are clearly visible in Repin's painting
hanging in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. Here's a link to the
painting: http://tinyurl.com/9ceyq
Regards, ----- WB.
|
I might add that in Latvia the word "burlaks" is used as a very derogatory
term -- something loosely meaning a "despicable low-life, given to evil
deeds".
--
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
www.geocities.com/opus731/ |
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Mike Lyle
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2005 11:59 pm
Post subject: Re: Burlack or Boatmen? |
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John_Kane@tricolour.queensu.ca wrote:
| Quote: | Mike Lyle wrote:
[...]
OED has "bargeman": "...one of the
crew or rowers of a barge", which I could happily extend to
haulers.
But what occurs to me is that this hauling was done in this
country
by _horses_: why did the Russians use humans?
Probably for any number of reasons but some that appear likely are:
A) Men are cheaper than horses? [...].
B) Reduced maintanence costs. [...]
C) Probably no need to maintain the human workforce over the winter
whereas buying and disposing of large numbers of horses each season
would likely be a logistical nightmare yet maintaining teams over
the
winter would be costly in supplies and manpower. Remember Russian
rivers will freeze for months each winter and one is likely to have
little else to do with a herd of heavy workhorses in the winter.
In,
I assume, the UK this is not such a problem.
|
I find the winter down-time idea very persuasive, and I hadn't
thought of it. Thanks.
--
Mike. |
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Don Aitken
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2005 12:39 am
Post subject: Re: Burlack or Boatmen? |
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On Wed, 12 Oct 2005 16:38:44 +0100, "Mike Lyle"
<mike_lyle_uk@REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk> wrote:
| Quote: | Great stuff! Thanks for the trip. OED has "bargeman": "...one of the
crew or rowers of a barge", which I could happily extend to haulers.
But what occurs to me is that this hauling was done in this country
by _horses_: why did the Russians use humans?
The use of horses dates from the construction of the canals, with |
their nice horse-friendly towpaths. Barge-hauling on rivers, which
goes back several centuries further, was traditionally by gangs of
men. This continued well into the 19th century on the Severn; in 1803
there were 150 men so employed between Bewdley and Coalbrookdale
alone. Telford's pro-canal propaganda laid stress on the advantages of
doing away with "this barbarous and expensive slave-like office".
--
Don Aitken
Mail to the From: address is not read.
To email me, substitute "clara.co.uk" for "freeuk.com" |
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Mike Lyle
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2005 3:07 am
Post subject: Re: Burlack or Boatmen? |
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Don Aitken wrote:
| Quote: | On Wed, 12 Oct 2005 16:38:44 +0100, "Mike Lyle"
mike_lyle_uk@REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk> wrote:
Great stuff! Thanks for the trip. OED has "bargeman": "...one of
the
crew or rowers of a barge", which I could happily extend to
haulers.
But what occurs to me is that this hauling was done in this
country
by _horses_: why did the Russians use humans?
The use of horses dates from the construction of the canals, with
their nice horse-friendly towpaths. Barge-hauling on rivers, which
goes back several centuries further, was traditionally by gangs of
men. This continued well into the 19th century on the Severn; in
1803
there were 150 men so employed between Bewdley and Coalbrookdale
alone. Telford's pro-canal propaganda laid stress on the advantages
of
doing away with "this barbarous and expensive slave-like office".
|
Every time a coconut in this thread! Thanks to you, too.
--
Mike. |
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qquito
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2005 3:27 am
Post subject: Re: Burlack or Boatmen? |
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| Very nice, informative and knowledgeable reply. Many thanks. --Roland |
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Skitt
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2005 3:33 am
Post subject: Re: Burlack or Boatmen? |
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qquito wrote:
| Quote: | Very nice, informative and knowledgeable reply. Many thanks. --Roland
|
Whom are you thanking, and which reply are you referring to?
--
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
www.geocities.com/opus731/ |
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