What's So Funny?

There you are, sitting around the conference table with your Russian colleagues, delighted to find yourself understanding everyone and able to comment without any outrageous grammatical errors. And then, just as you are about to pat yourself on the back, someone says, “Пти́чку жа́лко!” (“I feel sorry for the little birdie!”), everyone laughs, and you have no idea what’s going on.

After declensions, cases, aspect, verbs of motion, pronunciation, and all the other trials of the Russian language, there is one more thing to learn: quotes, jokes and allusions.

Many quotes come from Soviet and Russian movies, like пти́чку жа́лко. That’s from Кавка́зская пле́нница (Prisoner of the Caucasus), said after someone makes a long toast about a bird soaring toward the sun. A young folklorist from Moscow, not used to drinking the local wine, feels sorry for the bird. This movie is also the source of the brilliant and constantly quoted Жить хорошо́, а хорошо́ жить — ещё лу́чше! (Life is good, and living the good life is even better!)

In the business world, you are likely to hear some quotes from Ilf and Petrov’s Двена́дцать Сту́льев (The Twelve Chairs), such as the oft-repeated and very useful: У́тром — де́ньги, ве́чером — стулья! (Money in the morning, chairs in the evening.)  That’s a nice way of saying: I’m not handing over the merchandise until you pay me.   

Or you might hear another business proposal: Бензи́н ваш — иде́и на́ши! (The gas is yours, but the ideas are ours!) This is from another Ilf and Petrov masterpiece, Золото́й Телёнок (The Little Golden Calf). It’s used when someone wants an 80-20 split of profits: you put up the capital for 20 percent and your possible partner puts up nothing but his brain for 80 percent. Crunch the numbers.

In every office there is one person who somehow knows who got a raise, who is cheating on her husband and who is having trouble meeting the mortgage. “Профе́ссия така́я” (That’s the job) someone says, nodding at the assistant to the manager. This is a quote from Служе́бный рома́н (An Office Romance) said by Vera, the director’s secretary, who does, in fact, know everything about everyone.

Бе́лое со́лнце пусты́ни (White Sun of the Desert), a film about a Civil War hero in a mythical almost-Soviet republic on the Caspian Sea, is an excellent source of quotes about East and West, not to mention love of country. This is the source of “Восто́к – де́ло то́нкое,” a phrase that is easy to quote and hard to translate. It means that the East is a place of great subtlety that is not easy for a Westerner to understand. Change the geographical marker and quote it about any country or continent that remains foreign to you. It’s also the source of the phrase “оби́дно за держа́ву” (I feel so bad for my country), said by the very positive hero after turning down a bribe. Now it’s used any time your country does something embarrassing, that is, about 40 times a day all over the world.

You might be surprised to learn that “Извини́те, коль что не так” (Excuse me if I did something wrong) – modernized as Извини́ е́сли что́-то не так – comes from this movie, too. It’s a good thing to say at the end of a boozy party, when you’re not entirely sure you flirted with the right people.

And yet another quote from this movie is the perfect ending to anything, including a column.

Вопро́сы есть? Вопро́сов нет! (Any questions? No questions!)