I started reading Anna Karenina in Russian, and was pleasantly surprised to find I could actually read it; well, 80% anyway, good enough for basic comprehension. Clearly, I’m missing a lot of the subtlety, but you only learn this by repeated applications of Tolstoy. However, I did run across something that completely baffled me, that is: “точно–с“, “я–с“ and “слушаю–с“.
I couldn’t find anything in my grammar book, so I turned to my former Russian teacher Tonya Sergieff, who very kindly enlightened me. Tonya wrote:
“-c” is an abbreviation for “сударь“–”sir”. It was used fairly commonly in the 19 century in token of respect when socially inferior people were addressing their superiors.
Now it makes sense! “точно–с” = “precisely, sir” “я–с” = “I, sir” and “слушаю–с” = “I’m listening, sir”.
Thank you, Tonya!
I’m currently reading this book:
http://books.google.com/books?id=wLmoHsxQ8j0C
and there’s like a ton of annotations in there, explaining various Russian language “oddities”. E.g. in the first story, which is Пушкин’s Станцпонный смотритель (hope the spelling is correct, I don’t have the book around here), she explains that Russians have a lot of words for various means of transportation — various sleds, carriages, etc. (The same thing is apparently true for ships, by the way, as my teacher told me.) This -с thing is explained there, too.
Very interesting reading, and the Russian part is printed with accents, which is priceless for me at this point on the learning curve. Much better than two Russian/Czech dual-language books that I’ve read before that!
Hello Petr. Thanks for pointing this out! I have this book, but hadn’t ever noticed that particular annotation. It is an interesting note made there that “when used among equals, or from a superior person to an inferior one, it acquired an ironical accent”. Yes, the accents are indeed very handy, and also the use of “ё”. Thanks again for your observation!
I read Anna Karenina in English many years ago and enjoyed it. If that was a picture of a lake in Latvia, it’s no wonder our grandparents were proud to have come from there.