pdf, htm and Russian; why the Czechs hated Russian

Dear Students,

In posting my assignments for the coming week I notice that I am wavering between htm word-built files and pdf files. Both work fine, of course, and both print out well, but the pdf is fully formatted to the page. I am sometimes adapting old files from earlier versions of my courses, which means that either I rewrite the old file, be it pdf or web page, or give it to you unchanged but with commentary. I begin to feel that the old files all ought to be rewritten and revised for dates as well as commentary and analysis.  I am still getting into the swing of the semester, as you can see.

In fact I dislike and distrust Word and write all my non-teaching documents in Mellel (a Tel Aviv-based application) and then pdf-them, as the internet does not understand Mellel. So I guess the answer for me is to make everything pdf and rewrite all my past pedagogical work.

I often meet students who have had excellent high school Russian backgrounds, sometimes as many as three years. Preparation of this thoroughness is much rarer in Russian than in familiar Western languages, but it can be an excellent foundation. Meeting every day and speaking the target language is the ideal. It is strange to think that, for example, a student with two years of high school Russian would be placed in 102 — meaning she will have to wait for Spring to enroll; a student with three years of Russian should surely go into 203, one would hope or expect, but it's not always the case. Connor in my 203 has been a year away from Russian, but I can see his preparation was very solid and that he is quick with languages. Everyone is different. A great high school teacher can make a big difference. 

One has to want to learn a language, so much work goes into it. In Soviet Czechoslovakia, Russian was required and few people but linguists, Slavists, readers of literature, and other intellectuals really wanted to learn Russian; it was roundly despised by the hoi polloi because it stood for the occupying nation and its language of hegemony. (See Jan Sverak's Czech movie Kolja.) Some witty jokes circulated mocking Russian: куда вы идёте? 'where are you going?' was facetiously translated into Czech as kam jdete, idiote? 'where are you going, idiot?', and я забыл свою домашнюю работу 'I have forgotten my homework' became Czech zabil jsem pana domácího 'I have murdered the concierge' (see the retro movie Rebelové). 

It is the case that neighboring language groups, like neighboring villages, tend to despise one another. The folk etymology for Budweiser, coming from the name of a Bohemian village, is 'there will be more of them (people)' — probably the linguistic invention of people from the next town.