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Comment by smarx007 | Hacker News Reader

To add a bit more, "svidaniye" means a date, and "Do svidaniya" literally means "till [our next] date". In English, "see you" or "see you later" translates closest to the original phrase in Russian.

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Many indo-european languages use something like "see you again" in their goodbyes. Specifically, notice the V and D from the Proto-Indo-European root "weyd-"[1] meaning "to see":

* arriVeDerci (Italian)

* auf WieDersehen (German)

* ¡hasta la Vista! (Spanish)

* do WiDzenia (Polish)

* do sViDaniya (Russian)

* la reVeDere (Romanian, (because I'm Romanian and it seems like an important language to mention))

[1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur...

wieder means "again" and has nothing to do with sight.

sehen means "to see" and does not have your PIE root.

It's interesting, because "svidanyie" in Russian is probably closely related to "svitani" in Czech, which means "sunrise", nothing else. But more literally "svitani" would probably translate as "meet again". Fascinating how meanings morph and sometimes the original meaning is fairly obfuscated.

Funny, as a Ukrainian I never connected it this way, precisely for the same reason. In Ukrainian, “svitanok” means sunrise, with the root “svit” (world, but also light). In Russian, “svidanie” should have the root “vid” (view, sighting). So, to me, those are words with totally different roots :) https://ru.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/свидание points to https://ru.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/vidět in the etymology, among other things. But your interpretation would have been quite cool, though I don’t meet people often at the sunrise!

you see, "svit" exists in Czech too. It's used mostly as "svit slunce" meaning the light of sun. But then in broader sense "svitit" is a verb meanning "to light" - so it's fairly obvious that "to shine a light" or "a surise" or to "greet someone" are all related to "meet againt" or "see again". It's all variations of the same basically. At least it seems so, I am no linguist.

Linguistic sources say that svet/svit/light/sunrise/world and videt/see/meet have completely different proto-indo-european roots - kweyt and weyd respectively.

So nice theory, but no. “Svid” is not a root here, it’s “s”+”vid”.

interesting, didn't know that! can you point me to those resources to learn more, please? fascinating topic for me.

it's not. it's from "videt'", to see

yeah but it's still probably related. "videt" and "vitat" (to welcome) is probably the same etymological base. and "svitat" is kinda like see again, or welcome again. But yeah, this is diggging kidna deeper in the meaning that you normally don't think of in regular use of our languages.

Because we get to see the Sun again each morning...? (WAG)

svidanie stems from vid, which is a root of "to see".

s-vid... - means completed action, as in "to spot".

...vid-anie - a noun version of the same.

s-vid-anie - an event of managing to see someone/something.

do ... - until ...

Pretty logical, actually.

> In English, "see you" or "see you later" translates closest to the original phrase in Russian.

Often used ironically by movie villains. In English it might almost be taken as a threat.

Doesn't it literally mean "Until we see each other [again]", which is even closer to "See you"?

It does mean exactly that, though not literally (there are only two words in the phrase literally).

Close enough. There are very close matches in Italian ("arrivederci"), French ("au revoir"), Romanian ("la revedere"), but for English these are the closest.

"Do svidaniya" sounds more formal than "See you" though.

That is true, thank you for pointing it out. My personal preference is "vsego Vam dobrogo", which is even more respectful (it translates roughly as "All the kind (best) to You").

I think in general, it's probably best to avoid this kind of etymological explanation of the 'actual meaning' of some word or expression because they tend to obscure the usage and, well, actual actual meaning. Saying 'goodbye' in English doesn't really mean saying 'God be with you' to someone, even though that's what it's originally a contraction of. They're fine as etymology, of course!

>Saying 'goodbye' in English doesn't really mean saying 'God be with you' to someone

except, of course, when it does.

I regularly re-pronounce holiday as holy-day internally, and the same with welcome and well-come; i am, of course, a weirdo.

When I say/hear "do svidanya", I usually don't consciously interpret it as "till next meeting" each time, it's a set phrase and it's usually perceived as a whole, "goodbye". Only you if you put some effort to pay attention to the actual roots that you realize, oh that actually means "till next meeting" (especially since in modern Russian, "svidanye", when used alone, now means "romantic date"). Same with "hello" which literally means "be healthy", it registers as just "hello" in my brain, I don't immediately think "they're wishing me good health". But maybe it's just me.

>except, of course, when it does.

To a good first approximation, zero people mean "god be with you" when they say "goodbye". That might be the etymological origin of the word, but meanings shift over time.

Most people don't become polyglots either, though, so that's not a good measure of the utility. It's not a question of language-learners learning etymology would be useful to the man on the Chatham bus, it's a question of whether it is useful to language-learners.

Knowing the etymology of, e.g., "goodbye" makes it click faster/not be weird when you learn, e.g, that "hello" is "Dia is Muire duit" (God and Mary be with you) in Irish Gaelic.

and putting utility aside almost completely, it’s just pleasing to know things.

except, you know, the person you're conversing with this very moment, so that's a really bad (local) first approximation!

> except, you know, the person you're conversing with this very moment, so that's a really bad (local) first approximation!

Well there's that saying about all models are wrong, and some are just more useful than others.

My country is thankfully becoming more secular as demographics change, so hopefully that first approximation improves over time.

because forgetting things about the only tool we have for communication, imperfect though it is, is always an improvement. How else will we rediscover them badly?

On the contrary, I find etymological explanations often most enlightening. Although, I am fully aware that it might just be an origin of a word or a phrase and not the contemporary meaning. Your argument sounds defeatist to me. To paraphrase it: since the 'actual meaning' alone is not a perfect explanation we should not even try to understand the roots of words and their heritage. Then you can stop understanding the world altogether, because no amount of knowledge will remove all obscurity and contradictions. Yet human knowledge is prospering.

I concur, one can learn a lot about the culture when learning a new language. For example, in Swedish you say hello simply with “hej”. And as you may have guessed, Swedes are not big on introductory formalities even in the business context. On the other hand, German and many other languages have different words for you and You (“du” and “Sie”, pronounced Zie). As one may guess, You do not address unfamiliar people with “du”, there is a process to get to know people to the point when You ask a person if you shall switch to a “first-name basis” (this phrase gives a hint that in English, one uses the last name to address an unfamiliar person instead).

Edit: I was deeply impressed when I saw a photo of one of Einstein’s letters after he migrated to the US. Such a highly accomplished scientist still opened his letters to colleagues with “Sehr geehrter Herr Professor Dr.” (highly esteemed dr. professor, sir). This tells me all I need to know how cultured Einstein was.

Your paraphrase sounds more like some hypothetical argument you'd like to take engage in, not anything I actually wrote.

Well, if that was not your intention, I am sorry. But it was my honest understanding of what you wrote.

As a Russian learner, it seems a bit wrong not to transliterate that as "vsevo Vam drobovo" even though I understand that's not how it's spelled originally. For whatever reason, that's what my brain is expecting.

I actually wanted to write “vsevó Vam dóbrava” (o not under stress often becomes a) but changed it to an grammatical transliteration for some reason.

My favorite "bye" in Russian is "davai" which literally means "give!". Go figure.

"Until we meet again"

Auf Wiedersehen!

Genau! Actually, this perfect duality also extends to other phrases, like “priyatnava appetita”, just like Guten Appetit! At the same time, in Ukrainian you’d say “smachnogo”, similar to Swedish “smaklig måltid” (lecker Mahlzeit), as “smak” means taste in both languages.

smaklig måltid

When I see these accents I can't help but read it in Hatari voice.

In Russian the very informal version is "Пока". Literally "Till" with implied "till we meet again".

"Farewell"?

Not exactly. You bid farewell with “proschayte” (literally begging for forgiveness) or “vsevo dobrava” (wishing all the kind/best), but “do svidaniya” has a hint of looking forward to meet your counterpart again.

Something like "Hasta luego" in Spanish? Literally "Until later".

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