when it rains

[ljplicease]

On the drive home it was raining. When I parked in the parking lot I texted^[1] Lena to see if the door was “open”. “unlocked”, I corrected myself^[2]. Lena helpfully pointed out that I had a brolly in back seat. I didn't see that last message 'till I got inside the house. Fortunately I had remembered the brolly myself. We had lots of brown outs. I was hoping that the electricity would last long enough to microwave my dinner. In the end the power didn't go out, but the internet^[3] did. Until 10. ish. I knew that it would come back and that it was our provider (ISP), and not my equipment because I used my phone as a hotspot and checked on the status through our ISP's website. You need the internet to check if you are getting the internet back. very meta. Lena came up and asked how I was reading [wikipedia] when the internet broke. When I explained about the phone hotspot she sighed that I was unable to unplug. I closed my computer. We talked. It was a good talk.

---

1. technically I Google Hangouted
2. In Russian there doesn't appear to be a verb to lock. You can say a door is ‘closed with key’, to say that it is locked, but in practice people seem to say the door is open or closed. Even though open/closed is a different state than locked/unlocked. Actually in English I think people conflate the too also. They say I am tedious.
3. I read somewhere that we aren't supposed to capitalize it anymore

Comments

[arwen-of-lorien.livejournal.com]

Which would be a Russian word for locking? Google translate is a bit confusing. In Croatian we do have words for key and the verb to lock is derived from it. The Russian word for key sounds very much like our key (ključ), so I'm curious about locking. I'd say we use Croatian words for locked (zaključano) more often for things being locked than we would use closed (zatvoreno).

[plicease]

Lena and other Russian speakers I have talked to say there is no verb "to lock" (the infinitive for "locking"). So if you want to say it unambiguously you'd use "close with key", although informally most people say "close the door" and you infer from context that the speaker means "lock the door". Probably because it is shorter and easier to say. I stumbled into this because of the way Russian native speakers construct their sentences in English.

It was interesting to me, because in computer programming closing a file and locking a file are quite different concepts and I wondered how you would express the different concepts in Russian. Most of the Russian speaking programmers that I know learned to program in English, so they don't actually know how to talk technically about computers in Russian. So they couldn't answer this question for me. Lena's father, though, is a programmer and was in Russia for much of his career. I think he answered this question for me, but now... I can't remember what it was.

They also say there is no word for "privacy" in Russian, at least in the English sense of the word. They say this is for social reasons, but I am a little skeptical because of the people I know the ones who value and fight for their privacy the most are Russian speakers.

[arwen-of-lorien.livejournal.com]

That's really interesting. In Croatian we do have a word for privacy - privatnost, but it is so seldom used that it almost sounds clunky when placed in sentences. Our notion of privacy would mostly be connected with secrecy of personal data (i.e. not disclosing personal data to telemarketing company, for instance), than it would be with privacy in a manner of keeping your room locked when you are not at home. Our sense of privacy of personal space is not so deeply rooted as those in America and I'd say it's because a lot of people don't have their own rooms while growing up and are forced to share them with siblings or other family members. Also, a concept of having multiple bathrooms in a house is pretty much outrageous over here. One would have an extra toilet at best. I'd assume that the Russians are culturally close to this.

[plicease]

We tried the one bathroom thing. When we were living in Silver Spring. It was my idea actually (the Australian/American). I didn't see the need to clean two bathrooms! But it caused lots of arguments. Also an extra bathroom enables me to do my black and white photography.

My view is that privacy includes personal data. Actually I would say "privacy of personal data" to my ear when you say "secrecy of personal data" it has a very slight negative connotation, and sounds like you are trying to hide something.

My brother-in-law's wife for example practices habitual privacy in relation withe her family. She wants to control everything, but especially information like when she goes on vacation and when she gets pregnant (just two examples). Sometimes it is reasonable, sometimes it just seems dickish. But either way her behavior makes me skeptical of the idea that Russian speakers cannot have a sense of privacy.

I do take your point about sharing rooms. I remember Lena's parents wanting to show off their new house to their friends, including all the bedrooms and I was a bit like, can we not have everyone tramping through the room where we are staying? Still you wouldn't expect those same visitors to riffle through my underwear drawer. Probably?

Caveats being that I am not entirely American so maybe I misunderstand the privacy in the American sense and the Russian speakers that I know are mostly people living in the states and have thus assimilated to varying degrees

[arwen-of-lorien.livejournal.com]

Ah yeah, now that you say it, putting it in English when speaking of personal data definitely sounds better with privacy than with secrecy. In Croatian, however, one would definitely use our word for secrecy in that particular case. For us, secrecy is more like enhanced privacy. If one would want to give the word a negative connotation, one would pretty much use the word for lying. If the degree of a lie isn't that severe, one could say that something was tucked under or hushed up. But in most cases, for us it doesn't matter if things are simply kept a secret or a downright untruth is told in order to preserve privacy, we'd probably still call it lying. For instance, if someone asked me if I was pregnant and I wouldn't want to disclose it, I would be considered a pretty rude person for saying it was none of their business. However, they wouldn't be considered too rude at all for asking such a question in the first place.

Oh yeah, we Croats would definitely tour you through all our rooms, bathrooms, pantries, basements and the like. We'd probably open a closet or two for you as well. My mom loves to do things like that when showing off the furniture my dad custom made. :D