Because I live in a former eastern bloc country (Hungary). My only guess is the fridge is that old. (It’s not mine, but it came with the apartment I live in. The building I live in is Russian built too. :)
I will look again it, to make sure I got the letters right and to make sure it is pointing at what I thought it was. Since my Russian is so bad, when i checked last time what the words said, I was repeating “V soft sign K L” to myself so i wouldnt forget it before i got back to the keyboard. (I was confident i could remember min and maks) so it may have stood out in my head enough that i forgot what it was set to.
But it’s definitely cold in fridge, so it cannot be set to “turn off.”
This time, I take my camera with me :)
.… and discover that it is set to maximum (МАКС).
Here is a picture http://pics.livejournal.com/pthalogreen/pic/0012rat7 . It also has another setting “НОРМ” which im going to assume is the “normal” or “medium” that i was remembering that it had. I think I set it to maks some time ago in attempt to solve the food spoilage problem.
It’s really hard for me to remember выключить because my knowledge of Slavic languages (and understanding of Russian via cognates) comes mostly from southern slavic languages which I have studied, like Serbian, and uključiti in Serbian means “to turn on”.
It’s really hard for me to remember выключить because my knowledge of Slavic languages (and understanding of Russian via cognates) comes mostly from southern slavic languages which I have studied, like Serbian, and uključiti in Serbian means “to turn on”.
Haha, you’ve run into some of the most confusing false friends between any languages there. The Russian cognate of Serbian (and Bosnian/Croatian) uključiti is включить, which if I’m not mistaken means the same thing—not выключить, which means the exact opposite.
To make things even more confusing, the BCS verbal prefix u- normally denotes arrival/entering, whereas in Russian it generally denotes leaving. So you get false friends like ući “to enter” vs. уйти “to go away,” or uletjeti “to fly in” vs. улететь “to fly away.” Generally, if there exists a Russian cognate of a BCS verb with the u- prefix, it will have the prefix в- or во-, not у- or вы-. The former are real etymological cognates, while the latter are not despite the similarity, and often in fact convey the opposite meaning.
Such false friends are even more fun when you see Serbian spelled in Cyrillic, making the false similarities even more prominent. (The first prize, I think, goes to this one, though my great favorite is also право, which is “straight” in Serbian but “right” in Russian when you give directions.)
My Russian is pretty good… ВЬКЛ = выключить = turn off, not “medium”. Why do you have a Russian fridge anyway??
Because I live in a former eastern bloc country (Hungary). My only guess is the fridge is that old. (It’s not mine, but it came with the apartment I live in. The building I live in is Russian built too. :)
I will look again it, to make sure I got the letters right and to make sure it is pointing at what I thought it was. Since my Russian is so bad, when i checked last time what the words said, I was repeating “V soft sign K L” to myself so i wouldnt forget it before i got back to the keyboard. (I was confident i could remember min and maks) so it may have stood out in my head enough that i forgot what it was set to.
But it’s definitely cold in fridge, so it cannot be set to “turn off.”
This time, I take my camera with me :)
.… and discover that it is set to maximum (МАКС).
Here is a picture http://pics.livejournal.com/pthalogreen/pic/0012rat7 . It also has another setting “НОРМ” which im going to assume is the “normal” or “medium” that i was remembering that it had. I think I set it to maks some time ago in attempt to solve the food spoilage problem.
It’s really hard for me to remember выключить because my knowledge of Slavic languages (and understanding of Russian via cognates) comes mostly from southern slavic languages which I have studied, like Serbian, and uključiti in Serbian means “to turn on”.
Haha, you’ve run into some of the most confusing false friends between any languages there. The Russian cognate of Serbian (and Bosnian/Croatian) uključiti is включить, which if I’m not mistaken means the same thing—not выключить, which means the exact opposite.
To make things even more confusing, the BCS verbal prefix u- normally denotes arrival/entering, whereas in Russian it generally denotes leaving. So you get false friends like ući “to enter” vs. уйти “to go away,” or uletjeti “to fly in” vs. улететь “to fly away.” Generally, if there exists a Russian cognate of a BCS verb with the u- prefix, it will have the prefix в- or во-, not у- or вы-. The former are real etymological cognates, while the latter are not despite the similarity, and often in fact convey the opposite meaning.
Such false friends are even more fun when you see Serbian spelled in Cyrillic, making the false similarities even more prominent. (The first prize, I think, goes to this one, though my great favorite is also право, which is “straight” in Serbian but “right” in Russian when you give directions.)
Native Russian speaker here.
That is correct.
btw. ь and ы are distinct letters.
Спасибо for the correction.