27 Comments
I remember my host sister/friend in Ulyanovsk trying to dye her hair blonde and it came out kind of strawberry blonde, and she was looking in the mirror going "I'm ginger! I'm ginger!" Never going to forget this adjective lmao
I think I'm falling in love with Russian animation. A professor showed me Винни Пух a few weeks ago, and it might be the actual best thing ever.
Look up. "The disobedient kitten" (1953) or "Котенок по имени Гав" these are some of the best.
Is hostility to redheads common in Russia also? Are there specific mythological/folk beliefs about the significance of red hair?
[Note: I'm not taking the cartoon too seriously - it just set me wondering...]
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I wouldn't call it hostility though the fact can become a reason for jokes by other children because they can stand out. There is an expression "Что я, рыжий, что ли?" which literally means "Am I a redhead or something?" but should be understood as "Am I not like everyone else?".
In English, there's the phrase "red-headed stepchild" for someone not being treated well by others
No. Волос means a single string of hair, while волосы means hair in whole.
According to Forvo, the pronunciation is very close to the word for red meaning "rouge." рыжие pronunciation = rouge-yeah. https://forvo.com/search/%D1%80%D1%8B%D0%B6%D0%B8%D0%B5/ru/
I never heard anyone refer to hair as красный - рыжий is the proper term for red when it refers to hair colour.
Yup, that's a really good example! I was trying to think of one earlier but my brain refused to cooperate. Now I think about it, brunette works, too.
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рыжий From Old East Slavic рꙑжии (ryžii), from Proto-Slavic ryďь, from Proto-Indo-European h₁rūdʰ-yo-. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/рыжий https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/ryďь From Proto-Italic ruβros, from Proto-Indo-European h₁rudʰrós (“red”), from the root h₁rewdʰ-. Cognates include Ancient Greek ἐρυθρός (eruthrós), Sanskrit रुधिर (rudhirá), Old East Slavic ръдръ (rŭdrŭ) (< Proto-Slavic rъdrъ). Compare dialectal form rūfus (“reddish, ruddy”)https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ruber#Latin
у + genitive shows possession, where the possessor is in the genitive case. So if I want to say that my sister possess something I say у моей сестры
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I went with "My sister is a ginger" - which should be correct in common usage ;)
So ginger hair instead of red as the descriptor, but would you still use "красный" if someone had dyed cherry red hair?
Yes, if the hair is literally red, "красные" would be used. But it's only for dyed hair, because no natural shade of human hair is red enough to be called "красные".
