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From: de@moscom.UUCP (Dave Esan)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle,sci.space
Subject: Re: Things aint so bad
Message-ID: <1061@moscom.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 6-Oct-87 15:05:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: moscom.1061
Posted: Tue Oct  6 15:05:35 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 9-Oct-87 22:06:29 EDT
References: <2404@calmasd.GE.COM>
Reply-To: de@moscom.UUCP (Dave Esan)
Organization: MOSCOM Corp, E. Rochester, NY
Lines: 47
Xref: mnetor sci.space.shuttle:382 sci.space:3318

In article <2404@calmasd.GE.COM> jnp@calmasd.GE.COM (John Pantone) writes:
>> Mir ("Land", NOT "Peace")
>
>My dictionary also gives the alternative translation of Mir as Village.
>-- 

Sorry this posting is relatively late to the article, it has taken me a while
to catch up on news.

Perhaps this will help lay the question of the translation of Mir to rest?

Before the October Revolution (which took place in November 1917) the Russian
language had two vowels that had the sound "ee".  One looked like an i, the 
other like a u.  In some far off time these two sounds were pronounced 
differently, but over time they both became "ee".  The Soviet government
decided that it was a good time to update the Russian orthography (they
were right, the population was basically illiterate, there were not too many
books printed in Russian at the time) and eliminated the duplicate vowels,
replacing them with the single vowel that looks like the letter u. (They
also eliminated several other characters at the time.)

Mir before the revolution was written "mir" or "mur".  One meant the world
the other meant peace.  Furthermore, just to confuse the issue, "mir" (the 
world) had taken on an additional meaning.  Russian peasantry were in serfdom
until the mid-1860's, and even their emancipation, did not really free them
from the land.  They were confined to their particular farms and villages,
which to them became their world, or their "mir".  While this meaning is
not rooted in the Slavonic root languages like world and peace, it had
a profound effect on the Russian language, and added a third meaning.

Any other meanings found in a dictionary are attempts to add shades of 
meaning, a difficult undertaking to say the least.

The space station Mir could actually mean any of the three variations.  It
could be a propaganda ploy meaning Peace, a propaganda ploy meaning world,
or used in the third sense, it could be the area that the cosmonauts are
confined.

Whew! I knew that degree in Russian studies would come in handy someday.




-- 
               rochester \
David Esan                | moscom ! de
                    ritcv/