Re: «Грязь, грязь, чудная грязь!» (Flanders and Swann, Hippopotamus)

On 4/13/2024 1:42 PM, Aidan Kehoe wrote:

I have a healthy 8-month-old daughter and, as is the way, I was looking into
something to entertain her that would be more entertaining for me than Miss
Rachel and the usual current distractions, and Flanders and Swann came to
mind. Their ‘Hippopotamus’ was one of the comic songs I belly-laughed at when
younger, and Youtube has it, uploaded by Parlophone UK, here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8izmXTf3958

‘Mud, mud, glorious mud / Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood’ is the
chorus, possibly more familiar to people than the name of the song

One of the choruses in this recording is in Russian (I had known that Swann
was from the longstanding English community in Russia that disappeared with
the Revolution, not a shock), and I was interested in the actual words of
this.

Nikolay Ershov came to the rescue, on russian.stackexchange.com, with a great
answer here:
https://russian.stackexchange.com/questions/14403/hippopotamus-song-flanders-swann-russian-chorus-translationhttps://russian.stackexchange.com/questions/14403/hippopotamus-song-flanders-swann-russian-chorus-translation

The URL above is "doubled". The second (last) one can be cut and pasted
to your browser and will reach the page.

I include it here for everyone’s edification:

   «Грязь, грязь, чудная грязь,
   лучшее средство как кожная мазь.
   так возьми свою даму
   и поведи её в яму,
   и там мы окунемся в чудную грязь.»

   Fairly close to the English chorus earlier.

   ['grʲæsʲ 'grʲæsʲ 'tɕudnəjə 'grʲæsʲ] // mud mud wonderful mud

   The singer isn't de-voicing that final /zʲ/ enough. Maybe not the first time
   when the two words are repeated back to back and a voiced consonant follows,
   but for the rest, it should just become [sʲ], no middle ground there.

   ['lutʂəjə 'srʲetstvə kɐk 'koʐnəjə 'masʲ] // best remedy as skin ointment

   The grammar's a bit awkward here, but could just be strained to fit the
   metre. The "tch" cluster in the middle of the first word is a bit too soft,
   but it could be how some Russians actually said it half a century ago (but
   then again your audience might not know that, and it will come across as
   foreign). That final /zʲ/ isn't de-voiced e [tək vɐzʲ'mʲi svɐ'ju 'damu] //
   so take your lady

   [i pəvʲɪ'dʲi jɪ'jo 'vjamu] // and take/lead her to pit/hollow

   [i 'tam mɨ ɐ'kunʲəmsʲə 'ftɕudnuju 'grʲæsʲ] // and there we will_dip into wonderful mud

   The very non-dental [t] at the beginning is probably the most foreign sound
   in this otherwise fairly good rendition. Make that [t] as "French" or
   "Spanish" as you can instead. A weird stress pattern in окунемся (ought to
   be окунёмся); archaic? plain incorrect? greater poetic licence than what
   would fly these days?

While a docent at the Albuquerque Zoo, I was informed that
"hippopotamus" came from the Greek and meant "river horse". Any truth to
that? My last Greek speaking resource was a girl friend I haven't talked
to for about 60 years so the translation is unverified. I do hope it's
correct as I passed it on to thousands of Zoo visitors.
--
Jeff Barnett