Etymology of the expression beluga roar. How a beluga roars How a beluga screams
Beluga roars.
When this famous phrase is said, an association arises with a person who screams and cries so much that it can be heard very far around. There are other phraseological units in the Russian language that sound completely different, but have a very similar meaning. They are pronounced like this: “flowing like a stream”, “whining like a dog”, “shouting with good obscenities”, “roaring roaring” and much more. There are even similar expressions in other foreign languages of the world.
The phrase itself " beluga roar" could be considered a mistake, or even, most likely, a verbal typo. The beluga fish is the largest of the sturgeons and, like other fish, it not only does not roar, but does not make any sounds at all. Therefore, it would be more logical to say “dumb as a fish.” But another aquatic inhabitant has a voice. And what kind. This is a polar beluga dolphin that has smooth white skin and lives and hunts in herds. The beluga whale can make a special sound, very similar to a moo. This scream is not only loud, but also quite unpleasant.
Why did such a funny confusion happen? Most likely, this happened due to some peculiarity of the Russian language. In some places in Russia, the letter “G” is pronounced as the sound “X”. It is possible that the same thing happened with the word beluga and a sound change that no one even noticed. It is difficult to say this one hundred percent, but this version has a right to exist. Everyone who hears idiom roar beluga, perfectly understands its meaning, which could not be asserted if the erroneous word began to be pronounced absolutely correctly.
Beluga is a huge fish, one of the largest freshwater fish. Reaches a length of up to 4.5 meters and a weight of more than a ton.
With such a gigantic size, it seemed that the expression “roar like a beluga” was apt.
But this rather big fish doesn’t make any sounds that a person can hear, that’s why it’s a fish. Where did this expression come from?
It's all about the Russian language. It actually sounds like a beluga whale's roar. Beluga as opposed to beluga- a mammal and lives in the northern seas. This is a toothed whale, a relative of dolphins and narwhals. A fairly large animal, up to 6 meters long and weighing up to 2 tons. The color is pearly white, which is how the beluga whale got its name.
BeluKha
In addition to the ability to produce ultrasounds, with the help of which she locates the depths of the seas, she is famous for her vocal abilities. Beluga whales can whistle, quack, make sounds reminiscent of an out of tune symphony orchestra, and many others. And all this with decent volume. It is even called the sea canary.
Beluga
Northern industrialists, who had been hunting beluga whales for a long time, introduced the saying “Roars like a beluga whale.” People who live far from the ocean and have never seen a sea cetacean have altered this statement in accordance with their ideas. After all, very close to them in the longest river in Europe lives a giant fish - the beluga.
This is how they converted the beluga into a beluga.
“I howled like a beluga and cursed fate”
V. Vysotsky.
Introduction
There is an expression “Roar like a beluga,” which, despite all its absurdity, has a certain explanation. The usual substitution of the consonant g/x. Otherwise, the expression “Mute as a fish” loses its meaning. We know very well that fish (in this case belugas) do not make sounds (unless in Russian fairy tales they are pikes), with the exception of dolphins that produce ultrasounds, and even then those dolphins are mammals.
"Roar like a beluga
This phrase is a mistake. More precisely, a “verbal typo” crept into it. There are two completely different living creatures in the seas: the beluga fish, the largest of the sturgeon family (like all other fish, it never roars or howls), and the commercial animal beluga - one of the cetaceans, a dolphin with white naked skin. Beluga whales have a voice: moving in herds in the sea, they emit a peculiar moo, something like a bull's roar. The language confused these two animals. Why?
Probably not without the influence of one feature of our Russian pronunciation. In some places we pronounce the letter “g” as a sound somewhat similar to “x”: “hora”, “bokhaty”... This is how some speakers may have pronounced the word “beluga”. Others, out of habit of correcting an incorrect pronunciation, at the same time conveyed the similar word “belukha” in the “correct” way.
However, this explanation cannot in any way be considered indisputable.
One way or another, “to roar like a beluga,” “to sigh like a beluga” means: to emit loud and sad moans. This expression, although it is erroneous, is understood by everyone. But if you say correctly: “to roar like a beluga whale,” they will not understand you and even correct you. Who will be right in this case? What will be the rights in this case? These are the quirks of our language."
Etymology of the expression
However, the law on the movement of consenting Brothers Grimm plays a different role here.
In English there is a word called bellowe, which means:
bellowe – 1) mooing, roaring (animal); 2) scream, scream, roar (person) (English)
In the Slavic transliteration bellowe - beluga:
bellowe – belluga – beluga (glorified) (g/w replacement), where g/w replacement is a common occurrence.
Even more interesting:
utter a bellow > vitij bellug – howl with a beluga (glory) (replacement of v/u) where utter – 1) make a sound; 2) put into circulation (money); 3) complete, perfect, absolute (English), hence tutti - everything (lit. Italian), performance of music by a full orchestra.
tutti > dutj – duti – duti (glory), that is, to blow with all your might, “to shout at the top of Ivanovskaya.”
It turns out that the British “heard the ringing, but did not know where it was” and translated the Slavic word “belukha” as “bellow” - to roar. And from the English the word “bellow” came to us in the Russian language as “beluga”. These are the changelings.
Etymology of the expression in ancient Egyptian writing
Ancient Egyptian writing also has a group of hieroglyphs that mean “to raise one’s voice, to roar, to rage furiously.”
Examples of hieroglyphs are taken from an Ancient Egyptian dictionary.
In the line from left to right: description of the hieroglyph (in Coptic and Slavic abbreviations) - Egyptian transcription - translation into Russian - Gadiner code - Slavic transcription - Slavic translation - English word - Slavic translation.
Basket - yard - kite - sitting man with hand at mouth - khA - raise voice, roar, rage furiously (Old Egyptian) - V31-O4-G1-A2 > khKrKrm > gulkj kriki – booming cries (glory) > utter a bellow > vitij bellug – howl like a beluga (glory)
Basket - yard - kite - sitting man with hand at mouth - hold hand - khA - roar (ancient Egyptian) - V31-O4-G1-D40 > khKrDrgt > gulkj –kraj drogat echoing edge to tremble (glory)
Taurus-bread-chick - a sitting man with a hand at his mouth - 3 features - diwt (ancient Egyptian) - V11-X1-G43-A2-Z2 > diwt > TvrtwKrm-tri > tvorit vo kriki – create with cries (glory .) > shriek – scream piercingly (English) > krik – scream (glorified) (reduction k/sh) > Shchreck/shreck – horror, fear (German) > krik – scream (glorified)
Shrek is the name of a troll character living in a swamp from a story by American children's writer William Steig. Shrek is an analogue of the Slavic Vodyanoy.
Taurus-broom-broom-bread - a sitting man with a hand at his mouth-1 line-3 lines- diwt (ancient Egyptian) - V11-M17-M17-X1-A2-Z1-Z2 > TvrtwPiPitKrm-j-tri > tvorit podpertj krikij – to create supported by shouts (glorified)
Hand-3 vert. traits- 2 traits-chick-bread-scroll- 3 traits- diwt – roar (ancient Egyptian) - D46-Z3-Z1-Z1-G43-X1-Y1-Z2 > Dln-tri-jjwtSvt-tri > dlinj vit svitij – long howls revolving (glorified)
Abbreviations
SPI - A Word about Igor's Campaign
PVL – Tale of Bygone Years
SD – dictionary of V. I. Dahl
SF - Vasmer's dictionary
SIS - dictionary of foreign words
TSE - Efremov's explanatory dictionary
TSOSH - explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov, Shvedov
CRS – dictionary of Russian synonyms
BTSU - Ushakov’s large explanatory dictionary
SSIS - combined dictionary of foreign words
MAK - small academic dictionary of the Russian language
VP – Wikipedia
EBE - Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedia
1. Beluga roar, http://www.otrezal.ru/catch-words/377.html
2. Russian-Egyptian and English-Egyptian dictionary of hieroglyphs, http://drevlit.ru/egypt_dictionary.html#
3. V. N. Timofeev “Methodology for searching for Slavic roots in foreign words”, http://www.tezan.ru/metod.htm
A phrase such as “beluga roar” can be heard more commonly in common parlance. This expression applies to a person who cries and screams too much. The stable phrase is also found in works of art. For example, A.P. Chekhov, in his play “Ivanov,” put this phrase into the mouth of one of his heroes.
This expression can be jarring to many modern people. And it’s quite simple to explain their bewilderment: in Russian, a representative of the sturgeon fish is called a beluga, and it certainly cannot roar.
There is an assumption that the word “beluga” was originally used in this phrase, and not “beluga”. And the “beluga whale” is nothing more than a polar dolphin, which tends to make loud sounds. But it is not clear why “beluga” was later changed to “beluga”. It's like some kind of linguistic phenomenon.
And today the question remains whether the noun “beluga whale” was previously used in this expression or not? Nowadays, Russian speakers know only one version of this expression with the word “beluga”. For example, in handwritten monuments of the 16th century a similar statement is found.
Much later, the well-known phrase “roar like a beluga” is already used in manuscripts. In ancient times, in Russian, “beluga” was the name not only for a large representative of sturgeon fish, but also for a marine animal.
In Russian language dictionaries back in the 19th century, the nouns “beluga” and “belukha” were used to call that same polar dolphin. Some believe that we owe the appearance of the word “belukha” in the Russian language to the Russian traveler I. Lepekhin (18th century). Thanks to the works he wrote, this word came from scientific-geographical language into literary language.
Today, to designate a sea animal, that is, a dolphin, only one noun is used - “beluga whale”. And by “beluga” we mean a large fish. A similar distinction between these words occurred only in the last century. Many stable phrases to this day retain those outdated pronunciation and grammatical forms that have already disappeared and have not been used in speech for a long time. This exactly applies to the phraseological unit “roar as a beluga,” which in modern Russian is used in its ancient form.
This expression is used most often in common parlance, that is, in everyday reduced speech. It means "to cry very loudly, furiously." In the drama A.P. Chekhov's "Ivanov" one of the characters says: " They bring Zyuzushka to her senses. Beluga roars, sorry for the dowry". In M. A. Sholokhov's novel "Virgin Soil Upturned" we read: " The owner's snub-nosed daughter, swollen from tears, roared like a beluga, leaning against the door".
The modern form of this expression - beluga roar - often causes confusion. Indeed, in modern Russian, beluga is a sturgeon fish. She, of course, cannot cry. They say: “as dumb as a fish.” What's the matter?
The following assumption was made: initially this expression sounded different, namely: roar beluga whale, since here, supposedly, we are talking about the sounds made by a polar dolphin, a marine animal, which is called beluga whale in modern Russian. Replacement belu X and on white G y in phraseology is given in some popular books as an example of a “linguistic paradox”.
However, there is no evidence that the word beluga was ever used in this expression. They spoke and still say in Russian only to roar like a beluga. According to the Card Index of the Old Russian Dictionary of the Institute of Russian Language of the USSR Academy of Sciences, one of the manuscripts from 1535 says that “lions and belugas can roar.” And in later written monuments we find the already formed phraseological combination roar beluga. The fact is that for a long time in Russian the word beluga meant both a large sturgeon fish and a polar dolphin. We have reliable evidence of this since the 16th century. In the “Dictionary of the Regional Arkhangelsk Dialect” published in 1885, the sea animal, the polar dolphin, is called both beluga and beluga. At the same time, the word beluga comes first. " Local industrialists, - writes the compiler of the dictionary A. Podvysotsky, - This animal is also called a sea cow". This name was given to the beast, undoubtedly, for its ability to make very characteristic sounds and roar.
In all Russian language dictionaries of the 19th century, the polar dolphin is called both beluga and beluga. It can be assumed that the word beluga as a dialectal, local name for a game animal entered the literary language from scientific geographical literature, in particular from the works of the Russian traveler of the second half of the 18th century I. Lepekhin. This naturalist scientist was distinguished by his deep knowledge of folk speech. Lepekhin consciously sought to introduce folk, local names into scientific use. Thus, the northern Russian dialect name beluga became known first in a special scientific language, and then appeared in general literary speech.
In modern Russian, beluga is the only name for a polar dolphin. Now only fish is called beluga. The modern distribution of “roles” for these two words occurred only in the 20th century. What about phraseological units? In stable speech patterns, words, grammatical forms, and pronunciation features that have changed or even completely disappeared from the language are often preserved. This is how the stable expression roar beluga is preserved in the Russian language, despite the fact that the word beluga itself has not been used for a long time as the name of a sea animal. The phraseological unit retains its ancient form.
