Russian Bookmark

I found a bookmark the other day, which I can't read, in a book that I also can't read. Both are in Russian language, printed with the Cyrillic alphabet.

I took a semester of Russian in the early to mid 1990s, thinking it might come in handy with my writing/editing work at NASA. It didn't.

Some of our astronauts, civil service personnel, and contractors were taking courses in Russian and traveling to Russia for work with the International Space Station. It couldn't hurt in that environment to have some knowledge of the language and culture of our Russian counterparts, right?

Well, Russian for me was a "painful" language to learn, so yeah, it did "hurt." I was also taking Spanish just because I liked the language, excelled at it in grade school and later grades, and I wanted to get reacquainted with it.

Spanish was a cake walk. Russian was an ordeal. About all I remember is a chunk of the Cyrillic alphabet and some of the sounds associated with individual symbols. Maybe enough to do some transliteration with the help of my Russian language books and the Internet. Conjugating verbs? No recuerdo nada en Ruso. But I don't have the time to spend translating this, or attempting to. Maybe some day.

Anyway, the bookmark is still pretty cool looking. Pretty unique, too, for my collection. And the book has interesting looking foldout maps. Maybe I'll stick it on ebay for a buck and say if you can read it, you can have it cheap. Unless it turns out to be some rare first edition, in which case it will stay with my bookmark. But how would I know?

Maybe I better get that Russian language book out...

Comments

  1. KatyJanuary 24, 2014 at 12:47 PM

    I have a co-worker who came here from the Ukraine. She translated your Russian Book Mark for me. Here is what she said...

    First side:

    On A top: Name of the Publisher (old name "SOZEKGIZ" till 1963 until change it to the new one: "IDEA"

    In the middle the name of the bookmark: "New book on History"

    On a bottom: Name of the Book Association, that coordinated book sale nationwide.


    Second side is readable and it's just a bibliography: list of the titles published in 1958 on History of the USSR and General History.
    .

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Chuck WhitingJanuary 24, 2014 at 4:12 PM

      Many thanks to you and your co-worker for this! Very nice of you to take the time to check this out and let me know about it. I never got back to the bookmark, but I did get a handle on the book it was in, its title, and content: The Northern War and Swedish Invasion of Russia. I couldn't find a publisher, but maybe the answer is on the bookmark. Thanks again!

      Delete

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