# Russian (?): wohojauko



## Anatoli

Hi all,

In this post, Cheshire is asking in Japanese the Russian spelling of 「ヲホジャウコ」 (Japanese Katakana), which is roughly pronounced as "wosojauko". It is supposed to be Russian, transliterated using Japanese writing.

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=625143

This term was supposedly used by Tsaress Yekaterina.

Can anyone help?


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## Maroseika

Anatoli said:


> Hi all,
> 
> In this post, Cheshire is asking in Japanese the Russian spelling of 「ヲホジャウコ」 (Japanese Katakana), which is roughly pronounced as "wosojauko". It is supposed to be Russian, transliterated using Japanese writing.
> 
> http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=625143
> 
> This term was supposedly used by Tsaress Yekaterina.
> 
> Can anyone help?


What is the conext?


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## Q-cumber

Насколько я знаю, японцы не различают "чистые" звуки "б" и "в", "р" и "л", "х" и "ф". В приниципе, таким образом могли вполне записать в катакане (японская азбука для иноязычных слов), скажем слово "Васёк". Каждый иероглиф обозначает не букву, а слог.  Ва-со-ё (jo)<-u/у -указывает на удлинение ё>-ко.


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## Grosvenor1

I am not a native speaker of Russian, but васёк rings no bells. The Japanese phonetic looks to me like an attempt to express the word высокий ("high", "tall").

Thinking about it a bit more, высокий is unlikely. Japanese does have an "s" sound and I find it hard to believe it would become an "h" sound in Japanese transcription. If the _katakana _is _wosajauko_, it is possible that it is высокий, but not _wohajauko_.


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## palomnik

The katakana spells _wohojauko, no wosajauko. _From the Japanese, it appears to be a nickname that Catherine the Great gave to a traveling merchant that she had an audience with in 1791.  His original name appears to be - and here I'm guessing at the kanji for the proper name - Dr. Okuro Yahakari:

気の毒な彼に女王は 「ヲホジャウコ」と声をかけたという。

The empress called the pitiful looking man _wohojauko. _

The term could just as well be from French or even German, although I believe that Catherine the Great regularly used French as her language of choice.


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## Kolan

palomnik said:


> From his pitiful appearance the empress called him _wohojauko.  _
> 
> The term could just as well be from French or even German, although I believe that Catherine the Great regularly used French as her language of choice.


Then *вояка *rings the bell, a poorly organized soldier or warlord, loser.


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## Grosvenor1

The latest suggestion phonetically sounds closest, though there is no guarantee that she said it in Russian. She only learned Russian in early adulthood after moving to Russia to marry her pathetic husband (she caught cold apparently as a result of jumping out of bed on cold Russian winter mornings to study it, and nearly died as a result). Her native language was German and the language of the court French.


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## Anatoli

Apologies, it's wo*h*ojauko, not wosojauko.  (Katakana: ヲ*ホ*ジャウコ)

Thanks, palomnik. I can only add it happened in the small town of Pushkin, in the south of Russia.


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## Q-cumber

Kolan said:


> Then *вояка *rings the bell, a poorly organized soldier or warlord, loser.



Вояка could be the right word, yet it never meant "loser". 




> *вояка*
> м. разг.
> 1) Испытанный, храбрый воин.
> 2) а) Тот, кто воюет с задором, с запалом, но неумело, незадачливо (обычно с оттенком иронии или шутливости).
> б) Задира, драчун.
> 
> _Russian Explanatory Dictionary by Efremova_


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## Grosvenor1

If she was being ironic, meaning 1. might fit the bill, and perhaps meaning 2(a) could also include an overtone that he is a bit of a loser. *вояка *seems the most likely, on phonetic grounds. 

It is also an example of false friends among Slavic languages, as _vojak _(not sure if there is an accent in it) is the normal Czech word for "soldier".


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## Kolan

Q-cumber said:


> Вояка could be the right word, yet it never meant "loser".


Словарная статья из Ефремовой, безусловно, неполная. Я тоже не претендую на полноту, но оттенок (и даже значение) *loser *у слова *вояка *есть, особенно, если речь идёт о представителях противника.

Современные примеры.

http://vlasti.net/index.php?Screen=news&id=224116
(_Ирония_) Талибы терроризируют семьи западных *вояк*... страшными телефонными звонками *...*

*Новое Русское Слово :: США приравняли лучших вояк Ирана... к ...*

http://www.komunist.com.ua/article/18/0/1032.htm
Зато позиция коммунистов — отвергнуть очередную попытку законодательно обелить *вояк* ОУН-УПА и прочих фашистских пособников — нашла поддержку в 228 голосов. *...*

Сайт www.voyaki.ru - просто кладезь анекдотов о незадачливых военнослужащих.

С чешским и сербским языком у русского немало таких ложных друзей (могу вспомнить корневые слова *урод*, *позор, вонь*).


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## palomnik

I'm trying to figure out the context. On reflection, it would be highly unlikely that a Japanese person of any sort would have an audience with Catherine the Great in 1791, since Japan was closed, and very few Japanese left the country; if they did, they would be executed if they ever went back to Japan. 

There may be some reference to this in Russian sources if we know for certain who the person in question is, and that might tell us what Catherine said on the occasion.

Anatoli, I noticed the reference to Pushkin.  At first I thought it was a referral to Tsarskoye Selo, but the Japanese says "south Pushkin."  Would Catherine have gone to the town in the south for some reason?


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## Grosvenor1

palomnik said:


> I'm trying to figure out the context. On reflection, it would be highly unlikely that a Japanese person of any sort would have an audience with Catherine the Great in 1791, since Japan was closed, and very few Japanese left the country; if they did, they would be executed if they ever went back to Japan.
> 
> There may be some reference to this in Russian sources if we know for certain who the person in question is, and that might tell us what Catherine said on the occasion.
> 
> Anatoli, I noticed the reference to Pushkin. At first I thought it was a referral to Tsarskoye Selo, but the Japanese says "south Pushkin." Would Catherine have gone to the town in the south for some reason?


 
Is there another town called Pushkin, beside the one called Tsarskoye Selo previously? And if so, it too would probably have had another name in Tsarist times. 

I am a little lost as regards the context. Was a somewhat bedraggled Japanese visiting Catherine The Great's court, long before Japan opened up to the outside world in the middle of the following century?


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## Anatoli

Thanks for the answers, there's no more context and Cheshire seems to have disappeared .


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## Q-cumber

palomnik said:


> I'm trying to figure out the context. On reflection, it would be highly unlikely that a Japanese person of any sort would have an audience with Catherine the Great in 1791, since Japan was closed, and very few Japanese left the country; if they did, they would be executed if they ever went back to Japan.
> 
> There may be some reference to this in Russian sources if we know for certain who the person in question is, and that might tell us what Catherine said on the occasion.
> 
> Anatoli, I noticed the reference to Pushkin.  At first I thought it was a referral to Tsarskoye Selo, but the Japanese says "south Pushkin."  Would Catherine have gone to the town in the south for some reason?



The city got the name of the poet Pushkin in 1937 (when it was 100 years since Pushkin's death), so it can't have any relations with Catherine the Great...I mean under this name, of course. I''ve never heard about any other cities called Pushkin.


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## palomnik

Q-cumber said:


> The city got the name of the poet Pushkin in 1937 (when it was 100 years since Pushkin's death), so it can't have any relations with Catherine the Great...I mean under this name, of course. I''ve never heard about any other cities called Pushkin.


 
Q, I agree, but the Japanese writer in the original quote (it's in the Japanese forum) may not be aware of the connection between Pushkin and Tsarskoye Selo, and may have made the assumption that the town was always called Pushkin.

The "south Pushkin" (南プーシキン市) location still makes no sense to me.  But I guess we won't know anything further until Cheshire gets back on line.


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## cheshire

"Daikokuya Kodayu" is a shipwrecked merchant in the Edo period, during the last part of the national Seclusion policy.

Ох, жалко.(och, jalka)​Thanks for your help, everyone!


Ochin rada, shto vi panimaly minya!


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## Kolan

cheshire said:


> "Daikokuya Kodayu" is a shipwrecked merchant in the Edo period,


The wiki story sounds just fantastic to me, like Jules Vernes' novels. Not talking about Kolyma winters (-60C or so) and mountains, just imagine a long walk through the Siberian woods and swaps (few thousands km) with no even idea about where St-Petersburg is and if it does exist at all. The story mentions that they reached Ohotsk, then Yakutsk (nearly a quarter of the total distance by land), however, no future details are given about what could happen between Yakutsk and Irkutsk (which are not the same and not besides each other), the most difficult part of their journey. The Japanese must have acquired certain knowledge of Russian on their long way (otherwise, how they could ever communicate?), so that they would be able to record more or less properly Russian words. "*Wohojauko*" and "*ох, жалко*" (such/what a pity) seem to be phonetically far enough from each other to be properly understood. This heavily depends on how *j* is pronounced in Japanese, German or French way?


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## Nanon

I read a novel by Yasushi Inoue about Kodayu's unbelievable story. The English title is 'The Dream of Russia' and the original title according to copyright info is 'Oroshia koku suimutan' (sorry about possible errors, my edition is in French).

In the French version I have at hand (Paris, éd. Phébus, 2004), the meeting with Catherine the Great takes place in _Tsarskoïe Selo_ and Catherine says "_Jalko_, quel dommage !"
(I kept the French transliteration on purpose here.)

Unfortunately there is no note from the translator indicating that Pushkin would have been changed to Tsarskoye Selo... but this seems pretty close to the context.

A Russian translation seems to have been published under the title "Сны о России".


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## Anatoli

Kolan said:


> ...The Japanese must have acquired certain knowledge of Russian on their long way (otherwise, how they could ever communicate?), so that they would be able to record more or less properly Russian words. "*Wohojauko*" and "*ох, жалко*" (such/what a pity) seem to be phonetically far enough from each other to be properly understood. This heavily depends on how *j* is pronounced in Japanese, German or French way?



To judge how foreign words are recorded Japanese, it's worth familiarising with the Japanese phonetic and writing system. Japanese lacks both some sounds and sound combinations. Even if the Japanese people were able to pronounce it properly or close to the original, recording the sounds of a foreign language using Japanese writing system is awkward. So this was an attempt.

So, "*ох, жалко*" could only be written down as "oho jaruko". "L" is missing in Japanese (the Japanese light "R" is used instead)and syllables cannot end in a consonant (N is an exception). I think "U" was used instead of "RU"as this sounded closer.

ヲ ("wo") is pronounced as "o" in modern Japanese but is not usually not used, letter オ is used for that purpose.

This link may give some ideas about transcribing foreign words (not just English) using Japanese.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcribing_English_to_Japanese


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## Kolan

Anatoli said:


> So, "*ох, жалко*" could only be written down as "oho jaruko". "L" is missing in Japanese (the Japanese light "R" is used instead)and syllables cannot end in a consonant (N is an exception). I think "U" was used instead of "RU"as this sounded closer.
> 
> ヲ ("wo") is pronounced as "o" in modern Japanese but is not usually not used, letter オ is used for that purpose.


OK, can you justify the following 3 assumptions?

1. *j* is *ж*, not *й*.
2. *Light R* was introduced to expless *L* then somehow gone before the scripting.
3. It is 18th century, not 20-21st, why Russian "о" became "wo" in writing? How important is "w" for Japanese?

Altogether, was it originally "*В*охо*, *жа*(р)*уко"?

Is this the way Japanese people would pronounce "*ох, жалко*"?


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## Anatoli

Kolan said:


> OK, can you justify the following 3 assumptions?
> 
> 1. *j* is *ж*, not *й*.
> 2. *Light R* was introduced to expless *L* then somehow gone before the scripting.
> 3. It is 18th century, not 20-21st, why Russian "о" became "wo" in writing? How important is "w" for Japanese?
> 
> Altogether, was it originally "*В*охо*, *жа*(р)*уко"?
> 
> Is this the way Japanese people would pronounce "*ох, жалко*"?



1) j = a cross between дзь and джь (cf. 忍者 (にんじゃ) nin*j*a - нин*дз*я  柔道 (じゅうどう)  *j*ūdō - *дз*ю:до: )
2) Not sure I understand but Japanese R is used to render foreign L. Here a simple "u" replaced the Russian "л". Usually doesn't happen, cf. Волгоград - Bo*ru*goguraado
3) There are 2 letters, which render "o" in Japanese. I think, my original transliteration should be changed without a "w".  ヲ has the name "wo" to distinguish it from オ "o" but it has a grammatical meaning only, never used for transliteration. I also asked Cheshire, why ヲ, not オ, I made a wrong assumption it was to transliterate "wo", not "o". Technically, to render V or W + a vowel letter ヴ is used + a small ァ, ェ, ィ, ゥ or ォ but the Japanese have difficulty  pronouncing  V, so they slip into B, anyway.

"ох(о), дзяр(у)ко" - the letters in brackets are almost silent but always written down.


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## Grosvenor1

Even today, such a journey would be quite an effort unless you went by plane. He probably looked very ragged and bedraggled indeed at the end of such a journey, if he actually made it, and I am somewhat skeptical. 

I wonder if some of the journey was done by sea, via the Arctic Ocean north of the Siberian landmass during the short summer when things were not hopelessly frozen up. Or was it an incredibly long journey through warmer waters like the Indian Ocean, then overland via the Middle East?


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## palomnik

It's been years since I worked on Japanese, so obviously I'm out of the cultural loop.

Daikokuya Kodayu is apparently a well-known figure in Japan nowadays, mainly due to a novel - おろしや国酔夢譚 - by Yasushi Inoue written in 1968 and later made into a film starring Ken Watanabe. Like Will Adams, the real-life English sailor who was shipwrecked in Japan in 1600 and whose story became popular in the 1970's due to James Clavell's fictionalization of his life in the novel _Shogun, _Daikokuya represents a tantalizing case of Japanese interaction with the West in pre-modern times. 

The real tragedy of Daikokuya's life is that after returning to Japan he was kept in Edo in virtual solitary confinement to the end of his life in 1828, after an extensive debriefing by a shogun official.


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## Grosvenor1

palomnik said:


> It's been years since I worked on Japanese, so obviously I'm out of the cultural loop.
> 
> Daikokuya Kodayu is apparently a well-known figure in Japan nowadays, mainly due to a novel - おろしや国酔夢譚 - by Yasushi Inoue written in 1968 and later made into a film starring Ken Watanabe. Like Will Adams, the real-life English sailor who was shipwrecked in Japan in 1600 and whose story became popular in the 1970's due to James Clavell's fictionalization of his life in the novel _Shogun, _Daikokuya represents a tantalizing case of Japanese interaction with the West in pre-modern times.
> 
> The real tragedy of Daikokuya's life is that after returning to Japan he was kept in Edo in virtual solitary confinement to the end of his life in 1828, after an extensive debriefing by a shogun official.


 
I suppose the only alternative was executing him, if they couldn't allow him contacting the outside world. The Japanese authorities must have wanted his information about the outside world but were not happy to have him contaminating the Japanese with his foreign influences.


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## Kolan

Grosvenor1 said:


> I suppose the only alternative was executing him, if they couldn't allow him contacting the outside world.


Loolks like, a replacement of his death penalty with a life sentence.


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