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A Rambler search today brought me to an outdated message board on the website of company that sells outdoor sporting gear in Russia and a few other European countries.
As I was browsing through some of the posts from several years ago, I came across this:
в ответ на: кто подскажет, где в Москве купить палатку от HighPeak?
Видел несколько моделей по (ИМХО) нормальным ценам в магазине… Рыбачьте с нами” 40м от Метро Сухаревская. Сергей.
I was puzzled for a second as to what (ИМХО) meant, but then I realized it was just a transliteration of the English internet acronym IMHO (in my humble opinion). That was the first time I’ve ever seen it. But then again, the only Russian message board I frequent is Eye.moof’s joke forum.
Naturally, I began to wonder how widespread its usage was. So I headed over to a few search engines to see what kind of results they would return for the cyrillicized acronym. Here’s what I got:
Google.ru: 223,000 results
Rambler.ru: 822,154 documents
A9: 95,500 results
What’s even more interesting is that, as I scanned through the results to make sure I was getting the right acronym, I noticed that the ‘Russian’ version has a slightly different meaning. The Неакадемический словарь языкового уплотнения (Nonacademic Dictionary of Language Compression) has an entry on ИМХО in which they describe the difference:
Но наше, славянское «имхо» гораздо более нейтрально, без всякого оттенка стушёванности и застенчивости. В русском это вводное слово, обозначающее просто «по-моему», «я считаю», «полагаю».
But our Slavic version of IMHO is much more neutral. It hasn’t the slightest hint of bashfullness or shyness. In Russian it’s a parenthetical word which simply means “in my opinion”, “I consider”, or “I suppose”.
Interesting. . . But what’s most fascinating to me is that the НСЯУ goes on to claim that ИМХО has actually evolved into a noun which can refer to someone’s individual opinion, perspective, or supposition. They say that the stress falls on the second syllable and that the word declines normally (без имха, по имху. . .). The plural (yes, it can be plural apparently) is имхи.
Sidenote: Question for you all, especially native speakers of Russian. . . How would you translate стушёванность into English? I was stumped and had to go to the dictionary, but none of my four (Katzner, Oxford, Collin’s Pocketsize, and Dover) gave me a solution. I realize that it’s related to the verb стушeваться (to fade away), but I’m still not certain how to best translate it.
Responses to “ИМХО”
July 18th, 2004 at 12:05 am
Mike - Thanks for your comment. I didn’t realize that ИМХО reached Russian internet users so long ago.
By the way, the context for стушёванность is in the first quote up there:
Но наше, славянское «имхо» гораздо более нейтрально, без всякого оттенка стушёванности и застенчивости.
My translation of that sentence was, “But our Slavic version of IMHO is much more neutral. It hasn’t the slightest hint of bashfullness or shyness.”
Do you think that ’shyness’ works in this case? I wanted to say something like ‘humility’, but thought that might be stretching a little too far.
July 19th, 2004 at 4:13 pm
Self-effacement, maybe? It’s hard to find an appropriate noun, all I can remember is verb-based: to keep a low profile, to take a back seat, to melt/stay into background… ‘Low profile’ is not exactly стушеванность, but it looks close to what the author meant.
July 21st, 2004 at 9:31 am
The verb стушеваться was, I believe, invented by Dostoyevsky. Whether he derived it from тушь or ‘toucher’ or something else, I have no idea. Perhaps Vasmer might be able to help?
July 22nd, 2004 at 10:38 am
The second meaning of тушеваться was indeed probably coined by Dostoyevsky, but it was widely used in a more direct sense: стушеванные краски, солнце закатилось и силуэт башни стушевался, etc. It was obviously derived from ‘тушь’. Тушь itself is a borrowing from German Tusche, and Germans got it from French.
July 17th, 2004 at 10:49 am
Never saw actual use of стушеванность, so it’s hard to translate it out of context.
IMHO made it to Russian netspeak in 1991-1992. It was very popular in Fidonet, which, in turn, was extremely popular in Russia since early 90s.
Most of the Russian-language usenet groups are in fact fidonet ‘echoconferences’ gated. So it’s no wonder that IMHO got russified so quickly. Other fidonettisms include ламер, BTW, RTFM, “анноит — пиши комплейн”, ЗЫ (PS typed by someone who forgot to switch keyboard back to English), “Hello All”, and some insider jokes which are too long to explain.
Имхо is, of course, special. Back in 1991-1992, when Russian fido developed, we had practically no experience of cooperation and self-rule. And fido, unlike internet, has no providers and users, all members are interconnecting providers. So we had to develop some rules for ourselves. American founders of fido gave some very useful principles, such as ‘though shalt not annoy and though shalt not be annoyed easily’. ‘IMHO’ was another very useful American contribution: it designated the difference between opinion and knowledge, which is of highest importance in discussion. Naturally, sometimes it got abused, as when a fidonetter tries to present a weak argument as a knowledge but covers it from criticism with ‘IMHO’ disclaimer. Or, as a joke says, “ИМХО — Истинное Мнение Хрен Оспоришь”.