Digenis.org

Last week I started subscribing to Mikhail Epshtein’s weekly lexicon, ??? ?????. It seems to be on semi-hiatus for the summer and all issues, which will be released bi-weekly until August, contain ‘repeats’ of material from the archive. However, the archives are all available online and are useful browsing material for a slow day.

The latest issue has the following tidbit on compound nouns with zen:

????

? ???? ??????? ?????? ?????? ??????? ??????????????? ? ?????? ?????? ???? (????. “??????????????”, “?????????”). ??? ????????, ????-??????? - ??????????? ? ????????, ??? ???????? ??????????? ????????? ????????????? ? ????????? ???????? ??? ?????????????? ?????????????, ????????? ???????? (??????) ? ?.?.

???? - ?????? ????? ??????? ????; ???????? ??????, ????????, ?????????????, ????????, ?????????????? ???????, ???????? ?????? ?????????, ? ?.?.

????-?????? - ?????? ?? ????????, ????? ?????? ?????? ????????.

????-?????? - ??????????? ???????? ??? ?????????? (? ?????? ?????).

????-???????? - ????????, ?? ???????, ????? ????, ????? ?? ??????.

????-??????? - ???????? ???????, ????? ??????? ????????????? ??? ??? ??? ??????????.

Interesting, but it’s the first time I’ve heard any of these words. I’m sure I’m not the only one either, because Google doesn’t give a single hit besides the original text and a few direct quotations of it. The article was first printed in September 2004 and it seems to me that in the two years since then the situations in which these words could occur would have become more frequent. Nonetheless, none of these neologisms have caught on… So why does Epshtein include these zen words as ‘most worthy of our attention’? Got me.

As I assumed, at least several of these neologisms are calques from English. Zenmail was entered into the WordSpy database back in 1997. Zen-advertising (in English) seems to be a slightly different story as people are using it in several different ways. For example, An online gamer site uses it to mean nothing more than minimalist advertising, while a science-fiction fansite uses it to describe unintentionally blank advertising from Google.

I like Epstein’s defintion above: advertising in which it is unclear what product is being advertised or how to go about getting it. Though people may not be calling it such, zen-advertising has been all over Moscow in the last few years, most notably in the huge rebranding campaigns of mobile-phone service providers MTS and Beeline. I think the concept is quite ingenious; the mysterious ads had me thinking of the products for much longer than traditional billboards. I guess Megafon’s in line next for a massive rebranding.

Anyway, have you heard these words either in Russian or English? Have I just been living in a cave?