Subj : Old stuff
To   : Ardith Hinton
From : alexander koryagin
Date : Wed Mar 02 2022 15:35:11

Hi, Ardith Hinton!
I read your message from 26.02.2022 21:52

  AK>> So, in Russia we say that the palm itches in the salary day.
  AK>> Correct?

  AH> I know what you mean because an "itchy palm" has very much the same
  AH> connotations in English & I think it's entirely appropriate to
  AH> refer to it in the general sense here because many people have been
  AH> in situations where e.g. they got paid at the end of the month...
  AH> the same day the rent was due... and found it challenging to "make
  AH> ends meet" the last few days before then. :-))

  AH> IMHO you made a good start with a parallelism... i.e. an idea which
  AH> for native speakers who don't understand the grammar appears to be
  AH> a mystery. But I know I can count on my Russian friends to
  AH> understand the grammar, and I see you've grown beyond question #4
  AH> in the textbook. I've found prepositions quite a challenge in other
  AH> languages I've studied, so I can assure you you're not alone. In
  AH> English, when we're referring to a particular day, we say "on"
  AH> rather than "in". Easter Sunday, e.g., will be on April 17th this
  AH> year... by our calendar.

On/in -- yes we think differently. Although Americans, for instance, 
gave up "in" when they speak about streets. They accept that events 
happen on the street, like in Russia, not in the street, as the British 
speakers say. ;)

  AH> Question: I notice that the Orthodox Palm
  AH> Sunday occurs a week later than ours, and the Orthodox Pascha
  AH> occurs a week later than our Easter. How do Orthodox churches
  AH> calculate such dates & does "Pascha" +/- = "Easter"? I'm aware of
  AH> phrases such as "paschal lamb" but can't quite connect the dots.

Paskha is the Russian word for Easter. Quite often both events happen in 
one day. The problem is in ...mathematics and stubbornness. :) 
Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Jews have different mathematics formulas 
for calculating the passover day.

  AH> Anyway, I think I know what you mean by "the salary day" too... and
  AH> while I'm reluctant to interefere with a nice parallism I must
  AH> point out that where I come from it's usually called "payday" to
  AH> minimize class distinctions between salaried employees & those who
  AH> are paid by the hour. In general we'd say "payday" without using
  AH> either the definite or indefinite article....:-Q

However if speak about a particular payday we probably should use "the".
< The previous payday of Dec. 15 was partial. >

Bye, Ardith!
Alexander Koryagin
fido.english_tutor,local.cc.ak 2022
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