Tuesday, February 20, 2007



A news item on today's Korrespondent.net: "A Radio Liberty Journalist Attacked in Rivne."

The piece is in Russian, but the town's name - Rivne - is Ukrainian (but spelled in Russian). It would be Rovno in Russian: v Rovno, not v Rivne. Or am I wrong? Do we have some new rules I'm not aware of? Someone please help. Also, in Ukrainian, it would be u Rivnomu, not v Rivne, right?

Weird.

Now, here's the story itself:

According to the journalist, the incident occurred in the elevator of her apartment building. When it stopped and the lights went off unexpectedly, a young man [yunets in the original, of all things...], aged 18-20, attacked her, demanding that she took off her golden jewelry.

Romanyuk started screaming and hit the guy on the head with her handbag. When the light reappeared, the woman saw a knife in the attacker's hands, and after the doors opened [dvertsy, not dveri, for some reason, as if they were struggling inside a cupboard, not elevator], he escaped.


How can one not notice an adult man inside an elevator that's, like, 90x90 cm?

This should be the story's main angle, not the fact that she's a journalist. Something like, "Woman Steps On Man Inside Elevator, Ends Up Getting Assaulted."

It's the funniest piece I've seen in along time.

2 comments:

  1. "The piece is in Russian, but the town's name - Rivne - is Ukrainian (but spelled in Russian). It would be Rovno in Russian: v Rovno, not v Rivne. Or am I wrong? Do we have some new rules I'm not aware of? Someone please help. Also, in Ukrainian, it would be u Rivnomu, not v Rivne, right?"

    а нам всё равно!

    Оскар

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh! I can see Cyrillic letters in the previous comment! Hooray! (For the longest time, that didn't work!)

    Grammarwise, I would have tried to decline "Rovno", but google tells me I'm wrong. "В Ровно" seems to be correct in Russian, and I agree with your Ukrainian translation as well. (Not that I'm the one to ask!)

    ReplyDelete