«С Рождеством с Урала!» This Christmas card is old – from 2006, when I had just moved to Yekaterinburg, and there’s a mistake in it (guess where?). When I sent it out to friends and family that year it caused a sensation because of its… well, partly because of its portrait of Russian contemporary society, and its use of prepositions. One «с» but after it two different cases – how come?
As much as I today just want to wish all of you readers a wonderful, beautiful, cozy, warm, tender, loving Christmas together with family and friends, I feel that I should take a moment to explain the situation with the prepositions above. First of all, most I think are familiar with the preposition «c» in the context of «с чем, с кем?» [with what, with whom?], meaning it is followed by instrumental case. The original way of congratulating someone with some holiday of sort was «поздравляю тебя с праздником» but soon half of the sentence was shortened, and that’s why we’re in Russian language today only left with «С Рождеством Христовым!» [Merry Christmas! lit. 'with Christ's birth'], but everyone knows that it’s all about congratulations anyway. But «с» can also mean ‘from’, if it is paired with a noun that needs «на» to mean ‘on’. Okay, so that may not help anyone. Let’s take a look at an example instead – «на завод» is in this case accusative, meaning ‘to the factory’, and that makes «на Урал» mean ‘to the Urals’. But in a sentence like «он работает на заводе» [he works at the factory] the same preposition needs to be followed by the locative case. The very same happens in «она живёт на Урале» [she lives in the Urals]. But when you want to leave the factory or the Urals, you have to use «с» like you would normally use «из» [for nouns that need «в» in locative and accusative] with genitive – «он ушёл домой с завода» [he went home from the factory] and «она уехала в Москву с Урала» [she went to Moscow from the Urals]. I hope that makes at least a little bit sense!
The mistake I made, by the way, back in 2006 was that I wrote «Рождество» with a small «р», which is as much against the rules in Russian as is saying ‘Merry christmas’ in English or ‘God jul’ in Swedish. Which makes sense, since He, our Lord, is always written with a big L or a big H.
Santa Clause, or «Дед Мороз», or Tomten – or perhaps it was a mix of the three! – arrived and gave me the gift of the year today – guess what…?
I wish you all a wonderful holiday!
НАСТОЯЩЕГО СЧАСТЬЯ, ЗАМЕЧАТЕЛЬНЫХ УСПЕХОВ, КРЕПКОГО ЗДОРОВЬЯ, СИЛЬНОЙ ЛЮБВИ И ВЕЧНОЙ ДРУЖБЫ ВАМ!
[I WISH YOU REAL HAPPINESS, WONDERFUL SUCCESSES, STURDY HEALTH, STRONG LOVE AND ETERNAL FRIENDSHIP!]
