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From: olivier@austin.ibm.com (Olivier Cremel)
Subject: Re: One fine day
Originator: olivier@nice.austin.ibm.com
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Message-ID: <D4DHxJ.3vn7@austin.ibm.com>
Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 23:15:18 GMT
Reply-To: olivier@glasnost.austin.ibm.com
References: <3ib7l4$2u4@uwm.edu> <3idg51$bhc@overload.lbl.gov>
Organization: Bull HN - Austin
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In article <3idg51$bhc@overload.lbl.gov>, veklerov@spindle.ee.lbl.gov (Eugene Veklerov) writes:
> In article <3ib7l4$2u4@uwm.edu> corre@alpha1.csd.uwm.edu (Alan D Corre) writes:
> |I was recently reading Baron Vrangel's account of the mock execution of
> |Dostoevsky and came across the following sentence: "I vot v odin prekrasnyy
> |den' my uslyshali...barabannyy boy na ploshchadke lestnitsy..." ("And lo, 
> |one fine day we heard...a drum roll on the stair landing...") It seems
> |apparent to me that the expression "one fine day" does not refer to the
> |weather but rather, as in English, to the unexpected nature of the event.
> |There is an implied metaphor of the unlikelihood of a storm or other
> |unexpected natural phenomena on a fine day. "Out of a clear blue sky.." or
> |"Out of the blue.." imply the same metaphor. Did Russian borrow this idiom
> |from English? Do French and German, the other languages exercising great
> |influence on Russian, have a comparable locution? ("Par un beau jour
> 
> I agree that the meaning of "V odin prekrasnyy den'" is the same
> as that of "Out of the blue..".  The Russian expression usually opens
> a sentence when the speaker wants to build some expectation of a sudden
> and unfavorable event.
> 
> It is an old expression and I am not sure about its origin.  But I doubt
> it was borrowed from English.  Nowadays, English has a great influence
> on Russian.  But in the last century and earlier, it was next to nothing.
> Most of the foreign words and expressions came from French.  Tolstoy
> in his "War and Piece" describes a strange situation when the Russian
> nobility spoke French among themselves.  In fact, some of them spoke
> French better than Russian.

It could be from "un beau jour" then. By the way, how sure are we of the
implied metaphor (of the unlikelihood of a storm or other unexpected natural
phenomena on a fine day) ? How is it connected to the phrase
"avoir beau faire" (to do something apparently to no avail) ?

-- 
Olivier.
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		"Tel se cuide chauffer qui s'art"
