Timeline for Cross Origins of Comrade and Camaraderie
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
16 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 24, 2015 at 20:11 | answer | added | Vitaly Purto | timeline score: -3 | |
| Oct 30, 2013 at 18:18 | answer | added | nay-nay | timeline score: 0 | |
| Nov 22, 2010 at 21:46 | vote | accept | mfg | ||
| Nov 22, 2010 at 14:19 | answer | added | Mr. Shiny and New 安宇 | timeline score: 4 | |
| Nov 21, 2010 at 15:35 | comment | added | RegDwigнt | @Gilles: I am perfectly aware of all of that myself, but I was giving a rough overview of what happened in 5 languages over the course of 400 years, and I only had 600 characters at my disposal. | |
| Nov 21, 2010 at 0:43 | comment | added | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' | @RegDwight: P.S. “French Socialist” in 1789 is an anachronism. The word socialiste was in its infancy, and had a wide range of meanings including what we would now call a sociologist as well as various minor political movements (both revolutionary and counter-revolutionary). The modern meaning (as a range of political opinions favoring, at least in principle, social equality) didn't start until the 1820s or so. I believe the English word “socialist” arose in the same time frame. | |
| Nov 21, 2010 at 0:24 | comment | added | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' | @RegDwight: During the French Revolution, the use of citoyen had a universalist connotation: everyone was a citoyen regardless of social class. That's never been a connotation of camarade, which always implies belonging to a common organization (army, school, etc.). In left-wing political organizations, camarade became the standard word some time during the 19th century (and the quasi-synonymous compagnon in right-wing organizations). | |
| Nov 19, 2010 at 21:43 | answer | added | Marthaª | timeline score: 2 | |
| Nov 19, 2010 at 19:24 | comment | added | mfg | In order to assess the baggage currently, one should know if the word itself actually had any to begin with. In this case after you refined the Wikipedia explanation and clarified the larger context, the only baggage seems to have been a mis-perception. A mis-perception that didn't account for the vogue of the word across continental Europe. I appreciate your help. | |
| Nov 19, 2010 at 18:58 | comment | added | RegDwigнt | And I am not posting any of that as an answer simply because all of it is obviously off-topic on a site about English. What is on-topic is your second paragraph — does camaraderie carry the same socio-political baggage as comrade? has comrade lost any of the baggage it once had? — but as a non-native speaker, I am not in a position to answer either of those questions. | |
| Nov 19, 2010 at 18:52 | comment | added | RegDwigнt | In brief: 1789, the French Socialists dismiss monsieur in favor of citoyen, and later camarade. 100-odd years later, we have Kamerad in German, camarada in Spanish, etc, with the same political meaning. 1917, the Russians have a Revolution of their own and copy (but do not borrow from) the French: gospodin → grazhdanin → tovarishch. The Spanish decide to settle for compañero. Hitler promotes Kamerad way too much, so now it's Genosse in German. Meanwhile, the English word comrade lives a life of its own, having been borrowed from Middle French camarade in 1590. | |
| Nov 19, 2010 at 17:06 | answer | added | thesunneversets | timeline score: 2 | |
| Nov 19, 2010 at 15:22 | comment | added | mfg |
@RegD This may sound over-the-top stupid American (thanks in no small part to hyped Cold War simplifications), but the word pronounced tovarishch is not actually a borrowing of comrade, but an approximation (that is then translated back to English as comrade?)? Or is the word comrade itself used? And if you explain why the Russians started using [word], I think you should feel free to put it in as an answer (as the wiki article doesn't entirely explain the why, only the happenstance).
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| Nov 19, 2010 at 15:05 | comment | added | RegDwigнt | ... and the answer to that question is actually provided in the Wikipedia article you linked to: the Russians used товарищ to translate comrade, which at that time was "a form of address in international (especially German) Social Democracy", so when товарищ was translated into English, it made sense to just use the original word rather than friend, mate or companion. | |
| Nov 19, 2010 at 14:39 | comment | added | RegDwigнt | Small yet important correction, if I may. The Russians did not adopt comrade for usage. We adopted товарищ /tʌˈvarʲiɕː/, which means "friend, mate, companion", and probably comes from a Turkic language. So the real question here is why the English, and particularly The Evil™ Capitalists®, adopted comrade as a translation for товарищ, where they had so many other, better translations readily waiting to be chosen from. | |
| Nov 19, 2010 at 14:27 | history | asked | mfg | CC BY-SA 2.5 |