theamericans | Episode discussion post: "Urban Transport Planning"

Once again, the question of what everyone is fighting for when History steps in and writes the script far beyond what any one character can control. Not that they don't try.

Talking about Russian famine food. Paige: "You never got sick of it?" Elizabeth, laughing: "That wasn't an issue." For all her idealism, Paige is 100% middle-class American, incapable of understanding hunger. See title of show. And then Elizabeth bringing Philip some. And having to throw it away because he's filled up on Chinese (how's that for a 2018 nod?) while the actual Russians eat pizza and talk about baseball.

"They want us to be just like them. I don't want to be just like them! And neither do the people back home!"
"You haven't talk to the people back home in over 20 years."
"Neither have you."

And so Phillip dresses up once more and meets with Oleg, in service of... what, exactly? While Elizabeth kills another innocent in service of... what, exactly? All down the drain.

Talking about Russian famine food. Paige: "You never got sick of it?" Elizabeth, laughing: "That wasn't an issue."

I did wonder at Paige in that scene (not for the first time). Presumably, Elizabeth and Claudia are trying to instil in her, if not love, then at least admiration for the USSR, but they keep making it seem like a pretty grim place. And now the food is all the same.

I guess part of it is trying to teach her what they came from, what they fight for. But you can't explain what it's like to starve, or what it's like to be in a war, to someone who's never experienced it. What's real to them is just rumour to the next generation.

Exactly. Paige's comment was actually pretty honest given her background. They're never going to be able to give her the secret ingredient, which is their suffering or their childhood. For her it's just a stew. It only matters because it's one of many things she's made to cook in her nights at Claudia's, but she'd be just as happy making anything else. It's never going to be her childhood favorite food and she's never going to have a single memory of Russia as home.

I don't even think they're making Russia sound grim because for them the suffering is what makes them superior. Paige would probably love to be able to get in on that, but she can't.

Really, for all Elizabeth's complaints about having to do this in the US, the fact that Paige is American is the only reason Elizabeth and Claudia are able to completely control the Russian narrative. Kids Paige's age in Russia are the ones Philip described. They're not sitting at home listening Tchaikovsky and being grateful for peasant food every night.

One thing that just struck me, I remembered that episode where Paige gets to meet Elizabeth's mom, and she can barely pronounce Paige's name.

A lot of Christian names are more-or-less easily translated. But AFAIK, there's no Russian equivalent (at least no commonly used one) for either Paige or Henry?

The metaphor says: Elizabeth and Phillip gave their children names so American, that they can never become Russians under their own identity.

Henry they'd probably just pronounce as Genry. So yeah, different name, but with that small change it would be pretty smooth. Even closer in pronunciation than some names that have translations, like Michael vs. Mikhail.

I remember the grandmother struggling with the vowel in Paige, though. I think that would be harder. There wouldn't, imo, be an obvious Russian way to say it and that vowel seems to be the stumbling block. Plus I would bet that your average Russian person is at least more familiar with the name Henry than Paige.

Makes me remember also when Paige asks her parents' real names. Philip gives the very American-friendly short form of his name. Elizabeth gives her full name that Paige stumbles over immediately. (And Keri Russell carefully then pronounces it for her...wrong.)

Given that the "-ei" in "Aleksei" or "Alexei" sounds a lot like the "ai" in "Paige" a transliteration that probably works is "Peidzh".

I found a discussion online here:
https://russian.stackexchange.com/questions/8140/russian-version-of-elizabeth-philip-henry-and-paige

But as

beer_good_foamy said above, even if Russians manage to pronounce the names, they are not Russian names. If they use similar sounding names, they wno't be their own original names. They will never be Russian under their own identity.

Agreed.

This is just a topic that's always been interesting to me since I took a language in high school and they'd always give you a version of your name that was in the target language. Because while I understood why that would be a good idea in the classroom (especially if the language changed noun endings) I always thought it was weird to suggest that your name would change in another language.

That is, even if there is a Russian version of the name, if it doesn't sound like the name pronounced with a Russian accent, it's a new name. Like to me changing Elizabeth to something like "Elizaveta" would be the same name. Likewise Genry and Henry seem pretty close.

But, for instance, in English people would hear Michael and Mikhail as different names. So in some ways even if they had names with a Russian equivalent, it might still sound like a new name.

Of course, we're not even dealing with the fact that they would have a completely different last name and also have Mikhailovich/Mikhailovna!

Interesting fact is that Elizabeth goes all the way back to a Greek variant of a Hebrew name, and in transliterated Koine(ish) Greek it's Elisabet.

From that form, it's been borrowed almost unchanged in many languages, including Russian.

I'm pretty sure Philip could render as Filip, but I really don't know how Russified that is.

I could swear I read a book where there was a character whose patronymic was "Philipovna" and that made me think it was maybe a Russian name. It probably wouldn't be a problem to say it, at least.

Oh, I agree. I feel like that name would look stranger to a Russian speaker, but I have no way of knowing!

Episode discussion post: "Urban Transport Planning"

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Paige's Russia lessons

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