Štrumf / ştrumf
Because I'll be taking a long weekend's vacation to Dubrovnik -- helped along by the insistence of the Montenegrin law adopted yesterday, that independence day be May 21, the anniversary of the independence referendum, and last two full working days, even if May 21 falls on a Sunday (God bless Montenegro!) -- I have a story to tell you, in the hopes it'll tide you over until Monday or Tuesday. :-)
I don't quite remember how it came up, but back when I was courting Mrs. RamPage, who is Romanian, she began telling me about a funny cartoon on Romanian TV back in pre-1989 days. Said cartoon featured short creatures with funny hats called ştrumf. (I supposed that's ştrumfi in the plural for us foreign devils -- unvocalized 'i', mind.)
This baffled me for quite a few months.
Finally, it dawned on me. Could it possibly be that she was talking about one of the most mindbogglingly annoying cartoons on American TV in the early 1980s, the Smurfs?
No, she insisted, they were ştrumfi.
Were they blue?
Well, it was hard to tell, given that Ceauşescu-TV was usually black and white.
Was there an old ştrumf, a bunch of younger ştrumfi, and, exceedingly strangely in terms of unclear community and family relations, only one female ştrumf? Plus an evil wizard (Gargamel) and his cat (Azrael)?
Yes, yes, yes!
We proceeded to get into a heated argument over whether Romania or America created the Smurfs / ştrumfi. Pointing out that "ştrumf" doesn't sound at all Romanian, and probably was a German re-labeling didn't help my case, nor did appeals to the chronology of when they showed up on TV in the respective countries (the U.S. before Romania).
As with most arguments with Mrs. RamPage, I had to retreat and shake my head at the futility of trying to win the occasional point with a revved-up Romanian woman. More on this in a bit.
Nor did I feel like asking whether you could randomly replace words in Romanian with "ştrumf" the way the cartoon did with "smurf" in America.
Flash forward several years to a few days ago, strolling through central Podgorica, when and where I spotted a nearby storefront sign:
Dear me, the little bastards are everywhere. Hanna-Barbera Productions [tm] are still intent on sucking my brains out a quarter century later. I'm sure they're affectionate and cute for the trademark-oblivious Montenegrin store owner, but I won't be shopping there.
So today I figure I have the Internet, and I'm going to settle this once and for all.
And of course, I discover that Smurfs are not American creations at all. They are the work of the late Belgian artist Peyo, and they date back to 1958. None of which absolves the Hanna-Barbera story writers for mindlessly smurfing English, however flexible a language, into places where it was never meant to go.
At least this time I might win half the rare point with Mrs. RamPage. Protochronism and Romanian nationalism be damned -- even Ceauşescu would have had the dignity not to purloin the creation myth of the ştrumf.
11 comments:
I think it's actually "Štrumpf" in Serbian, with "p", but since it was difficult to pronounce (imagine a word that is difficult to pronounce, even for Serbs - 7 letters, 1 1/2 vowel(s)!) we settled on "Štrumf" :)
Yeah, I first thought it had a "p" in there, too...and I like the sound of it better that way.
Insofar as anyone can really like štrumpfi. ;-)
Ah, I have had many similar arguments with my better half...
(although you got me with the Belgian thing - I always thought they were Dutch).
Hi Ed! Long time no see!
Good to know other couples argue about Really Silly Stuff [tm]! :-)
"Insofar as anyone can really like štrumpfi. ;-)"
Plural is supposed to be "štrumpfovi" ;)
Ha! Nice!
My defense is that the Romanian plural is 'ştrum(p)fi.' :-P
It's Štrumf in Serbian... or Штрумф as we call them:)
but yeah, plural of Shtrumf is Shtrumfovi ...
as far as HB goes - you can bet your a... hat that there were no royalties paid for that :)
Hi Shark! Welcome to the blog.
You're absolutely right on the plural, as well as the HB trademark. The trouble is that, trying to get a word in edgewise with a Romanian spouse, one cannot afford to waste energy and time on the proper declension of one syllable Serbian / Croatian / Bosnian / Montenegrin nouns. That way lies total defeat and linguistic chaos. :D
Hey, my Romanian wife and I had exactly the same discussion about these little cartoon creatures. I knew them as Smurfs and she described similar little guys as Strumf, Poppa Strumf and Strumfeta. We're now working on having children and I'm keen to call a boy Strumf and if a girl then strumfeta "strumfetsa" (maybe as a pet name rather than actual name).
Hi Darrin! That is just great! I'm starting to think those of us here in the comments section need to start an Internet support group for Spouses of Balkan Wives... ;-)
Best of luck on starting up the family! However, I'm guessing that naming your kid Strumf or Strumfeta, although that inspiration makes me laugh hard, might be a fast way to get him or her teased or beaten mercilessly on the school playground. ;-)
Me, I'm still working on getting my wife to agree to naming our next cat 'Eminescu.' The trouble is that my sinuses don't particularly appreciate having the first one. *headscratch*
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