Thread: Анекдоты showing "Verbs of Motion" (or other points of Russian grammar)

Originally Posted by maxmixiv

In connection to just introduced "вешать" verb, I have recalled an another joke. Nothing interesting (everything is in imperfect) but nevertheless:

I wouldn't agree that there's "nothing interesting" in this joke! Of course, the points of interest are more lexical than grammatical. In particular, it illustrates there are TWO completely different imperfective, transitive verbs that are both spelled вешать, and also that the one verb снимать has multiple senses:

Мальчик пишет письмо родителям из пионерского лагеря:
"Дорогие папа и мама! У меня всё хорошо. Вчера нас утром вешали, а вечером снимали!"

пионеры -- loosely speaking, "the Boy Scouts / Girl Scouts program of the USSR"
лагерь -- here, "summer camp" (i.e., for the recreation/education of schoolchildren)
вешать (perfective взвесить) -- "to measure the weight of someone/something" -- NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH...
вешать (perfective повесить) -- "to hang an object up" or "to execute a person by hanging"
снимать/снять -- many idiomatic meanings, including: "to photograph someone". But the most direct meaning is "to remove", as in, "remove the hanged bodies from the ropes" -- here and 2. "to 'take out' or 'pick off' someone with a bullet, as a sniper does" (at least, I think that's the intended wordplay here -- I might be misunderstanding it, because this verb has such a large number of figurative/idiomatic senses)

Also, learners should note that when imperfective вешать means "to weigh" in the transitive sense, the imperfective взешивать can also be used. On the other hand, "to weigh" in the intransitive sense of "to have a certain weight" is весить -- not to be confused with висеть, "to hang" intransitively!

In summary:

весить -- "to be of a certain weight"
вешать/взвешивать/взвесить -- "to measure the weight of"
висеть -- "to be hanging"
вешать/повесить -- "to make something hang" (or, in some contexts, "to execute with a noose")
вешаться/повеситься -- "to commit suicide by hanging oneself"

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

снимать/снять -- many idiomatic meanings, here including: 1. "to photograph someone" and 2. "to 'take out' or 'pick off' someone with a bullet, as a sniper does" (at least, I think that's the intended wordplay here -- I might be misunderstanding it, because this verb has such a large number of figurative/idiomatic senses)

There’s nothing to do with snipers in the joke.
The boy had in mind the meaning ‘to take a picture’ of course. His parents could understand that as ‘to take hanged men out from the gallows’.