Marcommunish
Sul,-1 derived real pleasure from Mr Burgess's witty and ingenious article 'Here Parla Man Mar- communish' (SPECTATOR, November 25).
There is one point upon which I should be grate- ful for some clarification. It concerns the Russian word lodyr (lazybones) which Mr Burgess derives from the English loader. Preobrazhensky's Etymolo- gical Dictionary of the Russian Language gives this word as being common to all Slavonic languages (with the appropriate phonetical variations) and sug- gests its origin either in the Old High German lotar (good-for-nothing), or the Latin latro (p. 463). Prac- tically the same conclusion is reached by V. Dal in his Dictionary of the Great-Russian Language (v. II, p. 262).
Could Mr Burgess name the source of his interest- ing explanation?
N. SZAMUEILY
London W2
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