It's all right for some

Question

Let me ask you a question about the following sentence.
"I tried you at home, then at the dacha. Ludmilla said you were at work."
"I am. It's all right for some." Karpov was gently pulling the older man's leg. Borisov was
a widower who live alone and put in more working weekends than almost anyone else.
(p216, The Fourth Protocol, by F.Forsyth)
context: It's a dialogue on the phone. Borisov, first speaker, must be a little surprised to see
his friend Karnov is at work on a weekend.
question: meaning of "all right for some"
Does it mean that"It's all right for some like me to be working on a weekend" ?
It's quite hard to get the nuance of "all right" here.

Usenet · Accepted Answer

Masa asks about this Frederick Forsyth passage:
[nq:1]"I tried you at home, then at the dacha. Ludmilla said you were at work." "I am. It's all right ... older man's leg. Borisov was a widower who live alone and put in more working weekends than almost anyone else.[/nq]
That should be "lived alone".
"Pulling someone's leg" is making a joke by saying something that they are supposed to figure out isn't true, or isn't applicable.
[nq:1]Borisov, first speaker, must be a little surprised to see his friend Karnov is at work on a weekend.. It's quite hard to get the nuance of "all right" here.[/nq]
It took me a moment too.
The assumption is that a wife expects to see her husband outside of normal working hours, so if a married man works on weekends, his wife doesn't like it. In "It's all right for some", "it" means working on the weekend, and this is "all right" for some men because they don't have a wife who would complain. Now it's Borisov who doesn't have a wife and often works on the weekends, so he's* the one that you would expect to say that. Instead it's Karpov saying it *to Borisov, so he's making a sort of joke or pulling Borisov's leg.
Mark Brader, Toronto / "A computer makes it possible to do, in half an hour, (Email Removed) / tasks which were completely unnecessary to do before."

My text in this article is in the public domain.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Let me ask you a question about the following sentence. "I tried you at home, then at the dacha. Ludmilla ... like me to be working on a weekend" ? It's quite hard to get the nuance of "all right" here.[/nq]
This is a common expression in British English (Frederick Forsyth is British). Someone who has to work may say "It's all right for some" to express a pretended self-pitying envy of someone who is retired or for some other reason doesn't have to be at work. The "some" are those who don't have to work.
"It's all right" means "Life is agreeable" - it isn't quite the same idiom as "It's all right" meaning "Don't worry - everything is fine".

In the extract, the humour lies in the fact that Berisov need not work at the weekend but in fact often does so. So he is not living as pleasurably idle a life as his friend Karpov implies - as Karpov of course knows. He is gently teasing Berisov.
Alan Jones (native speaker of BrE)

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Let me ask you a question about the following sentence. ... quite hard to get the nuance of "all right" here.[/nq]
[nq:1]This is a common expression in British English (Frederick Forsyth is British). Someone who has to work may say "It's ... pleasurably idle a life as his friend Karpov implies - as Karpov of course knows. He is gently teasing Berisov.[/nq]
Since the speakers are Russian, I wonder if there is an equivalent Russian idiom that Forsyth had in mind.

Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]This is a common expression in British English (Frederick Forsyth is British). Someone who has to work may say "It's ... friend Karpov implies - as Karpov of course knows. He is gently teasing Berisov. Alan Jones (native speaker of BrE)[/nq]
Thanks for both your kind replies to my question.
I went through them impressively.
What came clear to my mind by reading your comments is that I had mistaken what was meant by "some"

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Since the speakers are Russian, I wonder if there is an equivalent Russian idiom that Forsyth had in mind.[/nq]
It's an interesting obervation, but a little funny. Because in such novels it's normally assumed that non-english speakers, even if they do conversation in english
words that are written as such, are speaking in their mother tongue. It's a kind of rule about such novels.
They say in english, but not imagined doing so in a reader's mind. That's a convention in novels.
If reality is what counts in any case, their words must be described in Russian for example, which makes hard for
novels to form themselves.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Since the speakers are Russian, I wonder if there is an equivalent Russian idiom that Forsyth had in mind.[/nq]
[nq:1]It's an interesting obervation, but a little funny. Because in such novels it's normally assumed that non-english speakers, even if ... in any case, their words must be described in Russian for example, which makes hard for novels to form themselves.[/nq]
Obviously the novel isfiction, and the conversation is created by the author. But the impression that the reader should be getting is that the conversation has been translated from the language of the speakers, which is wh I wondered if there was an equivalent Russian idiom similar to "it's all right for some".

Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

It's all right for some

Top answer

Get the Weekly English Kit 📬

Related Questions