Xjyuk

My question is in the title of this post, and I do not know what else to say. I am just puzzled.

Okay, to avoid my post being put on hold for being too succinct, I will add a couple of naive thoughts of mine.

I originally thought that "моя дорогая Наташа" means something along the line, "Natasha, I know that you are not cheap and that I consequently have to pay a big price to continue getting nice treatment, attention, favors, and other things from you." Or maybe something like this: "Natasha, I spent so much time, effort, and money to make you my woman; you proved to be really expensive." But the very idea that people could talk to a woman in terms of her price seems nonsensical to me, as any normal woman would get offended.

Then it came to my mind that the Russians who call women "дорогая" may mix up price and value. But I cannot imagine someone mixing up them. Only most uneducated simpletons who completely lack common sense are capable of mixing up these fundamentally different things.

My naive thoughts seem both nonsensical and funny to me, so I am puzzled.

Could you explain?

дорогой/ая is not only expensive, it's also dear, the word has at least two meanings

Not only women are called дорогая in the sense of dear, men are addressed as дорогой as well, in formal correspondence or in formal settings, especially at solemn events.

Colloquially these words either appear in dubbed foreign movies as a translation for dear, its equivalents, including other languages, or other words of endearment, or are used sarcastically between native speakers. In everyday life people normally don't address each other with them sincerely, if ever.

Sarcastic or derisive attitude is often expressed with its derivative дорогуша, which is of common gender.

Addressing a women with дорогая in the sense of expensive can only occur by way of a pun, a wordplay.

“Дорогой/ая” is literally translated as “worth a lot”. A direct meaning, “expensive” means “worth a lot of money”; but another, figurative meaning (“dear”) means “worth a lot [= is valuable] [for somebody's heart, for example]”.

дорогой

Древнерусское — дорогый (дорогостоящий).

Старославянское — драгыи.

Слово «дорогой» появилось в русском языке в XIII в.The meaning was "good and useful" and was used in two meanings.

Его значения:

1. Любимый;beloved




2. Стоящий дорого.expensive

Beloved is dear to heart, a person who is priceless for you and expensive is also priceless, but is connected with money.

It means "of high value", "valued".

Russians are people, and people like saying nice things to those they love, and comparing someone to something expensive (or, rather, precious) is a very nice thing to say.

It's quite a common metonymy across the languages of the world: English "dear", Italian caro, Greek ακριβός etc. all meant "precious" at some point (or still do).

The English word "expensive", by the way, does not convey quite the same meaning, because "expensive" assumes some kind of expense, "quid pro quo", while "precious" is more about the intrinsic value of something. Probably this is the source of your confusion.