from Alexey Sklyarenko:
Kot or, Zemblan for "what is the time"
(see Kinbote's note to l. 149), is clearly a play on the Russian
phrase kotoryi chas ("what is the time"). While Zemblan word
for "hour" appears to be a homograph of both the English
conjunction "or" and the French word for "gold", kot
(apparently, Zemblan for "which" or "what") is Russian for "he-cat". Can
there be a connection to the cat that Kinbote inherited with the house from
his landlord, judge Goldsworth, and to Hodge, Samuel Johnson's cat
mentioned in the epigraph to the novel?
Btw., note that there is cat (as well
as du, German for "you") in "ducat", the gold piece that the
grateful King leaves on the mantlepiece in the mountain-side house where he
spent the night following his escape from the palace. One remembers that the
King Louis XVI (whose escape to Varennes is mentioned in Speak,
Memory, Chapter Three, 1) was recognized because his profile was
on every French golden coin, louis[d'or], and wonders if there is
on the ducat the King's profile? However that may be, Karl the
Beloved is not recognized by his hosts, despite even the fact that there
stands on the same mantlepiece an old color print representing him as
a young man with his young wife.
I don't know if this is of any importance, but
kot = kto (who) = tok (current), kot +
or = otrok (boy) = rokot (roar, rumble) = rotok (little
mouth).
a correction re Graden (in one of my
previous posts): "prepositional case" (that doesn't exist in German)
should be "Dative plural".