Is it a mistake to say, "Oвчинки выделка не стоит"(sic!)?

Question

In a recent essay of mine, I accidentally mixed up the grammatical cases in an idiom. Namely, I wrote:

овчинки выделка не стоит

The most common variant of this idiom is:

овчинка выделки не стоит

My teacher marked my variant as a mistake and reduced my mark accordingly.

But did I really make a mistake? Doesn't my variant make sense? In English, you can say it in both ways:

(1) The reward isn't worth the effort. (Example)

(2) The effort isn't worth the reward. (Example)

Furthermore, Google returns a few dozens of results with my variant.

Before I confront my teacher with this, I need to be sure that I am right, so I am humbly asking native speakers to share what they have to say.

Answer 1

овчинка выделки не стоит

In this case it's an idiom (we're not talking about an actual sheepskin here) and idioms are much more static than normal sentences.

So yes, it does sound like a mistake.

UPDATE:

Same as in English, you could say:

• Награда не стоит усилий. OR:
• Усилия не стоят награды. OR EVEN:
• Усилия и награда не стоят друг друга / несопоставимы.

to mean the same thing: 'the effort is worth MORE than the reward'.

BUT none of these sentences are idioms.

That's the thing about idioms - they have to be reproduced exactly, even when they no longer support the current grammar: притча во языцех, не зная броду... Otherwise they sound like an error or, at best, a pun.

English example: you would barely say 'Have you any wool?' unless you were singing Baa Baa Black Sheep.

Answer 2

The set phrase:

Овчинка выделки не стоит

literally means [This] sheep's skin isn't worth processing.

Meanwhile:

Oвчинки выделка не стоит

translates as [This] processing isn't worth sheep's skin, which is strange.

Answer 3

First, as others say, it is an idiom. When someone hears or reads the phrase, their brain automatically parses it as the idiom they know, and does not notice the different endings.

Second, for me your variant while grammatically correct, would have a different meaning. The usual variant would mean "the subject is worthless" while your version would mean "the processing effort is too much". But as I already said, as this is an idiom, the most speakers would not notice that you modified the expression or would think this is a typo.

I also want to highlight that in certain interpretation your version can be seen as meaning something the opposite: the processing effort is so little that it even does not worth a sheep skin, if the sheep skin is meant to be not the subject of the work (on which the processing is done), but rather some small unit of value (and the subject of processing is omitted).

This may be understood so in circumstances where sheep skin is used as a currency, for instance. You can substitute here "копейка", so to get "копейки выделка не стоит" to mean the processing is very cheap.

In English you have a distinction between

The processing does not worth the sheep skin (skin is the subject of processing)

and

The processing does not worth a sheep skin (skin is the unit of value)

Since Russian lacks articles, you can interpret this the both ways.

When you use the idiom the standard way, the ambiguity disappears.

Answer 4

Yes and no

Yes, it is a mistake to make changes to a Phraseme and still expect people to take its original meaning. However, I'd like to focus on the fact that this particular phrase is a phraseme, and not an Idiom. An idiom can't be explained by the meaning of its components, whereas both the original phrase ("овчинка выделки не стоит") and your variant ("овчинки выделка не стоит") can be.

By modifying a phraseme, you can highlight reader's attention to the subtle differences in meaning that this change can create. Changed phrase can even get a living on its on, like the memorable "Вот где собака порылась".

However, in your case I don't think that you tried to be funny or clever. You didn't seem to draw any attention to your subtle modification. Even if you did, I can understand that your teacher may not appreciate this kind of cleverness, and flag it as an unequivocal mistake.

Answer 5

Actually, you can say this in both ways. The meaning of this really does not change and the listener will understand you.

However, here we are talking about an established expression that sounds like “овчинка выделки не стоит”. So if this counts as an error, it is only because you incorrectly quoted the proverb.

Answer 6

Yes, you had made a mistake.

First of all, because this is an standard idiom (and you must have skill to change idioms for this actions,if you want; and this always makes some tricky sense),and secondly,in this case, the sheepskin("овчинка",овчина) isn't a reward at all - but a resource for effort. The reward, the result will be here, f.e. a fur coat.

We have an idiom with this meaning also - "игра не стоит свеч" (here too, the goal of the card game isn't any candles at all, but f.e. money:>)

The point is that the goal of the action isn't worth the resources spent. With a "овчинка", this can be explained as follows: that a good fur coat won't come out of this resource anyway.