CURSING IN FINNISH.

Comments

1. Christopher Culver says

   July 17, 2013 at 2:29 am

   Torvalds is a Finland Swede, so I was surprised to read this new. After asking around, I’ve heard that Finland Swedes often curse only in Finnish. The reason is usually given that Finnish curses are more expressive or whatever, but to me this seems like another sign of the death of Finland Swedish as the community is slowly assimilated to the Finnish-speaking majority. (I see this with the Mari, too, they curse only in Russian, having lost that part of their lexicon.)
2. A Reader says

   July 17, 2013 at 2:43 am

   I think you meant “explains”.
   But I guess you’re American, so any combination of letters will do.
3. Trond Engen says

   July 17, 2013 at 2:45 am

   I don’t necessarily think it’s a sign of imminent death, but rather of uneven bilingualism. Not long ago I spoke to a Lithuanian welder who told me that Lithuanians do their swearing in Russian since that’s so much more suited for expletives. That may not be true for all Lithuanians all the time, but it was for him and his crew. Also, American English sexual swearing is spreading everywhere.
4. beslayed says

   July 17, 2013 at 2:56 am

   Note that the most vulgar part of the curse, “vittu”, appears to actually derive from Swedish – which raises interesting general questions regarding Finnish swearing.
   There’s a bit on Torvalds linguistic background here: http://www.muktware.com/news/2857/which-linus-torvalds%E2%80%99-native-language-finnish-or-swedish
5. AJP Crown says

   July 17, 2013 at 5:50 am

   I don’t think it’s any more American than it is Australian, British etc., is it Trond?
6. Trond Engen says

   July 17, 2013 at 7:43 am

   In English? No, probably not. As a source for worldwide borrowing? Oh, definitely.
7. AJP Crown says

   July 17, 2013 at 8:41 am

   Oh. I see what you mean.
8. languagehat says

   July 17, 2013 at 8:41 am

   I think you meant “explains”.
   But I guess you’re American, so any combination of letters will do.
   Thank you for your gracious attempt to spread enlightenment, but the first definition of explicate in Merriam-Webster is “to give a detailed explanation of,” so I think I’m in the clear.
9. J.W. Brewer says

   July 17, 2013 at 12:03 pm

   Since the “grammatical diversity” thread has been closed due to spam conditions, let me make an off-topic point here: viz., that I am mildly disappointed that the Yale project’s database only has two usage datapoints from New Haven itself, one of which dates from the 1790’s (and is evidence for the proposition that at that time the “go a-fishing” construction was still acceptable in the formal register of Standard AmEng), and the other of which is an instance of the “so don’t I” construction, which I do not recall ever experiencing myself in the wild.
   To be fair, the point of the website is apparently to assemble in one conveniently-usable place data from multiple prior researchers, not (at least primarily) brand-new research.
10. Shanth says

    July 17, 2013 at 2:23 pm

    I suppose this happens often among bilingual minorities, mainly because swearing is usually picked up from peers in adolescence. I also cannot swear in my mother tongue because I only ever use it with my parents and elder relatives.
11. tetri_tolia says

    July 17, 2013 at 6:06 pm

    So much for Bill Bryson’s ravintolassa!
12. David Marjanović says

    July 17, 2013 at 7:13 pm

    Also, American English sexual swearing is spreading everywhere.

    Quite. Fuck has found a niche in German: it expresses that you’re outraged at the situation – Scheiße implies a catastrophe instead. The emphatic particle fucking has similarly begun to spread, because German used to lack one entirely.
    Never mind special cases like all the Viennese swearing that’s calqued from Czech.
13. David Marjanović says

    July 17, 2013 at 7:13 pm

    (Or actually from weird mixtures of Czech, Slovak and Hungarian.)
14. languagehat says

    July 17, 2013 at 7:48 pm

    Another feather in the cap of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
15. John Cowan says

    July 17, 2013 at 9:20 pm

    My daughter, who has no German, has picked up Scheiße from somewhere, and uses it in place of Shit in front of her 4-year-old son. So far he has shown no inclination to use either form.
16. Grumbly Stu says

    July 18, 2013 at 12:43 am

    The emphatic particle fucking has similarly begun to spread, because German used to lack one entirely.
    Eine doch ziemlich unvorsichtige Behauptung. An jeder Scheiß Ecke ja begegnet man emphatischen Partikeln. Es war schon immer so.
17. Dmitry Pruss (aka MOCKBA) says

    July 18, 2013 at 1:04 am

    My Mishar Tatar friend grew up in Moscow speaking mostly Russian, but cognizant of a large number of Tatar words. When she finally went to spend grade school summer break in her parents’ native village, she had to communicate solely in Tatar for the first time in her life, and made liberal use of Tatar sex-words. The grownups were appalled and told her that these Tatar words really mean what they mean; but for cursing, there are Russian words of the same meaning. “We curse in Russian, don’t ever translate it into Tatar again”.
    Interestingly, f*ing doesn’t exist in Russian either, although it’s very rich in f-word-derivatives. Presumably the cause is that the *active* participle doesn’t cut it in russian. Do be a swearword, the intercourse-action has to be *passive* (as in fairly un-English f*ed)
18. Grumbly Stu says

    July 18, 2013 at 1:12 am

    In his philosophical works, Heidegger used the everyday emphatic expression immer schon almost as a term of art. I won’t try to explain the context of that. I merely want to point out that immer schon corresponds in English sentences to things like “[has] always [been]”, “simply always”, “for donkey’s years”, “for fucking ever”, “it has ever been so” etc etc.
    English-speaking commentators on Heidegger who have little German are unaware that immer schon (and schon immer) are trivial bits of German. They have dreamed up an English term of art to match: “always-already”. How stupid is that ?
19. Bathrobe says

    July 18, 2013 at 1:41 am

    (as in fairly un-English f*ed)
    Actually, ‘fucked’ is used often enough in English.
    E.g.:
    He’s fucked in the head.
    We’re fucked.
    Get fucked!
20. AJP Crown says

    July 18, 2013 at 3:08 am

    How stupid is that ?
    Very stupid. I don’t understand why there still aren’t any good translations into English of Heidegger (or Sloterdijk). Is there no money in it, or what? Maybe JK Rowling could do it under another name and then let everyone know.
21. Grumbly Stu says

    July 18, 2013 at 6:54 am

    No money, and – judging by the reception I have been favored with here when I have mentioned bits of Sloterdijk and Luhmann – neither clue nor interest. Before the public will buy, the ideas of these writers may need to be packaged in human-touch plots by Rowling or Cartland.
    I’m still wondering whether David meant that German “entirely” lacked an emphatic particle, or only an emphatic particle associated with screwing. In the latter case, I don’t see that the language lacked such a thing in the sense that it would be more perfecter if it had one. Men lack tits, and women lack bits, but surely this not a situation crying out to be remedied ?
22. AJP Crown says

    July 18, 2013 at 8:11 am

    There’s neither clue nor interest because they’re such rotten translations. It would need the enthusiasm of someone who’d read the German to make it happen.
    Maybe he would consider ‘immer schon’ too specific compared to ‘fucking’.
23. languagehat says

    July 18, 2013 at 8:58 am

    My Mishar Tatar friend grew up in Moscow speaking mostly Russian, but cognizant of a large number of Tatar words. When she finally went to spend grade school summer break in her parents’ native village, she had to communicate solely in Tatar for the first time in her life, and made liberal use of Tatar sex-words. The grownups were appalled and told her that these Tatar words really mean what they mean; but for cursing, there are Russian words of the same meaning. “We curse in Russian, don’t ever translate it into Tatar again”.
    I don’t understand this. How did she learn those words in the first place? Did her parents teach her all the Tatar curse words without explaining that they were curse words? If she just overheard her parents saying them, did she somehow not use them around her parents (despite thinking they were perfectly OK to use) and then for some reason start spewing them liberally in the village, or did her parents think it was cute that she used them and therefore didn’t correct her? A strange story.
24. languagehat says

    July 18, 2013 at 9:00 am

    In his philosophical works, Heidegger used the everyday emphatic expression immer schon almost as a term of art.
    A lot depends on your “almost.” If he was in fact using it as a term of art, then it makes sense to translate it differently than you’d translate it in a colloquial context. Is it your position that it would make no difference to the understanding of Heidegger if it were translated as “always” throughout?
25. Dmitry Pruss (aka MOCKBA) says

    July 18, 2013 at 9:25 am

    I don’t understand this. How did she learn those words in the first place? Did her parents teach her all the Tatar curse words without explaining that they were curse words? If she just overheard her parents saying them, did she somehow not use them around her parents (despite thinking they were perfectly OK to use) and then for some reason start spewing them liberally in the village, or did her parents think it was cute that she used them and therefore didn’t correct her?
    LH, sorry if I tangled it up. As a child, she was a legacy Tatar speaker with a very limited vocabulary but of course she knew translations of Russian swearwords to Tatar. I really don’t think kids pick this stuff from the parents – isn’t it the same in all cultures? As a kid, you learn it in the ‘hood, from other kids, from sibs and cousins, anything of that sort but not from the parents, right?
    So in Moscow, she grew up among Tatars and socialized with Tatars but spoke Russian (with occasional Tatar bits and pieces), and cursed exclusively in Russian. But in the village, she had to switch 100% to Tatar in daily communication, and without a 2nd thought she translated her swearwords to 100% Tatar too. The villagers weren’t amused. For them these words were dirty, literal, and totally inappropriate; for cursing, there were Russian erstwhile equivalents instead.
    Since your story made it clear that Finnish translations of English swearword come across as literal and inappropriate in public speech, but English swearwords are just fine for cursing, I vividly remembered this Mishar village tale.
    ‘fucked’ is used often enough in English
    that’s why I used the word “fairly”. Uses like FUBAR exist of course, but the active participle form predominates, while in Russian the situation is absolutely the opposite.
26. Grumbly Stu says

    July 18, 2013 at 10:01 am

    Is it your position that it would make no difference to the understanding of Heidegger if it were translated as “always” throughout?
    Yes, that is my position – with caveats.
    Like the texts of many unusual writers, his are much more than mere grammatically correct assemblies of words as if of Lego components. You can’t disassemble the whole, replace individual German words or expressions by English ones, then reassemble them according to English grammar – and thereby obtain an easily intelligible text.
    Heidegger’s words and expressions have meanings and associations that interlock very tightly – making them easier to understand intuitively (although when you think about it, the intuitiveness may vanish as you conclude: “This is nonsense”). Individual words and expressions may have more-or-less adequate counterparts “cold out of the English dictionary”, but when they are reassembled their connotations don’t interlock in the same way as the German “originals”. This is where “emphatic particles” become indispensable.
    This kind of thing makes it hard to render Heidegger into English off the bat, for a non-professional translator of philosophy such as myself. “Always” will do for immer schon initially, but I feel some kind of technical term or expression not too far away from “always”, some kind of emphatic “always” might help the reader more. Over the course of the text, special connotations must be polished to a shine.
    In any case, “always-already” helps nobody to understand anything.
    Translating Heidegger would be a Gesamtlebenskunstwerk kind of undertaking. I don’t value his stuff enough to undertake such a thing. I’ve also backed off from translating Luhmann, because even mild paraphrases of his ideas – such as I have occasionally set out here – met with cries of outrage and flights of tetchiness. Not because of the language, I think, but because of the ideas.
27. AJP Crown says

    July 18, 2013 at 10:42 am

    Well what about Sloterdijk? I never noticed outrage at Luhrmann’s ideas but maybe I was off sick that day.
28. AJP Crown says

    July 18, 2013 at 10:43 am

    – Sorry about the R. I can’t help myself.
29. Grumbly Stu says

    July 18, 2013 at 11:08 am

    Are you U, Crown ? The rhotic stuff ?
    It just occurred to me that, in terms of simple pluggability, “all along” is better than nothing for immer schon, at least in many contexts of everyday speech.
30. s/o says

    July 18, 2013 at 12:24 pm

    Since forever? Or is that too colloquial?
31. J.W. Brewer says

    July 18, 2013 at 12:27 pm

    Is Heidegger translated worse than prior German philosophers? Or is he just translated into a particular register/style of English that was developed in the 19th c. by translators of Kant/Hegel/Schopenhauer/whoever that thus Anglophone readers came to expect, even if one would consider it highly suboptimal if starting on a clean slate? (Nietzsche might be different, whether you admire or detest W. Kaufmann, because he is understood to have a very different approach – less ponderous, more epigrammatic – and it is expected that that feel will come through in English.) I have read that Germans think of Freud as an elegant prose stylist, even though the approach taken by those who translated his works into English (with, again, the first couple attempts establishing a baseline sense of how Freud-in-English is supposed to sound) would never give you that impression.
32. Grumbly Stu says

    July 18, 2013 at 12:30 pm

    Holy shit, there’s even a WiPe article about “always-already”. Ignorance of basic German has grown into an industry of judicious gibberish.
    The article has a single sentence that gives some idea of what Heidegger is getting at in sentences in which he uses the trivial German expression immer schon:

    Similarly, the modern subject has “always already” learned a language, so in a certain sense it is inconceivable to consider the pre-linguistic subject.

    Everything else in the article is Quatsch mit Soße. For example:

    The phrase was used by Marx with regard to capital, and was later repopularized by Heidegger. Marx’s use was preceded by Kant in Critique of Pure Reason [A346=B404].

    As if one were to say: “The word ‘the’ was used by Marx with regard to A Day At The Races, and was later repopularized by inhabitants of The Big Apple. Marx’s use was preceded by King James in The Bible”.
33. AJP Crown says

    July 18, 2013 at 12:41 pm

    Am I U? As opposed to non-U? I’m certainly non-rhotic. I’m not sure the U & non-U distinction still works. I think my family was on right side of the U line 50 years ago, but nowadays that would probably make me Disgusted, of Tunbridge Wells, a Tory – or even worse, a member of the Ukip party. It’s nothing to boast about.
34. Grumbly Stu says

    July 18, 2013 at 12:42 pm

    J:W: I myself wouldn’t venture an opinion, since I have read almost nothing by a German philosopher in an English translation – apart from bits of Nietzsche and Heidegger, just to see what up.
    The big problem with Heidegger is that the intelligibility of his works – quite apart from whether he is “right or wrong” about this or that – is strongly dependent on a reader’s receptiveness to … well, puns, to put it bluntly. Word games. Another such work is Max Steiner’s 1848 (ca) Der Einzige und sein Eigentum.
35. languagehat says

    July 18, 2013 at 2:04 pm

    Dmitry Pruss (aka MOCKBA): Thanks, I get it now!
36. Piotr Gąsiorowski says

    July 18, 2013 at 6:39 pm

    Some Russian curses are popular in Poland. The swearwords in question are cognate to our own, but somehow Russian imparts greater expressive force to them.
37. David Marjanović says

    July 18, 2013 at 8:39 pm

    I’m enjoying this discussion (except for the stomach cramps caused by the Pffft article on always-already), but I’m far too tired to add to it right now. I’ll be back (as Austrians have immer schon been saying) tomorrow. Just so much…
    Some Russian curses are popular in Poland.
    Somewhere I once read that chuj, extremely popular in some circles, is an outright loan from Russian, and that only fiut is native.
    …which would bring me to the intriguing question of /f/ in Polish, except I’m too tired for that, too. 🙂
38. Grumbly Stu says

    July 19, 2013 at 1:08 am

    Marx’s use was preceded by Kant in Critique of Pure Reason
    In some 19th century thing I recently read, the title of a contemporary translation of the book was Critique of True Reason. Velly interesting, or ?!
39. Bathrobe says

    July 19, 2013 at 3:42 am

    I learnt pizda from a Yugoslav many years ago. I wasn’t too surprised when I found that the Mongolians knew it too.
40. Piotr Gąsiorowski says

    July 19, 2013 at 6:41 am

    David: Somewhere I once read that chuj, extremely popular in some circles, is an outright loan from Russian, and that only fiut is native.
    But Pol. chuj is attested already in the 15th c., when Russian loans were very rare, so the chances are that it’s a respectable Proto-Slavic word (incredibly, Vasmer’s etymological dictionary of Russian omits it). There were also rather obvious Polish derivatives like chujec ‘boar’. Older Polish used several non-euphemistic synonyms, mostly abandoned now, e.g. pyje. Fiut, however, acquired its current meaning quite recently, and is a relatively young onomatopoeic word (originally ‘a whistling sound’ -> ‘a whistle’ -> you know what).
41. languagehat says

    July 19, 2013 at 9:28 am

    incredibly, Vasmer’s etymological dictionary of Russian omits it
    Are you quite sure of that? It would surprise me a great deal, since he included ебать and пизда. The bowdlerized Soviet edition, of course, omits all three, and that (for reasons of pocketbook) is the only one I own; Google Books won’t allow even a snippet view of Vol. 3 of the original German edition, but if you google [vasmer etymologisches wörterbuch хуй] you get a hit for “Russisches etymologisches Wörterbuch – Volume 3 – Page 238,” so I’m reasonably sure it’s in there. (And of course if anyone has access to it, we’d all be curious to know what it says.)
42. juha says

    July 19, 2013 at 12:43 pm

    ху́й G хуя́ ‘membrum virile’. Wird als Ablautform zu хвоя́ ‘Nadeln, Zweige der
    Nadelhölzer’ (s.d.) gestellt und verglichen mit lit. skujà ‘Tannennadel’, lett.
    skuja ‘Tannenzweig’, evtl. auch alb. hu ‘Pfahl, membrum virile’, best. geg.
    huni, tosk. huri, s. Pedersen Jagić-Festschr. 218 ff., Berneker EW. 1, 408,
    Barić Alb. Stud, 1, 29, Lehmann KZ. 41, 394, Iljinskij IORJ. 20, 3, 103. Dagegen ohne
    genügenden Grund Uhlenbeck IF. 17, 98, Petersson KZ. 46, 145.
43. languagehat says

    July 19, 2013 at 1:19 pm

    Thank you!
44. languagehat says

    July 19, 2013 at 1:31 pm

    I do have Berneker (Slavisches etymologisches Wörterbuch Vol. 1, 1908), who says on p. 408 s.v. chvoja: “Ablautend (*(s)qhouι̯os) hierher vielleicht r. ху́й, G. хуя́, pl. хуи́ ‘penis’. Dagegen ohne genügenden Grund Uhlenbeck IF. 17, 98.”
45. Piotr Gąsiorowski says

    July 19, 2013 at 4:07 pm

    Thanks, Juha! I own no copy of the German original.
46. David Marjanović says

    July 20, 2013 at 9:05 am

    From the Aranese thread:

    “the knight without fear of reproach” (an attempt to render le chevalier sans peur et sans reproche).

    Interesting. In German, der Ritter ohne Furcht und Tadel is old enough that Tadel has in the meantime shifted its meaning from that which should be criticized to the criticism itself.
    I guess there are implications for Standard Average European. 🙂
    Obligatory: der Ritter ohne Furcht und Adel, “the knight without fear or nobility”.
    From this thread:

    The emphatic particle fucking has similarly begun to spread, because German used to lack one entirely.
    Eine doch ziemlich unvorsichtige Behauptung.

    That’s more like “rather” and “more like”.

    An jeder Scheiß Ecke ja begegnet man emphatischen Partikeln.

    That expresses more contempt/anger/hate than fucking; it’s more like motherfucking. I don’t know, but I bet Scheiß- was used to translate “I’ve had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane”.

    Es war schon immer so.

    That’s not emphasis, it’s aspect. Es war immer so would quite literally mean “it always was that way – and isn’t anymore”. Schon immer expresses “it has always been” because the tenses can’t do that; switching to “es ist immer so gewesen” would not help.
    So, I maintain that an analog to English fucking, which simply puts boldface on the following word or syllable, or Russian же, which simply puts boldface on the preceding word (and may be used in polite company), is absent from German. German fucking has particles, but none for fucking emphasis.

    Heidegger’s words and expressions have meanings and associations that interlock very tightly – making them easier to understand intuitively (although when you think about it, the intuitiveness may vanish as you conclude: “This is nonsense”).

    Seconded.

    Translating Heidegger would be a Gesamtlebenskunstwerk kind of undertaking.

    + 1

    I have read that Germans think of Freud as an elegant prose stylist, even though the approach taken by those who translated his works into English […] would never give you that impression.

    Freud deliberately tried to avoid jargon, so he coined the few terms he thought he needed to coin in German rather than Latin or Greek: most famously das Es, das Ich, das Über-Ich. What did the English translators do? Translate those terms into Latin: id, ego, superego. *headdesk*

    But Pol. chuj is attested already in the 15th c. […]

    Oh! Thank you!
    Poor Uhlenbeck Without Sufficient Reason.
47. David Marjanović says

    July 20, 2013 at 9:10 am

    Yeah, I’m not legally sane this weekend. Apart from the borkquote, I put <b> tags in the wrong place – here’s the fixed version:

    Schon immer expresses “it has always been” because the tenses can’t do that; switching to “es ist immer so gewesen” would not help.

    (The only difference between “es war immer so” and “es ist immer so gewesen” is consecutio temporum: in Standard German you’d use the former in a narrative, the latter when you’re looking at the past explicitly from the point of view of the present. Both mean exactly the same and strongly imply “it’s over”.)
48. Vanya says

    July 21, 2013 at 12:19 am

    That expresses more contempt/anger/hate than fucking; it’s more like motherfucking.
    The Samuel Jackson quote was translated “Ich hab langsam die Schnauze voll von diesen beschissenen Schlangen in diesem beschissenen piss Flugzeug”, which to my ears sounds wholly inadequate. In my idiolect of Englsih beschissen- is maybe the equivalent of fucking in terms of emphasis. And it’s nowhere near strong enough to mean “motherfucking”. That is the problem with translating swearwords, it’s very hard to match equivalent offensiveness levels across cultures or even social classes. To accurately capture the transgressive offense in German that people from my rural hometown in the US would feel upon hearing “motherfucking snakes” the equivalent German might have to be something like “Saujudische Schlangen”, i.e. truly offensive and transgressive.
49. David Marjanović says

    July 21, 2013 at 5:32 pm

    Ich hab langsam die Schnauze voll

    Langsam? Slowly? “I’m slowly getting fed up”? Jesus Haploid Christ.
    Beschissen works for me, though. It definitely has the advantage of being longer – very important for dubbing.

    To accurately capture the transgressive offense in German that people from my rural hometown in the US would feel upon hearing

    *contracts*
    *slowly backs down*
    *approaches the door backwards*
    …Yeah, I don’t think the rural US is what Hollywood has in mind… it’s more like LA and NYC…
50. John Cowan says

    July 21, 2013 at 11:28 pm

    Hmm, my comment to Dmitry got lost, apparently. It was to the effect that it’s not surprising that Russians don’t swear with the present active participle, as it is entirely borrowed from Church Slavonic.
51. Vanya says

    July 22, 2013 at 2:15 am

    …Yeah, I don’t think the rural US is what Hollywood has in mind… it’s more like LA and NYC…
    It’s a “teen vs. adult” split more than rural vs. city. Younger people across the USA are increasingly more tolerant of obscenity, and less tolerant of racial , homophobic or other slurs against identity than their parents (e.g. the word “retarded”, the most common epithet we used as kids growing up, is quickly becoming taboo). Still I find that, maybe thanks to Hollywood, foreigners often drastically overestimate just how tolerant the average American is to hearing obscenities in everyday speech. If you go around using “fucking” for emphasis in any social situation other than being with your peers, people will still find you pretty crass, even in LA and NYC.
52. Vanya says

    July 22, 2013 at 9:42 am

    Actually David, if you’re talking about emphasis, “fucking” is a loaded word when English has dozens of other words capable of the exact same function ranging from straight up euphemisms like “frigging” and “flipping” to even more obscene like “cocksucking” (especially if you’re a Deadwood fan), to “stupid”, a word kids use a lot, to “son-of-a bitch/sumbitch” (now a little old fashioned I think as a word for “boldfacing”), to “bloody” in British English to plain old “goddamn/damn/darn”, and probably dozens more. But these terms aren’t helpful in philosophic writing, unlike Rusian же, because even the mildest euphemisms like “darn” are considered improper for high-minded writing. So formal written English shares the same missing particle as German.
53. Trond Engen says

    July 23, 2013 at 7:26 am

    My experience with borrowed curses like shit and fucking is that they are weaker than in the original. As such, they may fill a sociolinguistic rather than a sementic niche: They retain expressivity and in-group credibility without the offensiveness of native counterparts. When I was young in Bergen I knew nice girls of old families who were putting føkkings before every other word even with their parents and grandparents listening.
    Related: We also borrow polite phrases. Please and sorry were old when I was a kid, so they’ve been in Norwegian for many decades. And they’re more easily thrown around than their native counterparts. Plis (plis, plis, plis, plis, pliiiis!) is said by children nagging to achieve something. Sorry is definitely not the hardest word to say — it’s used when you can’t bring yourself to a sincere apology. English I love you in a Norwegian context sounded stupid when I grew up, but I’ve been told that it’s gaining ground, since the emotion is easier to express in English, at least for teenagers with commitment issues.
54. Grumbly Stu says

    July 23, 2013 at 8:29 am

    Sorry is definitely not the hardest word to say — it’s used when you can’t bring yourself to a sincere apology.
    Heh. I have chastised many a German for doing that. But do they change their ways, and return to offering sincere apologies in German ? They do not.
    It’s not surprising. In non-English-speaking societies, the English word “sorry” plays a useful role as invisible ashes. You can heap it on your head and yet save face.
    Actually, even English speakers who say “sorry” are using invisible ashes. It’s just that there is a convention that they are visible – like the Emperor’s new clothes.
    Without these conventions, we would have to perform seppuku as unmistakable proof of repentance.
55. Grumbly Stu says

    July 23, 2013 at 8:41 am

    Although seppuku proves nothing either, except by convention. Hmmm… I have the feeling that not all conventions are arrived at by unconventional means.
56. Paul Ogden says

    July 23, 2013 at 9:34 am

    Although seppuku proves nothing either
    Sofukkyu!
    Israelis also like to slip bits of English – especially naughty bits – into their Hebrew speech, and they’ll write them phonetically too. ‘Sorry’ is definitely in, as is ‘shit.’ ‘Fuck’ is heard fairly often but I don’t recall it in writing. They’ve calqued ‘go fuck yourself’ by employing a hitherto unused reflexive form of a verb meaning to fornicate. Not sure if it’s due to the multitude of biblical begats, but the root and its offspring rate five separate Strong’s Numbers: 2181, 2185, 2183, 2184, and 8457. Brown-Driver-Briggs has close to a page on it. For the curious the root is zana / זנה.
57. Paul says

    July 23, 2013 at 10:25 am

    Grumbly: Sloterdijk is now being translated, but how good these are I have no idea.
    http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113387/peter-sloterdijks-philosophy-gives-reasons-living#
58. Grumbly Stu says

    July 23, 2013 at 12:12 pm

    Thanks a lot, Paul ! From the quotes, it sounds like the English translations are not that bad. Quite a lot of his work has been translated into Spanish.
    Seeing what other translators have done with Sloterdijk, it becomes easier to accept his stylis tics for what they are – like those of Heidegger, whose onto-whatever-it-is rests on a foundation of heavy-duty German puns.
    Because what Sloterdijk says is so interesting, I am willing to ignore the diamonds-and-furs style he often deploys – the one I associate with rich Met-subscribing old dames in NYC.
59. Grumbly Stu says

    July 23, 2013 at 12:15 pm

    Dammit, strike “deploys” and read “employs” instead. One is infested with buzz-phrases.
60. Trond Engen says

    July 23, 2013 at 5:16 pm

    Obviously, even a thoroughly Norwegian apology can be completely empty, but you’re supposed to mean it, so insincerity comes with a cost. What sorry provides is guilt-free emptiness.
61. David Marjanović says

    July 23, 2013 at 8:12 pm

    it’s not surprising that Russians don’t swear with the present active participle, as it is entirely borrowed from Church Slavonic.

    Oh.

    It’s a “teen vs. adult” split more than rural vs. city.

    Of course; and what I really had in mind was liberal vs. Bible Belt (keeping in mind that lots and lots of places claim to be its buckle). I’m sorry (heh), it was too late at night… as it is now.

    the word “retarded”, the most common epithet we used as kids growing up, is quickly becoming taboo

    Yes, though I keep coming across people on the Internet who don’t even know this and use -tard as a productive suffix till they’re called out.

    “stupid”, a word kids use a lot

    Ooh, that reminds me: Stupidly large snakes, the story so far. But that does mean “unbelievably”, “crazily”, not just “very”.

    English I love you in a Norwegian context sounded stupid when I grew up, but I’ve been told that it’s gaining ground, since the emotion is easier to express in English, at least for teenagers with commitment issues.

    Interesting.
62. Grumbly Stu says

    July 23, 2013 at 10:43 pm

    Stupidly large snakes
    “Stupendously”, perhaps, vaguely remembered by a vocab tard ?
63. David Marjanović says

    July 24, 2013 at 7:14 am

    “Stupendously”, perhaps, vaguely remembered by a vocab tard ?

    Would greatly surprise me in this case, because I know the author.
64. Trond Engen says

    July 24, 2013 at 8:49 am

    DM: Interesting.
    But losing much of its appeal when I tell that I’ve never heard it in the wild. Or, now I realize that I have, but in a very different setting: On an award show a couple of years ago when a trio of TV comedians received a lifetime achievement award. One of them was in hospital at the time, terminally ill, and naturally this was the main focus of the improvised speech held by the two others. They ended up finishing with “We love you!”.
65. Grumbly Stu says

    July 24, 2013 at 12:40 pm

    Would greatly surprise me in this case, because I know the author.
    I didn’t mean the author. I assumed his title was just playing around with “stupidly X” as an already existing variant of “‘stupid’, a word kids use a lot”.
66. Grumbly Stu says

    July 24, 2013 at 1:07 pm

    See stupidly beautiful.
67. John Cowan says

    December 11, 2013 at 10:39 am

    Perhaps (and I do hate this sort of no-evidence etymological speculation, but what the hell) ‘beautiful enough to make you stupid when you look at it’.
68. Owlmirror says

    May 7, 2019 at 2:20 pm

    Israelis also like to slip bits of English – especially naughty bits – into their Hebrew speech, and they’ll write them phonetically too. ‘Sorry’ is definitely in,

    My memories are from long ago, but I recall a phrase that was deliberately pronounced like a phrase from Biblical Hebrew, “tzar li” (צר לי) , where the literal meaning is “I am in distress”. The phrase often shows up in Psalms, and you can see from context that it isn’t used in the sense of an apology/sorrow/regret over one’s actions, but about what has happened to the Psalmist. Woe is me!

    But I am pretty sure that the phrase is used in Modern Hebrew in deliberate imitation of English “sorry”.

    How would “sorry” even be transliterated into Hebrew? “סארריי”? Google seems to think I’m looking for info on Sarah or sari or Surrey.

    They’ve calqued ‘go fuck yourself’ by employing a hitherto unused reflexive form of a verb meaning to fornicate.

    Again memories from long ago, but I recall: “tizdayen” (תזדיין).
    Ah, Google supports me, here:
    “לך תזדיין בתחת, מניאק!” == “lech tizdayen batachat, manyak!” == “go fuck yourself in the ass, maniac!”
69. David Eddyshaw says

    May 7, 2019 at 3:18 pm

    What “sorry” provides is guilt-free emptiness.

    “Sorry” in Kusaal is gaafara, which is evidently from the Hausa gaafaraa “forgiveness”, from some derivative of Arabic غفر “forgive” (never been able to work what exactly.)

    It’s every bit as denatured as “sorry”: you might say it if you see somebody trip when you’re yards away and are in no conceivable way responsible.

    I reckon this is just one of those there cultural universals. The world is going to the dogs … kids today …

    On the other hand, I just learnt the hitpa’el of “fornicate.” The day has not been wasted,
70. Y says

    May 7, 2019 at 3:29 pm

    צר לי is widely understood, but quite formal or literary.

    “Sorry” would be transliterated סורי. English orthographic o is generally pronounced and thought of as an [o].

    tizdayen is from the root zyn ‘fuck’, with the reflexive binyan hitpa‘el. A fine example of native Hebrew morphology in the service of filth. The BH root znh is not in use in Israeli Hebrew, but the association clearly had something to do with the establishment of the meaning of zyn.

    maniac mostly means ‘asshole’, but also ‘sex maniac’ or ‘pervert’. It’s the address term of choice to catcalling or grabbing men.
71. John Cowan says

    May 7, 2019 at 4:20 pm

    Manyak as a possible merger of Arabic and English.
72. Brett says

    May 7, 2019 at 8:31 pm

    The polysemy of Hebrew lezayen (לזיין) was discussed a long time ago at Language Log.
73. Y says

    May 7, 2019 at 8:52 pm

    And at the hattery, starting here and here.
74. Owlmirror says

    May 8, 2019 at 4:26 am

    “tzar li” (צר לי)

    By the way, “צר” is the root of “צרה”, “trouble (something that causes distress)”, plural “צרות”, tzarot, whose pronunciation in an Ashkenazic accent has given us tsuris.

    צר לי is widely understood, but quite formal or literary.

    I note it’s also used to translate “Sorry, Charlie”. Heh.

    “Sorry” would be transliterated סורי.

    How would that be distinguished from “Syrian”, if it wasn’t pointed, though?

    English orthographic o is generally pronounced and thought of as an [o].

    I’m not good at phonetics, but I’m pretty sure that the “o” in “sorry” is pronounced very closely to the “a” in Charlie, although it probably depends on locale. Which is why “tzar li” works as a translation.

    Wiktionary IPA has: /ˈsɑɹi/, /ˈsɒɹi/, /ˈsɔɹi/

    The BH root znh is not in use in Israeli Hebrew

    Isn’t that the root of zonah, Modern Hebrew for “prostitute”; also used in verbal form for the act of prostitution/fornication?

    Anecdote: I once heard one man call another “ben zonah”; the other responded with “ben zoneh“. Despite the fact that they were insulting each other, I think the first was more annoyed rather than angry, and was amused by the response.

    Hm. I thought “zoneh” meant “male prostitute”, but Google Translate says “lecher”; “womanizer”.

    I see that Google Translate, at least, thinks that “תזדנה” means “Fuck”.
75. Owlmirror says

    May 8, 2019 at 4:45 am

    I found one weird high-ranking hit on Google: “azide-containing amino acid” had a Hebrew translation of “חומצות אמיניות המכילים תזדנה”.

    I really don’t think that translation is correct. I wonder if it’s an autocorrect/spoolcheck mistake — “אזיד” was originally written, but if that word wasn’t in the machine’s database . . .
76. Owlmirror says

    May 8, 2019 at 5:45 am

    And since I’m not a chemist, seeing “azide” reminded me of one of the few other places I’d seen the term: Things I Won’t Work With: Azidoazide Azides
77. Y says

    May 8, 2019 at 10:42 pm

    “צרה”, “trouble (something that causes distress)”
    And, hilariously, also ‘co-wife’.

    How would that be distinguished from “Syrian”, if it wasn’t pointed, though?
    By context, as is done all the time with unpointed Hebrew.

    Isn’t [znh] the root of zonah, Modern Hebrew for “prostitute”; also used in verbal form for the act of prostitution/fornication?

    It is the root of zona but the verb is not used in Modern Hebrew at all.
    zone is what you might call a recurrent neologism, usually jokey as in your example. I regret to say I don’t know what the slang terms are for male prostitutes. (Add: Wikipedia says the slang terms are “gigolo” or zona mimin zaxar ‘prostitute of the masculine sex’.)
78. January First-of-May says

    May 9, 2019 at 8:13 am

    By context, as is done all the time with unpointed Hebrew.

    As in the classic joke: “keep the window closed so that ions don’t enter”, which was supposed to be “…so that pigeons don’t enter”.

    (Supposedly the same word, when unpointed, can also be read as “Greeks”.)
79. Owlmirror says

    May 10, 2019 at 1:34 am

    Is it even possible, in Hebrew, to distinguish between “pigeon” and “dove”?

    As Wikipedia Columbidae says:

    The distinction between “doves” and “pigeons” in English is not consistent, and does not exist in most other languages. In everyday speech, “dove” frequently indicates a pigeon that is white or nearly white; some people use the terms “dove” and “pigeon” interchangeably. In contrast, in scientific and ornithological practice, “dove” tends to be used for smaller species and “pigeon” for larger ones, but this is in no way consistently applied. Historically, the common names for these birds involve a great deal of variation between the terms. The species most commonly referred to as “pigeon” is the species known by scientists as the rock dove, one subspecies of which, the domestic pigeon, is common in many cities as the feral pigeon.

    I must admit, “pigeon” calls to my mind the common feral pigeon ubiquitous in cities, whereas a “dove” is a bird either smaller or white. I’ve actually seen smaller birds that are a more uniform gray/brown that I think of as doves, but they may just be a different breed/species of pigeon (no doubt recently and specially introduced in this city overwhelmingly populated by the feral pigeon).
80. John Cowan says

    May 10, 2019 at 7:26 am

    It’s every bit as denatured as “sorry”: you might say it if you see somebody trip when you’re yards away and are in no conceivable way responsible.

    But that is a different sense of sorry, not denaturation as such. When an American cop on TV says “I’m sorry for your loss” to the grieving widow, he is not expressing his regret for shooting her husband. Indeed, the OED says the unetymological connection of sorry with sorrow goes back to OE times, though their strong formal similarity was not so apparent in standard OE, where the former was sārig. (This is usually described as a change from long a to long a between OE and ME, but it is really the result of the fact that OE is Wessish whereas ME is West Midlands and so not a direct descendant.) Etymologically we must rather connect sorry with sore (OE sār) and sorrow with German Sorge ‘worry, concern’.

    While I’m at it, here’s a bit of early modern Wessish, with rather more influence from English than a proper Wessish purist would care for (notably ond instead of a), though the spelling is intensely conservative. You can also see the P-Celtic substrate shining through here and there, as in dref ‘city’.

    1 Bæwðad Weorðe allre an Yæiþ ond an Spracwis. 2 Ond hwanne hie ocahmað frum Eæstum, fændað hie an cwm yn ðam Lond Scynar ond þær libbedan. 3 Ond hie segedan ynterð hæ: A cahme, mahghe we Brycce ond bacane we hæ yn fyr. Ond ðy Brycce becahmað teihe Stænas ond se Weorðtrewu becahmað teihe ða Lim. 4 Ond hie segedan: A cahme, beweorce we teihe an Dref ond anen Twr, hweacs Top geræcseþ Heofenum, ond we begottað ær ere we forðgoað owfyr ðar Weorðe allre. 5 Ond ða Hleord downcahmeþ tu gwel se Dref ond ðæn Twr hweacse ðy Mannbegrn bæwðad beweorced.
    6 Ond ða Hleord seged: Hiere ys an Folc, ond an Yæiþ bæwð gennie allum; ond hiere hwæt beganað hie mahgh, ond hie wær maen na ungehilfed gæn allum, hwæt teekað hie tu dw. 7 Ha downdode We, ond misce We hier Yæiþ, yn so ðat naman wæreð wnderestand ðy Ondere. 8 Ond ða Hleord brædedeþ hie owfyr ðæt Bred Weorð all, ond hie mostedan hear tei ðam Hleorde, ond na beweorc se Dref. 9 So næmedeþ man se Dref Babel, fwr ða Hleord miscedeþ se Yæiþ Weorð all ond frum þær brædedeþ owfyr ðæt Bred Weorð all.

    I need not, of course, translate for this audience….