The excellent Russian-Israeli blogger Avva has a great story about a taxi ride with a driver he’d used several times before: “Judging by his face and Hebrew, a typical sabra (native Israeli), an Ashkenazi, about 45… He tells me he lived in America a long time; sometimes he switches to quite good English.” They had just exited from a tunnel and were behind a car that refused to move; the driver was turning into the next lane to pass when a bus shot out of the tunnel and sped past in that very lane. “The driver leans on the brake with all his strength and hollers” a stream of Russian obscenity, “without any accent whatsoever.” (I won’t bother reproducing the mat because anyone who could read it might as well read Avva’s whole entry—it’s short and funny.) As one commenter said, “It’s always like that—we speak in one language, switch to another, and curse in Russian.” I have to say that Russian is the best language for cursing I know, bar none.
Russia is certainly one of the best, but I have to consider Mexican Spanish a serious competitor. And English isn’t too shabby – any language that comes up with things like “ass-crack of dawn” and the TV series “Deadwood” certainly is rich in profanity.
I would nominate Japanese as the worst language for cursing. I have been told over the years by various Soviet fraternal peoples (Kazakhs, Latvians and Kyrgyz) that their native languages have no native swear words, instead they resort to Russian.
For that matter how would modern Hebrew have developed any swear words since it was resurrected from mostly sacred literature? Were they imported from Yiddish? Arabic? Russian? All three?
English isn’t too shabby
Oh, I agree — it’s a fine language for cursing (and poetry — the two seem to go together). But Russian is the all-time champion.
I’ve heard the same about Japanese, and wondered the same thing about Hebrew. (I’ve been told by another Russian-Israeli that ebyona mat’ has become naturalized in Israeli Hebrew, so Russian is obviously a prime source.)
I haven’t gotten up (down?) to that level, but supposedly Hungarian isn’t too shabby for cursing. German cursing, on the other hand, is just lame.
But you know the Hungarian National Curse, right? Lófasz a seggedbe!
And what of Québécois French? It is harsh, crude, beautifully anti-ecclesiastic and superbly poignant. To me, c’est de la poésie, crisse!
I have heard that the Finnish curses are very good.
Contra Vanya, I think that a language with a religious literature would be especially good for deriving curse words.
“Soviet fraternal peoples” claim their languages have no native sear words. I knew a Siberian Yupik translator who claimed his native language had no swear words. He too used Russian for cursing.
For example, the story of Noah and his daughters.
I consider european Portuguese a very serious contender. Eight centuries as an independent country gave us plenty of time to fine-tune our cursing and swearing. Go have a look…
Firstly, I have always considered a good rhythmic language, with strong consonants interspersed with simple vowels, to be of prime importance for providing the necessary oomph to swear words, so top marks go to Spanish, Italian and Greek (Portuguese is too closed mouth for swearing to be an unfettered joy).
And secondly, grammatical flexibility is of paramount importance so that one can be inventive and pepper even the most common of phrases with blasphemy. English, as far as I know, is the winner on this count.
Combining the two criteria however, I find Greek to be the best. It’s more flexible grammatically than the other rhythmic languages I mentioned, and shits on English for rhythm and oomph.
How does Russian compare on these counts?
Russian is tops. It has extremely strong consonants and all the flexibility you could want. Just try saying the basic Russian swear word khuy ‘cock’ (rhymes with “phooey!”): go on, give that kh a big juicy gargle, round your lips for that satisfying oo sound, and finish up with that derisive relaxation of the lips into the terminal –y. Felt good, didn’t it? You probably want to say it again. Fuck is a good word, but it’s over too soon — to draw it out you have to artificially say “fu-u-uck,” or you can emphasize it by shouting it, but it doesn’t have the easy grace, the self-prolonging naturalness of khuy. And that’s just one word. It’s the combinations that reveal a true master. To quote Edward Topol (from his classic Dermo):
“I don’t know how it is in other languages, but in Russia the operative word when it comes to cursing is tier, as in a three-tier or triple-decker curse, which consists of three levels of different curses stacked one on top of the other. (For example, хуем пизданутый мудак, khuyem pizdanuty mudak, jerk-off fucked by a prick…)”
khuy… yeah, that was enjoyable and I wasn’t even angry!
Have started learning French. Swearing in French I imagine would bring comparatively little joy because of the stressless nature of the words and the lack of decent consonants.
Am very tempted to move to Russian with all this talk of triple-decker blasphemy.
And just because it’s so good, here’s my favourite swear word in Greek. It’s ϲϜ958;ϲϜ949;ϲϜ954;ϲϜ959;ϲϜ955;ϲϜ953;ϲϜ940;ϲϜ961;ϲϜ945; or ksekoliara. It means a female whose arse has come unstuck from anal sex. Ksekoliaros or ϲϜ958;ϲϜ949;ϲϜ954;ϲϜ959;ϲϜ955;ϲϜ953;ϲϜ940;ϲϜ961;ϲϜ959;ϲϜ962; is the male colonic equivalent.
Did you hear Greeks invented sex?
Yeah, and it was the Romans a little bit later that started doing it with women.
Oops, that should be ξεκολιάρα and ξεκολιάρος respectively.
I don’t speak or read Catalan, but from this example, it ought to be in the running.
From Maledicta: The International Journal of Verbal Aggression:
Mecagum Deu, en la creu, en el fuster que la feu i en el fill de puta que va plantar el pi,
“I shit on God, on the cross, on the carpenter who made it and on the son of a whore who planted the pine.”
Polish used to hold its own with the best, but the last ten years or so have seen an enormous vulgarization of public life and obscenities have become so common in even (especially) children’s speech (thank you American movies!) that they’ve mostly lost the power to provide shock or awe.
A side effect of this is that no one works at swearing anymore – they just keep up a unimaginitve barrage of the common words and their derivatives (kurwa, (c)huj, pierdolić, jebać, dupa) dropping them in a few times every sentence. A sad state of affairs considering the graphic power of older usage.
“Have started learning French. Swearing in French I imagine would bring comparatively little joy because of the stressless nature of the words and the lack of decent consonants.”
Oh, I’m going to have to take exception to that. While I agree that it’s not as satisfying as Russian (I have a little theory about curse words and the sensation of spitting/horking), the French definitely hold their own, what with the ability to draw out syllables putain-ain-ain.. which could be followed by the immensely satisfying: quel con!
To name but two.
Though it’s true that the absence of aspirates, particularly a lovely phlegmy ‘xh,’ is clearly a drawback.
Nick, I asked a Catalan friend, who is also fluent in Castilian, French, English and Italian, what language he would swear in if somebody came up behind him and stuck a knife in his ribs.
Without hesitation, he told me he would say, “Oh Fuuuuuuuuck!” So, no discredit to Catalan, but when push comes to shove, perhaps the simplicity of the anglo-saxon prevails.
I can think of two possibilities regarding the Catalan speaker.
Swear words in foreign (no matter how fluent you are) languages are easier to use since they are, after all, in a foreign language and don’t have the visceral impact that offensive words in your native language have.
This goes double if you’re living in a foreign language environment. Where did you ask him and where was he living then?
That’s why I find myself tearing into the Polish word kurwa (literally ‘whore’ but used like ‘fuck’ in the US) with a long trilled r (kurrrrwa!) when I’m upset, much more satisfying than a simple fuck! or shit! with none of the guilt (my parents discouraged casual swearing as low class). A win win situation.
“For that matter how would modern Hebrew have developed any swear words since it was resurrected from mostly sacred literature? Were they imported from Yiddish? Arabic? Russian? All three?”
That’s exactly right. I can’t think of any purely-Hebrew curse words (that is, with an inherent negative connotation) except “zayin” (penis) and “zona” (whore; they might even be from the same root, I’m not sure though and it seems unlikely — “zona” being a biblical word and “zayin” modern).
“I’ve been told by another Russian-Israeli that ebyona mat’ has become naturalized in Israeli Hebrew, so Russian is obviously a prime source.”
Yep. Although it’s pronounced “kibinimat” (which may be my misinterpretation of your transliteration, as I don’t know a thing about Russian 🙂
(Misinterpretation of a transliteration…Man, am I arrogant)
Theoretically, Poland should be on top, being a) heavily Catholic and b) Slavic, with all the same basic words as in Russian. Why do you think it hasn’t happened, Michael?
Actually, “blasphemy” doesn’t apply to Russian, there is no tradition of religious cursing; dirty words, no matter in how many tiers they are, never touch on the Virgin, Jesus and the rest of the Christian Pantheon.
I remember being shocked when first encountered (in Little Italy, Manhattan)an expression “Jesus F*cking Christ!”; and I’m not even a Christian, let alone Catholic. Something like “Porca Madonna” is inconcievable in Russian.
You’re quite right, Michael, about native language cursing. One of my former bosses, Polish-American, born and raised in MidWest, would periodically swear in Polish, but never in English: Polish was a foreign language for her. I, on the other hand, couldn’t control blushing when hear her casually mention …um … doggie-style activity in the middle of the meeting with national account’ client.
Tatyana, I wrote earlier in the thread that Polish cursing used to be pretty impressive but has faded badly in recent years due to unimaginitive overuse of a few key terms. I remember when a single loud instance of the k word would send an entire streetcar into tut-tut disapproval (young and old alike) now 8 year olds talk about kurwa this and pierdolony that and chuj the other and no one bats an ear. Very depressing.
Now that you mention it, blasphemous obscenity is extremely rare in Poland too (though I think obscene language combined with Jesus would be considerably less shocking to Poles than would combinations with either Mary or the Pope).
Poland is not the only Catholic area where there is little blasphemy. Germany also has large Catholic areas that have never really been strong with blasphemous curses. I think this has to do not with piety but with the amount of control the Church traditionally had over daily life. In areas where the Church, until recently, played a strong political role in people’s everyday lives and behavior – Italy, Spain, Ireland, Quebec, Mexico – the tradition of blasphemy is very strong. In Catholic countries where the Church was in opposition to state power, or at least not directly aligned with it – Germany, Poland, France – blasphemy was less effective, maybe because there was less resentment towards the Church in people’s daily lives. Note how blasphemy has almost vanished in France, a trend that began, I believe, after the Church was displaced in 1789, while blasphemy still remains strong in Quebec where the Church was powerful until the 60s. Is it possible that the traditional political weakness of the Orthodox Church explains the absence of blasphemous obscenity in Russian?
Strange indeed.
“Just try saying the basic Russian swear word khuy ‘cock’ (rhymes with “phooey!”)”.
The French also – although not a swear word, per se – have couille [kuj], which just so happens to rhyme with ‘phooey’.
Y’know, I love this site. I can read/talk about Greeks having sex, balls and cocks… all within the context of academic discourse. Man, I can’t WAIT to be a prof!
You know, I don’t think that had ever occurred to me — I must keep French and Russian in completely different parts of my brain!
My guess on Hebrew cursing (based on five years in Jerusalem, though I never got anywhere with either Hebrew or Arabic [to my everlasting shame], but these are the words you learn quickly) is that most of it is Arabic. But that might also depend on the community. Watch as everything turns out to be a laugh for the Arabic speaker. Do you breathe air (dick)? I’m just being a tease (ass). And finally, though you need to be speaking German, küß (cunt) mich. It never ends.
I’ve heard my Russian friends and colleagues (at least half of them female) use “fuck” freely while speaking Russian. It’s foreign and thus relatively mild and socially acceptable. “Факи так и сыплются” is how one might describe such a conversation. “Fuck-up” is particularly useful: “На работе случился большой факап,” “Я сегодня крупно факапнулся.”
My impression is that “fuck” and “shit” are fairly widespread in Hebrew as well, and also quite a bit milder than the commonly-used Arabic obscenities. Speaking of blasphemy (very interesting comment, vanya!), I wonder why Israeli Hebrew doesn’t have much anti-rabbinic blasphemy (or at least not that I’m aware of), given the not inconsiderable power there of the rabbinate. Maybe it’ll arise in the next 50 years or so.
I think I’ve mentioned in a previous LH comment my lexicographic fantasy of a Hebrew-Yiddish-English dictionary of obscenities. One can always dream.
I haven’t heard the kind of uses mentioned by Alexei in Polish but fuck (usually in the form fuck you) and shit are common enough. Sometimes they are written phonetically fakiu and szyt. A friend claims to have heard “fakiu się” (się is reflexive) but I’m sceptical.
A colleague/former student told me a student named Alicja got the nickname “who the fuck” (hudafak? hudefak?) after the song about Alice (European reference those in the US probably won’t get).
Only tangentially related (in other words not at all). There’s an up and coming tv/film actor in Poland with the unfortunate last name Szyc (pronounced “shits”). I almost hope he manages an international career …..
I don’t speak russian, but – as far I can tell – “fuck” seems to feature a couple of times here:
http://moscowgraffiti.blogspot.com/
And personally, I find finnish extremely useful for swearing while trying to keep your cool. In all other circumstances dutch will be used.
I know a certain Israeli who is very knowledgeable in the Gmara. From time to time he curses in the most exquisite (Talmudic) Aramaic. The Hebrew-speaking listeners turn literally green: they understand they’re being cursed, some get what is said, but none respond in kind!
Hi,
I live in Australia and found this site while doing some searching on languages. I’m Polish born, but came to live here at a young age. As you probably all know, Australia has all sorts of people here, and there are plenty of Slavs that’s for sure. It’s a bit different here, when someone uses the work Kurwa (it’s known here well because of the large amount of Slavs obviously) and say at schools mostly if you’re heard saying it, you will probably get more punishment than swearing in English. I’d say it’s because it’s foreign, but the fact that most people know that it also means Whore, more than anything else. Which is why the female’s hate it.
Here in New Zealand all the young people use Korean swear words
Really! How does that happen? Are there a lot of Korean immigrants?
new zealand? cool….
im korean and i now have a new respect for new zealanders….XD
hmm maybe its becase our swear words are fairly simple and there are so many~
When talking about spanish curses and bad words, it’s useful to know thah not only mexican spanish is worth to be studied… In Chile we have a lot of funny words. The most used are:
Huevón!(also used in mexican spanish): you’ll never find a word wtih so many meanings, from ‘guy’, ‘old friend’ or simply ‘any person’, to ‘jerk’, ‘asshole’ or ‘completely moron’. Also the verb ‘huevear’ can mean ‘to dance’, ‘to flirt’, ‘to bother/disturb’, ‘to do stupid things’… a wide etc.
Pico!: dick! cock! (as when you say ‘oh, s**t!). Also can be used like ‘nevermind!’, ‘it doesn’t matter’.
Conchatumadre!: your muther’s pussy (used like ‘motherf***er’).
I wonder why Israeli Hebrew doesn’t have much anti-rabbinic blasphemy
We don’t swear by our fellow human beings unless they are somewhat sacralized, like the Prophet. Nobody in America, for example, would say “Reagan, I just dropped my cell phone”, or “Obama, it’s hot today.” Here’s Mark Rosenfelder on the strange oaths in Asimov’s Foundation series:
In Russia, there is an ongoing debate on whether blya/blyat’/blyad’ is a (swear) noun or an interjection. The reason being, I suspect, is if it is recognised as an interjection it might be exempted from a ban on ‘mat’ in the press.
I was once playing volleyball in Pisa, Italy, and everybody was swearing in English (f, sh etc). Incidentally, you can’t say Pisa in Russian without people around blinking nervously, it sounds so close to c* in Russian.
Incidentally, you can’t say Pisa in Russian without people around blinking nervously
Native English speakers get similarly edgy when Germans utter a certain word.
you can’t say Pisa in Russian
Well, if you pronounce it in English fashion as [pizə] I can see why, but in Standard Italian it’s [pisa], which would rather suggest to me писать, a harmless sort of verb. I don’t know how the Pisans pronounce it.
Paul: Never mind that, what about the philosopher? That got Sidney Morgenbesser (he of the famous “Yeah, yeah” double positive) into trouble once:
I wish I could have been a fly on the wall in that precinct.
Other Morgenbesserisms not on the above page:
On being beaten by the police during a protest march in 1968: “It was unjust but not unfair […] unjust because they hit me over the head, but not unfair because they hit everyone else over the head.” (This is often quoted with “unjust” and “unfair” transposed, including on the Wikisource page, but it makes no sense.)
A question on a philosophy exam he set: “It is often said that Marx and Freud went too far. How far would you go?”
To B.F. Skinner: “You think we shouldn’t anthropomorphize people?”
On theories of everything: “To explain why a man slipped on a banana peel, we do not need a general theory of slipping.”
On dualism: “It was Lovejoy, I think, who once wittily suggested that Dewey hated the number 2, implying that Dewey was opposed not merely to dualisms but even to important distinctions.” (Computer folks, like me, only deal in the numbers 0, 1, and ∞, thus putting us one-down even from Gamow’s Hungarian aristocrats.)
On Morgenbesser (by Robert Nozik): “I majored in Sidney Morgenbesser.”
On Morgenbesser (by Art Danto): “Someone recently asked me what Sidney Morgenbesser was known for, and I had to say that he was known for being Sidney Morgenbesser.”
On John Cowan, after he had suggested that lying on one’s resume was a Bad Thing (by Geoffrey Pullum): “What are you, some kind of Kantian guidance counselor?”
Anatoly had a post (almost a decade old now!) in which he (convincingly, to my mind) proposed бля(дь) as the best Russian equivalent of fuck; both can be used in virtually any syntactic circumstance. (I once knew a Russian who used блядь in just about every sentence.)
It’s sexist but, strictly linguistically, I agree, it is.
See what refurbishing you site does to you, you have a nr 10 year old post revived and discussed with relish, b-t!
Yes, it’s great!
In a similar fashion to what Sashura, Paul Ogden, and John Cowan have mentioned, a decent Czech person can’t feel at ease letting out a perfectly innocuous “Fakt, jo?!” (“For real?!”) around an English speaker. It literally means “fact, yeah?” — it even corresponds etymologically — but the befuddled Anglophones tend to hear it a little differently… (It doesn’t help that the ‘t’ is often elided in speech!)
Now that you mention it, blasphemous obscenity is extremely rare in Poland too (though I think obscene language combined with Jesus would be considerably less shocking to Poles than would combinations with either Mary or the Pope).
When a catastrophe happens, you have the options o Jezu and o kurwa, depending on whether you’re more sad or more angry about it, I think.
Maybe that’s why the version I’ve encountered is just “Faaaaaaaakt???” with a clearly audible, released [t]. I doubt that, though. 🙂
From Dovlatov’s Affiliate
Мистер Хиггинс рассказал нам о задачах симпозиума. Вступительную часть завершил словами:
— Мировая история едина!
— Факт! — отозвался из своего утла загадочный религиозный деятель Лемкус.
Мистер Хиггинс слегка насторожился и добавил:
— Убежден, что Россия скоро встанет на путь демократизации и гуманизма!
— Факт! — все так же энергично реагировал Лемкус.
Мистер Хиггинс удивленно поднял брови и сказал:
— Будущая Россия видится мне процветающим свободным государством!
— Факт! — с тем же однообразием высказался Лемкус.
Наконец мистер Хиггинс внимательно оглядел его и произнес:
— Я готов уважать вашу точку зрения, мистер Лемкус. Я только прошу вас изложить ее более обстоятельно. Ведь брань еще не аргумент…
Усилиями Самсонова, хорошо владеющего английским, недоразумение было ликвидировано.
Mister Higgins informed us about symposium goals. His introduction he finished saying:
“World history is one.”
“[It’s] fact!” — said from his corner a mysterious religious personality Lemkus.
Mister Higgins became a bit wary and added:
“I am sure that Russia will soon move toward democracy and humanism.”
“[It’s] fact!” — Lemkus answered with the same energy.
Mister Higgins raised his eyebrows and said:
‘I see future Russia as a thriving and free state.”
“[It’s] fact!” — Lemkus said without alteration.
At last, mister Higgins looked him over and said:
“I respect your position, Mr.Lemkus. I only ask you to explain it in more detail. Swearing is not an argument.”
Samsonov, who knew English well, helped to clear this misunderstanding.
God, I love Dovlatov. Every time I read a little of him, I want to read more of him.
H.L. Mencken, The American Language 4th ed. (1936):
I regret to this day having passed up the opportunity of buying a dictionary of Italian (or specifically Neapolitan?) curse words, many years ago.
So, is that true about Korean swearwords being used in NZ?
But to explain how a man slipped on a banana peel, why banana peels are slippery in the first place…
Only you гондомы can prevent охуенные forest fires, блядь.
Meanwhile, the satrap of Dagestan has had it up to here with all these дебили [cut], бля!
Four блядь’s in one sentence — impressive! (That’s the first clip.)
Reminds me a lot of the Pole I heard on the light rail in Berlin once. He was basically making a list on the phone: “A, kurwa… B, kurwa… C, kurwa…” and so on for a long time, kurwa.
A certain number of speakers of Russian in Israel, when speaking Hebrew, have trouble keeping a straight face when hearing or pronouncing the Hebrew for ‘postdated check’ — /čεk daˈxuj/.
A, kurwa… B, kurwa… C, kurwa
Reminds me of Tom Wolfe’s Army Creole, in which the word for “Yes” is (one gathers) “Fucking A.”
“go on, give that kh a big juicy gargle, round your lips for that satisfying oo sound, and finish up with that derisive relaxation of the lips into the terminal –y. Felt good, didn’t it? ”
Savvateev’s mantra….
This Savvateev? What’s the connection?
Yes, this one. It seems both J1M and I know him. The connection is that in 90s I knew хуууууйййй…… as “мантра Савватеева”. Presumably because he used the word in this capacity but perhaps he just joked about it once:)
Anyway: either when trying to reproduce the mantra back then, or when thinking about Russian phonology in company of Russian learners much later I came to the same conclusion that you put in words here.
Two children behind my window right this second:
– А завтра будет срочное поднятие флага?
– По идее да… Бля-а, вот бы завтра проспать бы.. нахуй. […..] А у нас будет экология во вторник или в понедельник? А чё нам задава-али?
(no, nothing interesting – but I enjoy random conversations of people in langauges that I learn/study, so I regret that I don’t have my recorder at hand. The children were very expressive)
Another fine specimen.
Да, бля!
And the other voice screams “Yeaaaaah”. Globalization! (When Americans pick up something other people came up with it is called “cultural appropriation”, when other people pick up something Americans came up with it is called “cultural imperialism”. Kidding!)
If swearing will be taught from textbooks, this will be a textbook example.
Юмбү ёёёё юмбү еэээ,
юмбү ёёёё юмбү yeah.
“If swearing will be taught from textbooks”
…we won’t swear anymore.
I was thinking in terms of foreign-language teaching.
Meanwhile, the trifecta: Ёбанные суки, блядь!
Also сволочи блядь, пидарасы блядь, идиоты блядь, and for variety блядь сука.
I just went to the park and heard потому, что блядь in such an unemotional tone that I’d translate it as weil halt or at most weil eben. Unfortunately I didn’t get the context.
Can you elucidate weil halt for us non-germanophones?
It means, “Just because,” like what one would reply to a whiny child saying, “Aber Mutti, warum?” I don’t know if this is the actual etymology, but I parse it as being equivalent to English, “Because, full stop.”
I’d translate it as weil halt or at most weil eben.
Is this Austrian ? All I’ve ever heard is weil darum [pronounced “weil DArum”].
Grimm has the adverb halt (meaning no. 2) as central and upper German, regions with which I associate it as well. It’s very much bleached and doesn’t mean anything like “stop!” or “hold!” anymore; in English its nearest equivalents are “just”, “(well,) you know”.
Yes, bleached far beyond etymology, and not northern. “After all” is the strongest meaning it can have. Eben is more common in the north, and I think it generally has meanings at the stronger end of the spectrum.
das ist halt so – “(well,) that’s the way it is(, you don’t need to think about it further)”
weil das halt so ist – “because that’s just how it is”
Eben nicht! – “no, the opposite!”
No, that’s “Weil” halt. – “Well, ‘because'”. Weil – darum! is the same: “Because – therefore, that’s why!”
(I’m not familiar with either, but they’re obvious enough.)
That gives me a good guess about the stress pattern:
In “weil eben” and “weil halt”, “weil” may be given a slight-to-strong stress. High-low tone pattern.
But in “weil DArum” the “da” is always strongly stressed. Several tone patterns can be used.
What the expressions mean is obvious. I was wondering only about stress and tone pattern.
Stress and tone patterns are almost always ignored in discussions here, unless these are about “tone languages” like Chineses and Vietnameses. Why is that ? Seems pretty book-bound.
Stress and tone patterns are just as important as IPA-mediated “pronunciation” (with rudimentary stress notation) when it comes time to Assign Meaning. Or even just to wrap your head around what is being said.
For example: a German not familiar with weil halt would be perplexed on hearing “weil HALT”, because that production of halt means “stop!”. “Because stop” has no meaning, “just because” has meaning..
Stress and tone patterns are almost always ignored in discussions here
Not true at all. A site search on “stress” provides lots of examples.
But not tone patterns, which accompany stress patterns. I mean various combinations of these that are used in a dynamic way, in practice, to provide various meanings – not to statically distinguish dialects or idiolects from each other.
I believe the Russian term for those is интонационные конструкции (lit. “intonational constructions”). I’m not sure what they’re normally called in English.
That sounds like what I’m trying to describe. “Construction” is better than “pattern”. And “intonation” is spot on, I just couldn’t think of a better word than “tonal”.
Strangely, identified only in 70s.
I learned about them from a foreign learner of Russian.
—
Pattern is a good word, “roots and patterns” is a good description of what happens in Semitic. But it does not have a good Russian translation:(((
Russian Arabists say “models”, but it is not good at all.
The girl was efficient in making natives feel dumb:)
She: “is this IC-2 or IC-3?”
Native speakers who volunteered to help: “….”.
Native speakers who volunteered to help: “….”.
Early on I learned not to ask native German speakers about the “gender” or “grammatical gender” of a word. That drew blanks. A more productive question is “sagt man ‘der’, ‘die’ oder ‘das’ X?”
Yes, there’s a блядь in this video, but I’m posting it to ask what the rest of that language is, because it’s not Russian.
Missing link.
“there’s a блядь in this video”
I remembered an obscene children rhyme (in the rhythm of жили у бабуси два весёлых гуся – can be found on youtube)
а у тёти Нади
все три дочки бля…
не подумайте плохого,
блЯхами торгуют!
Oh, I managed to botch the link somehow. Here it is.
“Cannot retrieve Tweets at this time. Please try again later.”
Elon is in the house?
Sounds Turkic to me; I hope somebody can ID it.
I managed to botch the link somehow
Ah for the good old days when we could only blotch the ink.
сука as sarcastic intensifier: “an oh so fucking important village”.
пидарас as completely random insult chanted in choir.
“#Lithuanians raised $250,000 for a maritime drone for #Ukraine with the name “PEACE Дец”.”
Meanwhile, #NAFO is raising money for another one and holding a vote on Twitter (while it still exists) on whether it should be named “Ra[c]coon’s Revenge”, “Aqua Bonker 9000”, “HMS Bonquerer” or an abbreviation for “Dynamic Instrument for Liquid Defense Operations”.
“PEACE Дец”
I love it! For the benefit of non-Russophones, this is a play on the wonderful word пиздец (pizdets).
The voices in this video (watch it while Twitter still exists!) speak Russian and Ukrainian. I’m not sure if they also curse in both languages.
I have seen this spelling.
Usually п…ц is 3.14дец, звиздец, кабздец, капец, трындец, песец, абзац.
Absatz is becoming less common (but there was a programme Полный Альбац by a journalist Albats on the Echo of Moscow).
песец gave rise to пушной зверь and other euphemisms for the animal itself (also improvised)
Гонец из Пизы (used as title by Veller).
@DM, I don’t know. At 0:12 there is a sequence “[shot down] да, ракету, да?” where I don’t understand the word for [shot down]. IF in Ukrainian they can use ï/єбали in the sense of “shot down successfully”, then they swear in Ukrianian. But maybe I just misheard the word?
пизда на хуй
пизда – пиздец (in the sense “wow”)
на хуй – a punctuation mark, “.”
weil (…) halt (…) translates straightforwardly into Newfangled French: parce que […], quoi.
So that’s interesting: interjectional ебать – infinitive. Is this some kind of in-joke about English?
No. It existed well before anyone in Russia knew anything about English (I mean, at least from 1980s, from personal experience)
When Americans pick up something other people came up with it is called “cultural appropriation”, when other people pick up something Americans came up with it is called “cultural imperialism”.
Yookoohoo translation theory.
Also
ебать-копать!
and
етить-колотить!
Foreign influence is not excluded of course – also it can be schooling, for in school infinitive is the citation form (one has an impression that in Russian as such imperative was: e.g. it is used in trade pidgins, alongside with possessives as personal pronouns).
(Not say that Russian does not have its ways to use infinitives that could motivate such expressions)
I shouldn’t keep the Twitter handle Грета Туборг @qretaxyeta from you.
(As I keep saying, one of my mental ages is 8.)
Yet another fine specimen.
xueta
Greta-xujéta (as schm- just xuj-).
xujetá is more or less the same as xujnjá, where xuj- is emotional and mass noun suffix is pejorative.
Cf. суета сует “vanitas vanitatum“. Суета itself now means something else, while xujetá is more or less vanitas.
Bakhmut. Prologue and epilogue in Ukrainian, with [ɣ] and at least some final devoicing and plenty of swearwords, at least one of which is recognizably Russian; combat footage (the enemy is never seen) in Russian, with [ɣ] and apparently even total disappearance, and also disappearance of the в in автомат. And about as many swearwords as shots.
@DM, are you familiar with FYLOSC swearing?
(If yes, Russian profanities must sound just as cute to you as their profanities sound to us…)
To some extent. “I fuck you, the god who created me” is a classic, also the P word.
A German pun in Russian: Wunderwaffeln!
You’d think the Russian language is plenty self-sufficient in swearwords. But sometimes you’d like to replace же by a swearword, and what happens then is…
“Что я вижу?!? Что я fuckkkking вижу!?!”
That’s a great clip. (The subtitles go wrong with Россия в говно, which is ‘Russia [has fallen] into shit,’ not ‘Russia is shit.’)
haven’t seen it, just want to note that “в говно” is often found in phrases like пьяный в говно etc.
When it is “Russia” it can be раздолбать в говно etc.
So it works like “to pieces”.
Ah, thanks — a subtlety that had escaped me.
Agian, I haven’t seen it (this war keeps destroying my mood, so sometimes I just don’t want to watch another war video…) and of course в говно can be used in “fall into shit”, cf. “сраная рашка катится в сраное говно”. The normal directional meaning of “in ACC”. And of course in some contexts – where the verb is obvious from the context – the verb can be omitted. But there is another meaning of the accusative, as in “[shatter] in pieces”, and when I hear “я был в говно” (and the phrase is the only indication of what could be omitted) I understand it as “я был [пьян] в стельку” and when it is “машина в говно”, I understand it as “[удолбана] в говно” or something like that.
Oh, this is not a war video (unlike the others I’ve posted in this thread).
It’s a Masyanya video. (But about the war.)
Oops:) I thought it maybe isn’t but then checked the link and saw twitter again and thought if I want to trun on the VNP and realised that I’m not just in the mood … Masyanya is generally cool (though there is a war video by Kuvayev, namely the clip for a song by ногу свело)
P.S. sorry didn’t notice “but about the war” at first.
I tink to вундервафля I should add шушпанцер (not a ‘German pun in Russian’ though).
Just learned that in context of etching nitric acid is called крепкая водка, an obvious calque of aqua fortis/eau-forte (eau-forte is the Russian name for “etching”, офорт). Царская водка is in turn the official name for aqua regia.
So translations of aquae get -ka when they do not mean “water”.
Krepkaja vodka-I suppose this label led to many unfortunate accidents when unauthorised persons accessed the acid cabinet…
Just add 200 ml of eau de Cologne and a bit of varnish and it’s all good, comrade!
Grammar lesson: бля goes before the noun, блядь after.
A war video, but not a combat video: a Russian soldier calmly demonstrates that a new artillery shell is empty. His intonation is calm, that is. His vocabulary is very much not.
In case someone’s wondering: @GirkinGirkin is evidently not that Girkin…