duckshit
08-16-2009, 03:47 AM
what do you guys think is the best language to curse in?
imo russian is most vulgar, there's basically five or six root words that are as versatile as the english word "fuck", if not more. that plus the various ways you can conjugate these words and use suffixes and prefixes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_mat
Perhaps more interesting than mat's etymological derivation is its psychological origin: why is Russian profanity so firmly rooted in sex? In other languages—even in other Slavic countries, such as the Czech Republic and Poland—the vocabulary of obscenity is more or less evenly divided between shit culture and sex culture. All the basic elements of mat, however, relate to sexual activity, which, in Russia, is considered far dirtier than defecation....
In other words, the whole business of sex is both dirty and painful. Yet zhopa, the word for "ass," has never been regarded as a mat term, and the rear end is of so little interest that Russian has no real equivalent for the word "asshole," either in the physical sense or in the metaphorical... "Shit" is not too popular, either, and when American movies are dubbed the word is rendered by the Russian equivalent of "damn."
One theory has it that before Russia became Christian obscene terms were employed by various pagan groups, including a fertility cult. When Christianity arrived, the Church declared war on mat as a manifestation of these cults, thereby turning the language of sexuality into a form of blasphemy....
Baranov, the mat scholar, believes that it has always lent language an element of conviction, facilitating the transition from word to deed. "In the Soviet period," he says, "the status of the high lexicon was devalued—words such as 'fatherland,' 'motherland,' 'truth.' In the context of Soviet ideology, these words acquired a negative resonance, not only for the general population but also for Party propagandists. In this situation, obscene words began to function as markers of authenticity." He told me an anecdote from his own past, when he was working as a warehouseman at a shoe factory: "Our production manager was a woman, and one day she called me in and gave me an assignment. And then she looked at me and said, 'Yob tvoyu mat' ['Fuck your mother']'—'Make sure it fucking gets done!' I'd never heard her use mat before. She used it to show that she was being straight with me."
All the basic elements of mat, however, relate to sexual activity, which, in Russia, is considered far dirtier than defecation..." What exactly is dirtier than defecation -- sexual activity or relating to sexual activity? If the former, the statement is wrong; if the latter, acceptable. "Yet zhopa, the word for "ass," has never been regarded as a mat term, and the rear end is of so little interest that Russian has no real equivalent for the word "asshole," either in the physical sense or in the metaphorical..." Well, "ass" is surely weaker than "fuck" in any context, so what's the problem? The expletive "shit" cannot be translated as "govno" because a one-syllable word is clearly required -- hence it becomes "chort". Overall, Russians are less fixated on anal stuff, that's right: it's considered -- and indeed is -- a German thing (Czechs being Slavic Germans). "Yob tvoyu mat'" may technically mean what Erofeyev says it does, but Russians do not take it as a meaningful sentence -- rather, as an extreme expletive.
"The study of mat is not welcomed in academic circles..." Welcomed or not, Scherba held regular seminars on mat (behind closed doors, they say), and Plutser-Sarno has recently started publishing a dictionary of mat. The Three-Letter Word alone -- without derivatives -- took a whole volume.
The very use of obscene Russian vocabulary, called mat, can enhance the humorous effect of a joke by its emotional impact. Due to the somewhat different cultural attitude to obscene slang, such effect is difficult to render into English. The taboo status often makes mat itself the subject of a joke. One typical plot goes as follows.
A construction site expects an inspection from the higher-ups, so a foreman warns the boys to watch their tongues. During the inspection, a hammer is accidentally dropped from the fourth floor right on a worker's head... The punch line is an exceedingly polite, classy rebuke from the mouth of the injured. For example the alleged worker might say: "Dear co-workers, could you please watch your tools a little more carefully, so as to prevent such cases and avoid work-place injuries?"
(L) Another series of jokes exploits the richness of the mat vocabulary, which can give a substitute to a great many words of everyday conversation. Other languages often use profanity in a similar way (like the English fuck, for example), but the highly synthetic grammar of Russian provides for the unambiguity and the outstandingly great number of various derivations from a single mat root. Emil Draitser points out that linguists explain that the linguistic properties of the Russian language rich in affixes allows for expression of a wide variety of feelings and notions using only a few core mat words:[10]
* An agenda item on working conditions at a trade union meeting of a Soviet plant. Locksmith Ivanov takes the floor: "Mother fuckers!... Go fuck yourself!... Fuck you and you too again!..." A voice from the audience: "Right to the point, Vasya! we won't work without work robes!"
As an ultimate joke in this series, the goal is to apply such substitution to as many words of a sentence as possible while keeping it meaningful. The following dialog at a construction site between a foreman and a worker retains a clear meaning even with all of its 14 words being derived from the single obscene word khuy.
- Fuckheads, why the fuck did you load so much of this shit? Unload it anywhere you want!
- What's the fucking problem?! Fuck no! No need to unload! It got loaded alright! Let's fucking go!
Word-by-word:
- Ohuyeli?! (Have [you] gone mad?!) Nahuya (why) dohuya (so much) huyni (of stuff) nahuyarili (you have loaded up)? Rashuyarivay (unload [it]) nahuy! (out of here)
- Huli?! (What's the problem?) Nihuya! (No way!) Nehuy (No need) rashuyarivat (to unload)! Nahuyacheno ([It] got loaded) nehuyovo! (quite well)! Pohuyuarili! (Let's go)
After this example one may readily believe the following semi-apocryphal story. An inspection was expected at a Soviet plant to award it the Quality Mark, so the administration prohibited the usage of mat. On the next day the productivity dropped abruptly. People's Control figured out the reason: miscommunication. It turned out that workers knew all the tools and parts only by their mat-based names: huyovina, pizdyulina, huynyushka, huyatina, etc.; the same went for technological processes: othuyachit', zayebenit, prihuyachit, huynut, zahuyarit…
imo russian is most vulgar, there's basically five or six root words that are as versatile as the english word "fuck", if not more. that plus the various ways you can conjugate these words and use suffixes and prefixes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_mat
Perhaps more interesting than mat's etymological derivation is its psychological origin: why is Russian profanity so firmly rooted in sex? In other languages—even in other Slavic countries, such as the Czech Republic and Poland—the vocabulary of obscenity is more or less evenly divided between shit culture and sex culture. All the basic elements of mat, however, relate to sexual activity, which, in Russia, is considered far dirtier than defecation....
In other words, the whole business of sex is both dirty and painful. Yet zhopa, the word for "ass," has never been regarded as a mat term, and the rear end is of so little interest that Russian has no real equivalent for the word "asshole," either in the physical sense or in the metaphorical... "Shit" is not too popular, either, and when American movies are dubbed the word is rendered by the Russian equivalent of "damn."
One theory has it that before Russia became Christian obscene terms were employed by various pagan groups, including a fertility cult. When Christianity arrived, the Church declared war on mat as a manifestation of these cults, thereby turning the language of sexuality into a form of blasphemy....
Baranov, the mat scholar, believes that it has always lent language an element of conviction, facilitating the transition from word to deed. "In the Soviet period," he says, "the status of the high lexicon was devalued—words such as 'fatherland,' 'motherland,' 'truth.' In the context of Soviet ideology, these words acquired a negative resonance, not only for the general population but also for Party propagandists. In this situation, obscene words began to function as markers of authenticity." He told me an anecdote from his own past, when he was working as a warehouseman at a shoe factory: "Our production manager was a woman, and one day she called me in and gave me an assignment. And then she looked at me and said, 'Yob tvoyu mat' ['Fuck your mother']'—'Make sure it fucking gets done!' I'd never heard her use mat before. She used it to show that she was being straight with me."
All the basic elements of mat, however, relate to sexual activity, which, in Russia, is considered far dirtier than defecation..." What exactly is dirtier than defecation -- sexual activity or relating to sexual activity? If the former, the statement is wrong; if the latter, acceptable. "Yet zhopa, the word for "ass," has never been regarded as a mat term, and the rear end is of so little interest that Russian has no real equivalent for the word "asshole," either in the physical sense or in the metaphorical..." Well, "ass" is surely weaker than "fuck" in any context, so what's the problem? The expletive "shit" cannot be translated as "govno" because a one-syllable word is clearly required -- hence it becomes "chort". Overall, Russians are less fixated on anal stuff, that's right: it's considered -- and indeed is -- a German thing (Czechs being Slavic Germans). "Yob tvoyu mat'" may technically mean what Erofeyev says it does, but Russians do not take it as a meaningful sentence -- rather, as an extreme expletive.
"The study of mat is not welcomed in academic circles..." Welcomed or not, Scherba held regular seminars on mat (behind closed doors, they say), and Plutser-Sarno has recently started publishing a dictionary of mat. The Three-Letter Word alone -- without derivatives -- took a whole volume.
The very use of obscene Russian vocabulary, called mat, can enhance the humorous effect of a joke by its emotional impact. Due to the somewhat different cultural attitude to obscene slang, such effect is difficult to render into English. The taboo status often makes mat itself the subject of a joke. One typical plot goes as follows.
A construction site expects an inspection from the higher-ups, so a foreman warns the boys to watch their tongues. During the inspection, a hammer is accidentally dropped from the fourth floor right on a worker's head... The punch line is an exceedingly polite, classy rebuke from the mouth of the injured. For example the alleged worker might say: "Dear co-workers, could you please watch your tools a little more carefully, so as to prevent such cases and avoid work-place injuries?"
(L) Another series of jokes exploits the richness of the mat vocabulary, which can give a substitute to a great many words of everyday conversation. Other languages often use profanity in a similar way (like the English fuck, for example), but the highly synthetic grammar of Russian provides for the unambiguity and the outstandingly great number of various derivations from a single mat root. Emil Draitser points out that linguists explain that the linguistic properties of the Russian language rich in affixes allows for expression of a wide variety of feelings and notions using only a few core mat words:[10]
* An agenda item on working conditions at a trade union meeting of a Soviet plant. Locksmith Ivanov takes the floor: "Mother fuckers!... Go fuck yourself!... Fuck you and you too again!..." A voice from the audience: "Right to the point, Vasya! we won't work without work robes!"
As an ultimate joke in this series, the goal is to apply such substitution to as many words of a sentence as possible while keeping it meaningful. The following dialog at a construction site between a foreman and a worker retains a clear meaning even with all of its 14 words being derived from the single obscene word khuy.
- Fuckheads, why the fuck did you load so much of this shit? Unload it anywhere you want!
- What's the fucking problem?! Fuck no! No need to unload! It got loaded alright! Let's fucking go!
Word-by-word:
- Ohuyeli?! (Have [you] gone mad?!) Nahuya (why) dohuya (so much) huyni (of stuff) nahuyarili (you have loaded up)? Rashuyarivay (unload [it]) nahuy! (out of here)
- Huli?! (What's the problem?) Nihuya! (No way!) Nehuy (No need) rashuyarivat (to unload)! Nahuyacheno ([It] got loaded) nehuyovo! (quite well)! Pohuyuarili! (Let's go)
After this example one may readily believe the following semi-apocryphal story. An inspection was expected at a Soviet plant to award it the Quality Mark, so the administration prohibited the usage of mat. On the next day the productivity dropped abruptly. People's Control figured out the reason: miscommunication. It turned out that workers knew all the tools and parts only by their mat-based names: huyovina, pizdyulina, huynyushka, huyatina, etc.; the same went for technological processes: othuyachit', zayebenit, prihuyachit, huynut, zahuyarit…