Foul language in Russian
Censorship, etymology and linguistic type of swearing in Russian
Sergei Donatovich Dovlatov-Mechik - a Soviet journalist and writer. Internationally, he is one of the most popular Russian writers of the late 20th century.
It's rather hard to find information about foul language in Russia, because of taboo on the use of obscene language in print. This taboo exists not only among writers, but among scientists (such as philologists) too. It is a big loss for Russian linguistics, because foul language contains a lot of information about history and culture of Russian. At the same time, foreigners have long been attracted to the Russian foul language by its strong expression, imagery and ambiguity.
In most of Russian literature you will not find any characters who swear, though foul language is very common in colloquial speech. Nevertheless, there are some authors who use foul language in their works, but they are mostly from underground, for example S. Dovlatov or V.Pelevin. It makes their narrative fairer and more natural, comparing to many other earlier texts of writers that had been censored. Obscene vocabulary either was used by ports, good example is I. Brodsky. Most of the authors that use this vocabulary in their works, do it not for the shoking but for the most expressive accuracy and for representation of real live speech.
The national identity of the Russian foul language is not in the wide set of vocabulary, but in its frequency distribution. The number of derivatives from foul stems in Russian is truly innumerable, because they are constantly generated by speech.
In most of Russian literature you will not find any characters who swear, though foul language is very common in colloquial speech. Nevertheless, there are some authors who use foul language in their works, but they are mostly from underground, for example S. Dovlatov or V.Pelevin. It makes their narrative fairer and more natural, comparing to many other earlier texts of writers that had been censored. Obscene vocabulary either was used by ports, good example is I. Brodsky. Most of the authors that use this vocabulary in their works, do it not for the shoking but for the most expressive accuracy and for representation of real live speech.
The national identity of the Russian foul language is not in the wide set of vocabulary, but in its frequency distribution. The number of derivatives from foul stems in Russian is truly innumerable, because they are constantly generated by speech.
In the article about Russian obscene lexis V. Mokienko gives classification of foul words, there are some of them:
- Names of persons with emphatically negative characteristics
- The names of "indecent", socially taboo parts of the body - "shameful words"
- Names of the sexual intercourse process
- Physiological function names
So what is different in Russian foul language comparing to others? In general, all foul words in European languages we can divide into two parts:
1) Sex-culture type
2) Scheiss-culture type (Anal-excrement type)
Russian, Serbian, Croatian, Bulgarian and other systems of obscene lexis can be attributed to the first group, the second one includes English, French, German, etc.
Because of that, translation of Russian foul language speech always causes problems for forgings with other type of obscene language. Indeed, if you translate it literally, long Russian swearing will seem a flow of sexual perversion, whereas a speaker doesn't think about sex at all.
- Names of persons with emphatically negative characteristics
- The names of "indecent", socially taboo parts of the body - "shameful words"
- Names of the sexual intercourse process
- Physiological function names
So what is different in Russian foul language comparing to others? In general, all foul words in European languages we can divide into two parts:
1) Sex-culture type
2) Scheiss-culture type (Anal-excrement type)
Russian, Serbian, Croatian, Bulgarian and other systems of obscene lexis can be attributed to the first group, the second one includes English, French, German, etc.
Because of that, translation of Russian foul language speech always causes problems for forgings with other type of obscene language. Indeed, if you translate it literally, long Russian swearing will seem a flow of sexual perversion, whereas a speaker doesn't think about sex at all.
The Innovators:
How a Group of Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
Troubles with translation obscene lexis occur also because of lack of vocabularies with such words. To solve this problem, V. Raskin (Raskin, 1979) offers to use three main roots: хуй (dick) – пизда (cant) – ебать (to fuck) and combine derivates from them. Many linguists call this "sexual triad". The number of their derivatives and euphemisms is truly incalculable, because, as has been said earlier, they are constantly generated by live speech.
In conclusion, censorship of such wide, expressive and informative part of language is a big omission not only for scientists, but also for Russian-learners.
In conclusion, censorship of such wide, expressive and informative part of language is a big omission not only for scientists, but also for Russian-learners.
So use our language fully to feel and understand all sides of rich Russian soul!
