h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Folks, Willem shared a link with us over on the comments to my Guide Entry (A87792628) on cussing generals. The link made us laugh so hard, I just have to post it here. Warning: it's vulgar, but it will make you laugh.

http://www.cossacks-lienz.net/Sultan.html

To my intense delight, this lyrical diatribe has become a symphonic aria! By Dmitri Shostakovich, no less. Of course, you'll understand it all. It's only in Russian.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILCvcPzOYJA

This got us started about swearing as a cultural phenomenon. For example, Lithuanians don't swear much - or so we've been told. Instead, they indulge in extravagant and imaginative curses, like this:

'May a hedgehog sprout inside of your pants.'

Or;

'Go scratch a worm’s armpits.'

We speculated that this might be related to the Yiddish habit of doing the same thing, as in:

'May you grow like an onion - with your head in the ground.'

Stuff like that.

As the Lithuanian lady says on her website, 'Lithuanian is a delicate language.' Unfortunately, the only word Elektra knows in her grandparents' tongue will get your mouth washed out with soap. It has something to do with feeling eggs, she tells me. We do not inquire further.

This Lithuanian video doesn't have any cussing in it (we think, we're not sure). We don't know what it's about, but it's funny:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKQZZ7fHMkk

Now, I've always been sort of interested in the cursing business, largely because I grew up without it. I'm not lying. I was 12 years old when we moved to Yankeeland, and I saw a certain four-letter word painted on a wall. I was puzzled:

1. Why paint a word on a wall?
2. How was there a four-letter word in the English language that I wasn't familiar with? My vocabulary was pretty extensive.

I made the mistake of asking my mom. She turned several peculiar colours. Then she made me promise not to use it. I said, 'That's fine, but what does it mean?'

She choked out that it had 'something to do with having babies'. This left me even more mystified than before.

At university, I knew people whose conversation consisted of more-or-less streem of consciousness cussing. They always made me want to laugh. To me, they might as well be saying, lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas', which is Finnish for 'airplane jet turbine engine auxiliary mechanic non-commissioned officer student', which probably only offends people who live in the Helsinki suburbs and oppose noise pollution.

The Cossack who cussed out the Turkish Sultan sounds pretty fluent to us. That's because Russian, Polish, and other Slavic languages are really cussy. Boy, can you go to town. I can't repeat what they say, even though I CAN pronounce it. I had practice. Our teacher made us put a Tootsie Roll Pop in our mouths to practice the past tense of 'to be' pa russkie. I used to try out the little I remembered on people from the Soviet Union. They thought I was a nitwit, as usual, but understood me perfectly well.

Romanian, like all Romance languages, is potentially horribly foul. It's the Romans' fault. However, my Romanian professor stoutly refused to teach us any cuss words, so all we learned how to do was be terribly polite. We went around saying things like 'pretty please with sugar on top'.

French? Don't get me started about those people. And I used to have a moderation job that got me answering petitions that started, 'That word is extremely rude in Norwegian.' We emailed the Oslo office - yep, it was.

German? A disappointing language for cussing. No imagination to it whatsoever. Basically you put that one prefix on every noun in the sentence. Bor-ing. Of course, Goetz von Berlichingen did all right.

Greek has possibilities. There was the day I told our school secretary that the bus driver was pretty polite - a taxi cut him off in traffic and all he said was 'Panageia mou'. (Sort of like, 'by Our Lady'.) The secretary rolled her pretty eyes and said, 'That's NOT what he said.'

That's when I learned a really bad phrase in Greek that's awfully close to that.

Now, you know what I'm suggesting here:

1. DON'T get us on the wrong side of the Filther. Or the yikes button.

2. DON'T insult anybody's native language. Or anybody, for that matter. Be nice while talking about not being nice.

But hey - what language do you prefer to cuss in? Share links, but keep 'em clean.

Here's a lesson in Yiddish cursing, courtesy of Sholom Aleichem and Kolya Borodulin. If you know German, you'll be able to learn some Yiddish from this. His Yiddish is interesting - I can hear the Russian accent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjQIfqw8R9I

PS And if you want to hear a lot of real Russians cursing, try Youtube.

I seem to remember reading about a Yiddish curse that went along the lines of 'may you swallow an umbrella and have it open in your stomach'.

...Ouch.

Quite good at painting a picture, aren't they?

That's a picture you might not want, yeah.

The hedgehog one, too.

Oh, thank you both, that was SO funny. I needed cheering up today and I think that did it. So much more effective than our illiterate four letter words

Websailor

As you have probably guessed, I have read some rather old documents in my time, I have known others with similar interests.

I remember being shown a page, I think it was from about the 15th century. The writer casually mentions watching the peasants F___ing in the fields. It took a bit to figure out that it was spring and time to plant the seeds.



F S

I see.

Glad that hit the spot, Webbie.