Profanity in Russian speech WAS Re: HP in translation
zanooda2
zanooda2 at yahoo.com
Tue May 1 03:28:30 UTC 2007
--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "justcarol67"
<justcarol67 at ...> wrote:
<snip>
> maybe Russian speakers or Spanish speakers or whatever
> should think about how their native-language equivalents sound to
> their own ears before using the English ones
zanooda:
I actually laughed when I read this, Carol :-). I hope you don't
think that we non-English speakers just walk around cursing people
right and left in English :-)? I for one am a very well-mannered
middle-aged lady. Alla is a young woman, I guess, but I doubt she has
the *f* word on the ready when she comes to her law office. We don't
swear, I swear :-)!
The difference between not swearing in English and not swearing in
Russian is, for me personally, that I don't swear in English because
I *know* these words are offensive, but in Russian I just physically
can't bring myself to pronounce them.
I was interested in this strange phenomenon from purely linguistic
point of view, that's why I commented on Alla's post. I don't agree
with Steve that it is about how passionate the language or people are
(and I don't really understand how a language can be passionate or
impassive). I mean, it can be true, but it's not my feeling.
It seems to me that this is more about how deep different languages
are rooted inside us, you know. Your native language is something
that belongs to you and surrounds you from the moment you were born.
That's why in your native language you *feel* the words, in other
languages you just "know" them. Maybe it's not very scientific, but
that's how I understand it.
> Carol, who agrees with Steve that Russian sounds, to an outsider,
> like a passionate language, and thinks that a Russian accent in a
> man is either cute or sexy, depending on his age
zanooda:
Did you hear the real Russian accent, not this fake TV/movies one?
I'm just asking because the "heavy" Russian accent sounds extremely
unpleasant to me. The "light" variety is kind of nice, yeah.
zanooda, who doesn't think English is boring, and who loves
everything about it, including the way it sounds, which she can't say
about some other languages
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