March
2007
Lotsa meat and candles, explained
Having a cold and the consequent trouble falling asleep can do wonders for you. While you wait for your consciousness to finally let go of the whole “Ohmigod Ada, your throat hurts! And you’re snotty! Blow your nose! Turn on your other side! Drink some water! Do something! You cannot go to sleep while you’re this uncomfortable! ” you get to think about stuff. Deep, meaningful, slightly crazy stuff. Like, for example, why do Romanians use the curses they use, and why are they powerful enough to get you beaten senseless if addressed to any guy over 1,60m.
First of all, there are the standard “go to the devil”, “may the devil take you” and “give yourself to the devil’. Vestiges from the glorious Orthodox past of the nation, when the serf that would say them to his serf buddy would probably have been looking first if there’s a good escape route from the buddy’s anger, just in case, they’re now less then mild, used by shy translators instead of those oh-so-offensive fuckyous stubbly men drop on the TV every five seconds before getting out their missile throwers and blowing the extras to pieces.
Staying in the archaic mystic zone, Romanians use in cursing an incredible amount of liturgic objects, saints and religious holidays that they connect randomly either with the cursed’s mom, the mom’s dead relatives or a sexual activity performed with said mom and relatives. Therefore, one can only wonder how Dali would have reacted at the surrealistic idea of, say, a chubby dead grandpa’s Easter being raped .
The sexual activities that appear in the cursings are rather unimaginative, showing clearly that oral/ anal activities are taboo for normal people and are done only by (*whispering, while carefully looking around* ) people with tainted reputations. The predilect target is the cursed’s mom, our main national curse sending the cursed ASAP for a jolly incestual party with his/her genitor.
Last but not least, as in almost every other respectable southern European nation with rampant machoism , the implied homosexuality of the cursed is also a very frequent insulting material. In a strange twist of words, the curser is usually the one who’s doing … ahem .. stuff to the cursed, or is inviting the cursed to check his family jewels, oblivious to the fact that he’s simultaneously placing himself in the gay camp too.
So there you have it, folks - cursing in Romania. How do your people curse?
Entirely too often. And in multiple languages.
we curse in the most vile ways possible. how about:
you are a son*of*a*b**tch
motherf**ker
go f**k yourself?
Those are just a few of the more tame ones…
I have to say though, it is great having many sublime ways to tell someone off..
Hope you feel better soon. I have all the same symptoms, maybe I got your germs from reading your blog. ha ha ha.
Nice to see you back…I missed you…
Umm I usually *cuss* in a combination of Spanish, English, German and Pig Latin…
Romerican - yo lo se. We curse in Romgarian
apricoco - eh, we’re better now. The blog was sprayed with disinfectants, just in case
)
Becky - sure feels good to be back !
I have noticed Hungarian swearing seems very enamoured of equine appendages. Or is that just used by the people I know? I think for sheer graphicness “nagy büdös lófasz” is my favourite exclamation of annoyance.
Definitely a general Hungarian thing. My grandma’s favorite swearing is “az Isten lova fasza” and she lives in Timis county.
British English, on the other hand, just uses the one word in every possible variation we can think of.
Spanish (at least in Spain) is very big on Roman Catholicism as a source of material. “I shit in the Virgin’s knickers” is a popular one, for example, and that’s not even very strong. Even one of the commonly used everyday expressions of surprise/annoyance/whatever is “Hostia” (host)
Andy - how do Palestinians curse? Does it involve the Prophet’s camel, for example?
Usually just by saying the word “Israeli” in as ugly a way as they possibly can. It sounds a bit like Iss-rye-eee-li.
…. holy cow.
In Canadian French cursing uses religious/liturgical items from the Catholic faith: colis (the chalice used for the blood of Christ), tabernac (the tabernacle), etc. However, if you told someone to go mange merde (eat shit), they’d probably take it as an unfriendly suggestion, too.
Here in Ro, telling somebody that he eats shit is a rude way of saying you don’t believe him. Doesn’t count as cursing, actually.