What language do you swear in?
It’s one of those things that makes me proud to be a native Russian speaker
Friends with Words is a newsletter about language, culture, and identity, created by a Russian-born Israel-based writer, linguist, and single mom.
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Maya: "Ofek [a friend from school] says that in Russian every sentence has a klala [‘swearword’ in Hebrew], but that's just not true!"
"Of course, it's not true," I agree.
"Yeah, for example, if I say ya lublu tebya [‘I love you’ in Russian] — there is no klala here!"
"No, there isn't," I say, and because she can’t see my face (we’re walking side-by-side), I'm smiling widely: she just volunteered to say an entire sentence in Russian. This would have been a big problem last year.
She continues: "Like, "fuck you" is a swear word. Russian doesn't have words like that! Russian just doesn't have klalot [Hebrew for ‘swearwords’]!"
"Oh yes, it does. Russian has lots of swear words. We just don't use them." (Never ever. Not even when we bump our pinky toe on the bed leg or come home to discover that our dog ate the bottom half of the curtains.)
"It does??? Can you teach me some?"
"Nah."
"Please?"
"No. I don't want you to speak that way."
I mean, I’m delighted that she wants to learn more Russian words, but it'd be a little weird if I started teaching her swearwords. Especially since Ofek is right: it is possible to speak Russian in such a way that every sentence has a swear word.
Heck, it’s possible to speak it in a way that almost every word in every sentence is a swear word. It’s one of those things that makes me proud to be a native Russian speaker.
How does it do that?
Easy. Imagine that the word blop is a swearword referring to male genitalia (it’s not, I just made it up). In Russian, you can say things like This blopping blop just blopped me out-of-the-blop. As you can see, every word in this sentence (apart from “this” and “me”) is formed from a swearword.
Except that it’s more elaborate than that. That’s because in Russian, you can form new words from existing words very easily.
Many languages can do that to some extent. English, for instance, can form nouns from adjectives (happy —> happiness), nouns from verbs (teach —> teacher), adjectives from verbs (play —> playful), or verbs from other verbs (play —> replay), and so on.
But English only has a handful of ways to do this, while Russian has tons. Specifically, it has tons of prefixes that can form new verbs from existing verbs by adding all sorts of meanings such as direction, completion, intensity, and so on.
So, for instance, the verb yehat’ means ‘to go / travel by vehicle.’ Here is a (non-exhaustive) list of new verbs you can form from it with the help of prefixes:
Po-yehat’ ‘go somewhere (by vehicle)’
Pri-yehat’ ‘arrive’
Pro-yehat’ ‘drive/go through’
Za-yehat’ ‘stop by / drive in’
Ob-yehat’ ‘bypass’
Na-yehat’ ‘to run into / to hit’
Vy-yehat’ ‘to drive out’
Do-yehat’ ‘to reach a destination’
Pere-yehat’ ‘drive over’
S-yehat’ ‘move out / drive away’
You can do this with any verb. If you add each of these prefixes to the verb yebat’ (it’s a swearword meaning’‘to fuck’) you get a very diverse range of meanings that don’t have anything to do with copulating. For instance, za-yebat’ means ‘to annoy’, s-yebat’ means ‘to escape ’, and na-yebat’ means ‘to cheat’, and so on.
Add to that the fact that 1) you can sometimes stack these prefixes one after another, creating even more verbs, 2) you can form adjectives, adverbs, and nouns from most of these verbs, and 3) there is not one but three basic swearwords that you can make new swearwords from, and you’ll see that, given enough motivation, you never really need to use any non-swearwords.
Russian swearwords are heavy
Swearwords are an important part of language because they allow people to express strong emotions that can’t be expressed by regular words, or to signal belonging to a particular social group.
By the way, did you know that people who know more than one language usually prefer to swear in their mother tongue? It’s a visceral thing, swearing, like speaking to babies or counting.
I count in Russian, but when I need to use an expletive, I find myself sometimes reaching for the English ‘fuck’ and sometimes for the Russian equivalent ‘blyat'".
Importantly, I don’t recommend you use swearwords in a language you don’t know very well. At best, it would sound ridiculous, and at worst, extremely rude, and you would alienate people immediately.
That especially applies to Russian. Because Russian swearwords are heavy. Everything I mention here is for research purposes only.
English swearwords are toddlers’ speak compared to them.
So are Hebrew swearwords. The absolute worst Hebrew swearword — kusemmek (it comes from Arabic and refers to the addressee’s mother’s genitals) sounds very similar to the Hebrew word for ‘buckwheat’ — kusemet.
Whenever I buy buckwheat (until recently it was hard to find it in stores, but for Russian-born people like me, buckwheat has always been a staple), I always have to be extra careful to stress the final t.
The Hebrew word for “dick” — zayin — is homophonous (sounds the same) with the seventh later of the Hebrew alphabet, and the verb lehizdayen “to fuck” (that comes form zayin) is homophonous with the verb “get armed.”
The phrase tizdaynu besavlanut that contains this verb can either mean “get armed with patience” or “fuck patiently.”
That would never happen in Russian. Russian swearwords are not a joke.
In Russian, when a person speaks in sentences full of swearwords, I would think twice before approaching that person. Depending on the situation, I might be scared, even. This way of speaking reeks of violence. It means you don’t wanna mess with that person.
On the other hand, if an average person uses an occasional swearword here and there, it’s not threatening. It sounds delightful.
My swearing babushka
The only person who swore in my family was my grandmother. I say ‘was’ and ‘swore’ because she died just three weeks ago, at nearly 100 years old. I’m not used to speaking about her in the past tense, but there we are.
She started swearing freely in her 90s. I guess it’s the age when you just stop caring. Two years ago, at 98, they had to hospitalize her for a few days to patch a hole in her stomach. She swore the entire time at the hospital, annoyed at being confined to a bed: “Yob tvoyu mat’1…. shto zh eto takoe, nikogda zhe ne bylo” (“What the fuck is all this [referring to the tubes and wires] I’ve never had these before!!!”)
They patched the hole and released her from the hospital with instructions to come back for a check-up in five years. But she died before her follow-up.
And now nobody swears like this in my family.
Maybe I’ll start.
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Literally, “F*** your mother”
The versatility of Russian when it comes to swear words is astounding!
I don't swear much, and on the occasion of sudden pain or shock-like hitting a toe, it's probably "shit." I might have, on very rare occasions, said "fuck" before, and that's stronger for me 😅
I find hearing swear words in your mother tongue or languages that you're exposed to as a child will have more impact. I never swear in Cantonese because they are very, very vulgar, and if I hear them, they will trigger aversion in me. On the contrary, I don't feel much when I hear a swear word in German now; sometimes, I am unsure if it's very vulgar or only a little bad. When my son learned some German swear words from others and used them at home, my husband would have a big reaction and forbade him to say it, but for me, I'm like, ok, is it that bad? Haha, so I let my husband decide and teach.
I believe swear words are only effective on the recipient if they have had enough experience with those words to trigger feelings or reactions.