Insider, Updates

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Absalom
Posts: 718
Joined: Sat Sep 24, 2011 4:33 am

Re: Insider, Updates

Post by Absalom »

Jericho wrote:
discord wrote:
so the varangians that settled into the rus were probably not varangian GUARD, and therefor probably mostly scandinavian(predominantly swedish.) and we all know what happens every time someone tries to invade russia....
Well luckily they didn't invade Russia as it didn't exist at the time but they were instrumental in founding the nation which is ironic because the swedes created the very enemy that ended our era of major power in the north, talk about your self-made enemy.
Unwelcome form though it may be, you can always say that creating both a thing, and it's countermeasure, is at least efficient.
Charlie wrote:I a bit of German because I can speak Afrikaans. Russian, I learned enough of to identify basic swearing.

While I can attest there are there are more ways to call someone some foul, that I know of, in Russian. German, for me anyway, seems like an angry language it sounds angry. Not to say every German is a large angry man that only wishes to bludgeon your ears to death with his better grasp of German, but you know... he could be.
Yeah, there does seem to be some value in a language being pronounceable in an "unrefined rock and stone" form when it comes to the field verbally stabbing someone. If someone was to actually study the subject of weaponized language for a few decades, maybe we could even reenact the Dune movies with it.

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junk
Posts: 210
Joined: Tue Jul 19, 2011 11:52 am

Re: Insider, Updates

Post by junk »

Timefly wrote:
junk wrote:
discord wrote:the ancient Rus were basically vikings(correction, varangians, slight difference there.)but they got genetically outbreed by the locals, same with the language, russian is slavic, as are the people really.
It really depends - remember that russia is a huge huge place that while having mostly one language has loads of ethnic groups. WIth fairly large germanic pockets, asian, slavic and many others.
Russian is definitely a slavic language, not germanic, but he Russian Czars and higher classes 100+ years ago had significant ties to European royal houses (French, German, British; others all over, too, I'm sure), and there was quite a bit of cultural exchange before the revolution put an end to all that.

As to cursing, Russian has an entire sublanguage for foul swearing. The foulest stream of extremely filthy sentences in English probably doesn't come close, so it is not something you'd ever want to be caught using if you wish to maintain your reputation in good company. My wife (who is Russian) just grins and shakes her head when I try to see how filthy I can talk. Not even close, she says. I think Russian wins on that count, but after two or three bottles of vodka, I'm sure there'd be no guarantee what comes out of my mouth. ;-)

As to German, it offers some creative options for swearing, but I'm not certain how much better it really is at that than English. It's been too many years since I've had practice swearing in German.
Oh I didn't mean Russian as in being a germanic based language. I just meant the ethnic groups. Russian pretty much replaced most of the languages ni the place.

As far as slavic languages go as well, I think I know mine pretty well being billingual czech|german.

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