Re: Brugmann's Law

From: Patrick Ryan
Message: 51399
Date: 2008-01-18

Just a comment on "curse".
 
Your usage of it seems to be to be overly broad. Properly, 'curse' is used in two major ways in English: 1) to wish or predict evil on another; and 2) to blaspheme.
 
'I'll f---- your mother' is, in my opinion, not a curse but an obscene threat.
 
'F--- your mother', which is what I thought the Russian expression meant, is not a curse but an obscene insult.
 
A curse might be: 'Your mother will be f---ed by a mangy dog'.
 
The English phrase 'God damn you' is, of course, a real curse invoking God to harm someone but Christians ignorantly associate curse with the Biblical prohibition of not taking 'the name of the Lord in vain'. This refers not to speaking God's name _in_ anger but _with_ anger, outlawing the ancient practice of berating a god if he does not deliver fortune. Do ut des was taken very seriously by the ancients but the Christians have sidestepped the issue with the 'inscrutable plan' excuse. Very Oriental.
 
Plain and simple obscenity is also lumped under cursing in this country but not really properly.
 
 
Patrick
 
 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, January 18, 2008 7:48 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Brugmann's Law

Mate Kapović wrote:

> Well, "I'll fuck your mother" definitely *sounds* like a curse... In
> Croatia, we have a version of this one including the dog.

May you be "blessed/cursed" by a dog? We have it too (<pies cie,
jebal/>), and the phrase must be quite old. Samuel Linde's monumental
Dictionary of the Polish Language (1815) has it (Linde was an undaunted
lexicographer, too much in love with words to regard anything as taboo).

"Be thou cursed with [my] word/hand" is not used in Polish (except as a
generally comprehensible Russian phrase, left untranslated). Our
equivalent is <kurwa twoja mac'> (lit. 'the whore is your mother'), used
in full or elliptically slimmed down to the first word as a general-use
"shock-exclamation". This too, seems to derive from a plain insult
rather than a religious formula.

Piotr


 
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