Having now studied twelve languages, I can tell you with complete confidence that none has profanity as astonishing as Russian profanity. Seriously. The creativity, eloquence and vile vigor of Russian cussing is simply mind-boggling. English profanity is like baby-talk compared to Russian. The word that names the system of Russian profanity is мат. Notice that there is no soft-sign at the end of the word. Despite the superficial resemblance to the word for mother, you must never use мат around your Russian мать. She will slap your face so fast, you won't know what hit you.

In the US you can often hear English curse words in casual conversations on the street. In Russia there is still a wide gap between people who regularly use мат and people who don't. Those who use it, use it like crazy. Most everybody else hardly ever uses it. Not too surprisingly, factory workers and peasants are more likely to use it than highly educated folks. I was much amused to read about an ice cream factory in Barnaul where the management got so tired of the workers' vulgarity that they issued an official dictionary to help the workers translate their normal curse-laden expressions into polite literary Russian. I can tell, dear reader, that you are consumed with curiosity about this dictionary, so a bit of it is reproduced below.

Warning! The material below contains offensive Russian and English profanity!

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Концерт is the Russian word for concert. In terms of declension it is a perfectly regular noun, but bear in mind that it is a на word: when you talk about going to or being at a concert, you must use the preposition на instead of в, and when returning from a concert you must use the preposition с:

The most common words for blouse in Russian are кофта and блузка. The former is a perfectly second-declension noun, and the latter is affected by a spelling rule and has a fill vowel in the genitive plural:

Some sample sentences:

Russian Wikipedia makes the following statement:

I suppose theoretically that might be the case, but nowadays кофта is used fairly generically for a woman's top in casual conversation and is essentially the same thing as блузка. (Do a quick search for the word on images.google.com if you don't believe me.)

Last week when I googled кофта, I came across a slightly vulgar Russian poem about a blouse that had me rolling on the floor laughing my academic credentials off. It suddenly struck me that it would be a great opportunity for a little translation practice… or better yet, a translation contest! I quickly threw together an English version just to be sure it could be done effectively: yes, it can. So here we go:

Translation contest and rules

• Translate the poem into English.
• E-mail it to me using the contact link at the bottom of this page.
• All entries received by 11:59 p.m. on May 28th, 2010 will be considered.
• I will send $10 by regular mail to the person who sent me the version I judge to be the best translation.
• People from all countries are welcome to apply as long as you have a postal address to which I can send the $10 if you win.
• All entries will be posted to the web the first week of June so readers can compare translation tactics.

My grandmother used to have a big box of jewelry. It was always carefully placed on the second shelf of her armoire. When I was little, I loved playing with it, pretending I was an exotic princess. I have no idea why my grandmother trusted me with her little treasure box. Frankly, if I were her, I’d think a dozen times before letting me play with it; the fact that I never lost any of it could only be pure luck. There were so many nice, almost antique, pieces in there: earrings, rings, bracelets and beads. But what I liked the most was a tiny pendant with a blue rock and a golden setting. There was something so exquisite about it, my inner princess simply had to have it! After my grandmother passed away, my mom kept the jewelry box. I am not even sure what happened to it after we moved to the US. I have been trying to find a picture similar to the pendant I remember. The picture above somewhat resembles it but certainly doesn’t do it true justice.

In Russian a pendant is кулон, which is a noun of masculine gender. Its diminutive is кулончик. In fact, if I were to talk about my grandmother’s pendant in Russian, I would most likely use кулончик to emphasize its small size as well as its fragility.

Sometimes the Russian word каждый ‘every’ has an interesting interaction with the preposition по + dative singular. In effect, the по means ‘apiece’ or ‘each’. We call this the ‘distributive’ meaning of по:

Of course, in those contexts the каждый is redundant, so the sentence can be said the same way without it, in which case the people to whom things are given will most likely be expressed in the plural:

Oddly enough, if the number of things issued to the recipients is more than one, then the number phrase is accusative instead of dative: