One of my favorites is in Japanese. Laughing is “w” or “www” or something. The word is “warau”. So then the ws, they look like grass, so people use the grass emoji, so then people write “kusa”.
I’m using none of these. But what i use almost all the time : possibly = evtl (eventuell) maybe = vllt (vielleicht) kindest regards = LG (Liebe Grüße) e.g. /for example = zB (z.B.: / zum Beispiel) (i omit the dots and colons)
One that I’m aware of is “tskr” in Japanese. It’s a slang term that derives from たすかる (tasukaru). The meaning depends on the context and it can mean something like either “you saved me” or “thanks for helping me”.
A French one is common enough that it’s used in English- “Répondez, s’il vous plaît” (Respond, if you please) is where we get RSVP. “SVP” is also sometimes used as a shorthand for “please”, at least in Quebecois.
There’s loads, I’m kind of blanking but MDR (mort de rire) comes to mind as the lol equivalent. I think you guys in Quebec don’t use it though correct me if I’m wrong. I married one of yours but I’m still missing a lot of the day to day things.
Not necessarily an acronym, but here’s a fun one for Japanese: Laughing in Japanese is warau, which gets shortened when typing to just w. If you want to laugh a lot, you would type wwww. That ends up looking like a field of grass, so that in turn gets shortened into 草 (kusa, or grass). Basically, 草 is the Japanese equivalent of lol
Also, in Chinese, thank you is often abbreviated as 3q, because when you say it out loud, it sounds like “thank you” (san kyu)
The only Hindi acronyms that I know of are offensive. There’s mc, which stands for madarchod (motherfucker), and bc, which stands for behenchod (sister fucker).
There’s also the rarely used AMJ, Hindi equivalent of TIL, used on the Hindi version of r/todayilearnt (r/aajmainejana).
Absolutely. The German term equivalent to writing “Sincerely,” at the end of letters is “Mitt freundlichen grußen,” and it was (is?) often written as “M.f.G.” There’s even a song by the German pop/rock band Die Fantastischen Vier titled “M.f.G.” The lyrics are almost entirely various abbreviations (here’s a version of the song with the lyrics, but not the video).
ex-USSR early rusophonic internet had a lot of original and transliterated ones but I rarely see them nowadays, and most are community-specific. Some didn’t carry over, some replaced by chat stickers, and the writing\reading of longer posts itself seems like a niche now when there are audio and video messages at hand. Add there that the web space I talk about is now also fragmented and occupied by bots\dummies due to the war and many sites for international communication on russian lost a big part of frequent posters\mods and later effectively musk’ed themselves.
Those I’ve heard the last:
<span style="color:#323232;">imo > кмк > как мне кажется > what I suspect is
</span><span style="color:#323232;">bf > мч > молодой человек > young partner
</span><span style="color:#323232;">wtf > чзх > что за хуйня > what's a dickshit
</span><span style="color:#323232;">idk > хз > хуй (его) знает > dick knows (that)
</span>
A lot of newer words I googled after hearing it from kids came from TikTok and they are mostly translations of trends carried in by local influencers.
In Russian? There are like five basic words you make your obscene lexics from (like ‘fuck’ in English), and хуй (khooy) is one of them, meaning dick, and хуйня (khooy-nya) is a thing related to a dick in a bad way, like a borked project or a complicated situation, while not having a direct translation on it’s own. Something like, ehm, a dick-thing? as it’s a noun, just like хуета (khu-e-tah), meaning the same. There are also an adverb хуёво (khoo-yovo) meaning something isn’t going great, and забил хуй (zah-beel khooy) when you discarded your dick in that situation and don’t give a fuck about what’s going on.
Many of them you can hear on the recordings from the ongoing war.
I’m not sure I’ve understood you correctly, so you can specify what you want to know.
My post was mainly a joke, however, I find your comments extremely interesting and well worded.
That last example “забил хуй (zah-beel khooy)”. I find very amusing and I can grasp the feeling. Google translates it literally to being “Hammered the dick”.
Is that accurate?
I think slang and vulgar terms are fascinating and tell a lot about the culture that produced them. I even go so far as to say, swearing is one of the most illuminating things there is to language.
Thank you so much for sharing!
Speaking of the ongoing war, did you catch this video?
Now, dammit, now. (addressing the one who he’d then call out) I’m gonna give you (a punch).
Залупа or Dickhead is correct. Usually this noun describes not a person, but a bad place to live in (a similar-sounding word https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D1%85%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%83%D0%BF%D0%B0 is a name for a simple and small hut, probably it came into obscene slang due to it’s shape) or some pointless endeavor.
Уёбище ты ёбаное isn’t exactly fucking scumbag. Enraged person just strings similar words together. But if translated, ёбаное уёбище is a fucking fuckface, for the second word usually means someone (physically) unpleasant. I find that this version underlines the ranting nature of this banter.
Счетовод or calculator-man is an old word for an accountant, from the imperial times when only a minority knew basic math. Now it’s only used as a sarcasm like there. Probably not precise, but meme-y.
In Косой пидор, блять the first word was omitted from subs. It means strabismus or an unusual alignment of one’s sight, making eye-lines get crossed or point in different directions. It’s a very old ableism that’s still used for those who fail shots or throws in sports, games, military. It also has a direvative verb скосить when someone missed. See also: www.reddit.com/r/…/the_most_confusing_sentence/ They could’ve used other words for visually impaired, but probably found it’s not worth it.
Lifter or поднимальщик there is an invented word, basically a person who lifts (something), probably a barrel of a gun too much, thus the accuracy is abysmal. Don’t think it can be translated better.
Yeah. Забить is putting a nail in with a hammer (or scoring a goal in soccer), forcing something in.
Now after thinking I suspect the original version was SFW, not the other way around, and meant ‘to hammer in a bolt\screw’, to bork something intentionally. And later it changed for a dick.
Not at all. I find obscene words and talking about them amusing myself.
Do you have some interesting examples from your own language\s?
I just speak American English, so nothing too crazy. There’s the term fuckin’ a. It’s used by older generations I’d say. I’ve always just assumed the a stood for ass, which would be strange to censor ass after you said fuck. I recently looked into it and the a is for affirmative, and the term comes from military radio chatter. It basically means emphatically affirmative.
Another old time one is the whole shiterie, Meaning the whole thing or collection.
Another fun one is a brick shit house, meaning overly well built for what it’s used for.
There’s also shit on a shingle aka sos, which was a really basic diner food consisting of gravy on toast.
And I assumed A was for the highest mark in school (when evaluating something). In some cases I remember it did make sence, but thanks for telling me about it’s origins.
Offtop, but now I’m thinking if all these college clubs in the movies were called in latin words because of the military too, with their Alpha-Bravo-Delta correction of hearing\spelling errors over the radio.
Your examples are fun too, and SOS sounds like an emergency dose of callories with minimal decorations when one’s too exhausted (:
P.S.: It’s not unusual to know only one single language. Weirdly enough, that’s shared between the US and Russia due to their huge territory most people never leave and a lot of folks being offended by hearing other languages spoken around them, like MAGA or vatniks. I’ve got lucky my parents invested some skillpoints into languages years ago, so I can talk to you, and you’ve been dealt a slightly worse hand in that department. No shame here. A lot of my dearest and wisest friends can’t read memes I send them even in kindergarden English so, at least, you dodge this regular frustration (:
All people on this earth have a lot more in common than they think especially Russians and Americans. I think your Vatnik MAGA comparison is spot on. Being a stupid asshole is now a political ideology.
It’s a long one but very interesting. There are several times he shows peoples cars and boats covered with Zs. Very reminiscent of trump supporters I see around here with all kinds of bullshit on their cars.
This guy’s channel is great. He explores areas of Russia that no one talks about. This video I found especially interesting as Kaliningrad (originally Koningsberg) is where my maternal grandmother was from. It’s fascinating to see what the land is like. I doubt I’d ever be able to see it in person regardless of the war.
My great grandfather on my dad’s side was from Ukraine. I’ve always been very interested in Eastern Europe.
Good on your parents. I wish I spoke at least some Spanish as that’s the main 2nd language around where I live. There are also quite a few Russian and Ukrainian immigrants in the area. So much so that all the signs at the food bank have those languages in addition to Spanish. It always warms my heart to see the Babushkas loading up on beets and turnips alongside the older Hispanic ladies!
I wish you health and safety in this increasingly turbulent and uncertain world.
I’d say хз (the last one) is still used very commonly, but the rest are a bit outdated and I barely see them anymore.
Another thing I thought was outdated but some of my friends use is shortening common words. “I like” would be “мне нравится” and some people save themselves a second and write it like “мне нрав”.
And another thing I just thought of is “etc” equivalent in Russian, “и т.д.”, this one is used officially in documents etc, it’s a shortening of “и так далее”, literally “and so on”. And some people simplify it further by writing “итд” without spaces and dots.