Russian Jokes - Taboo Vocabulary

Taboo Vocabulary

The very use of obscene Russian vocabulary, called mat, can enhance the humorous effect of a joke by its emotional impact. Due to the somewhat different cultural attitude to obscene slang, such an effect is difficult to render in English. The taboo status often makes mat itself the subject of a joke. One typical plot goes as follows.

A construction site expects an inspection from the higher-ups, so a foreman warns the boys to watch their tongues. During the inspection, a hammer is accidentally dropped from the fourth floor right on a worker's head... The punch line is an exceedingly polite, classy rebuke from the mouth of the injured, rather than a typically expected "#@&%$!". For example the injured worker might say: "Dear co-workers, could you please watch your tools a little more carefully, so as to prevent such cases and avoid work-place injuries?" In another variant of the joke the punch line is "Vasya, please desist in pouring molten tin over my head."

(L) Another series of jokes exploits the richness of the mat vocabulary, which can give a substitute to a great many words of everyday conversation. Other languages often use profanity in a similar way (like the English fuck, for example), but the highly synthetic grammar of Russian provides for the unambiguity and the outstandingly great number of various derivations from a single mat root. Emil Draitser points out that linguists explain that the linguistic properties of the Russian language rich in affixes allows for expression of a wide variety of feelings and notions using only a few core mat words:

• An agenda item on working conditions at a trade union meeting of a Soviet plant. Locksmith Ivanov takes the floor: "Mother fuckers!... Go fuck yourself!... Fuck you and you too again!..." A voice from the audience: "Right to the point, Vasya! we won't work without work robes!"

As an ultimate joke in this series, the goal is to apply such substitution to as many words of a sentence as possible while keeping it meaningful. The following dialog at a construction site between a foreman and a worker retains a clear meaning even with all of its 14 words being derived from the single obscene word khuy. Russian language proficiency is needed to understand this. Word-by-word:

— Ohuyeli?! (Have gone mad?!) Nahuya (why) dohuya (so much) huyni (of stuff) nahuyarili (you have loaded up)? Rashuyarivay (unload ) nahuy! (out of here)

— Huli?! (What's the problem?) Nihuya! (No way!) Nehuy (No need) rashuyarivat (to unload)! Nahuyacheno ( got loaded) nehuyovo! (quite well)! Pohuyarili! (Let's go)

Possible, but incomplete translation:

— Fuckheads, why the fuck did you load so much of this shit? Unload it the fuck away from here!

— What's the fucking problem?! Fuck no! No need to unload! It got loaded alright! Let's fucking go!

After this example one may readily believe the following semi-apocryphal story. An inspection was expected at a Soviet plant to award it the Quality Mark, so the administration prohibited the usage of mat. On the next day the productivity dropped abruptly. People's Control figured out the reason: miscommunication. It turned out that workers knew all the tools and parts only by their mat-based names: huyovina, pizdyulina, huynyushka, huyatina, etc. (all of these are loosely translated as "thing"); the same went for technological processes: othuyachit (to detach, cut, disconnect), zayebenit (to push through, force into), prihuyachit (to attach, connect, bond, nail), huynut (to move slightly, throw, pour), zahuyarit (to throw far away, to put in deeply) etc.