#11 - JRL 8482 - JRL Home
Subject: RE: 8481 Ukraine [re: language, insult]
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004
From: "Anna Badkhen" <ABadkhen@sfchronicle.com>
Regarding Andrew Osborn's Dec. 3 article from Kiev, a minor linguistic correction. "Mudak" does not mean "someone stupid and uncultured," as it says in the article. It is an old word (I believe of Tatar origin) that literally translates as "donkey's penis" ("ud" being "penis"), which makes "mudak" a rude epithet best translated as "jerk."
Given that in Russian swear words are usually at least a notch more insulting than in English, the use of the word "mudak" characterizes the person who uses it at best as "uncultured" as the person at whom the insult is addressed.
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