>>Russians can drop the most
>>astonishingly profane statements either in deeply heated anger or a
>>cheerful aside.
>
>Trivia: many languages have different sorts of modes of speech -- one
>you'd use while addressing a social superior, a different one for a
>social equal, different modes depending on your own gender, etc.
>Russian has one, mat, that is for obscenity. It's so
>vulgar that its use in public spaces is punishable by law.

That's awesome. Cheltarese definitely needs that.

Many years ago, when I worked at the Katahdin Times, I did a feature article one year for Veterans' Day in which I put out a call for WWII veterans in the tri-town area to stop by the office and talk with me about their experiences. One of the responses I got was from a man who was part of the occupation force in Japan immediately after the war, who told me the best story I was ever not allowed to publish. His job was to drive around the Japanese countryside with an interpreter and a couple of bodyguards ferreting out hidden supply caches the Japanese Army had been hoarding against the invasion that didn't end up happening, then distributing the part that wasn't ammunition to the general populace at large, who were having a tough winter provisions-wise.

Both phases of the job involved a lot of interfacing with local dignitaries - the mayors of towns and such - in the first place because they often had leads on where the Army's stuff was hidden and in the second because they were the contact points for getting it into the hands of the public. Apart from the interpreter he had with him, our man had also been issued a phrasebook of what he'd been assured were the most polite and respectful ways of posing various common questions and whatnot. For the first month or so, he never used it, preferring to rely on the services of his translator.

One day, while speaking with the mayor of a town out in the hinterland someplace, our man was caught short and decided he didn't want to trouble his interpreter with the matter, so he got out his phrasebook, hunted down what it told him was the Japanese for "Excuse me, honored sir, but where may I find the restroom in this building?", and carefully pronounced the phonetic rendering.

The mayor, the translator, and everyone else in the room stared at him in horror for a couple of seconds, and then the mayor burst out laughing, and kept it up long enough that he was nearly reduced to tears. Eventually he was able to explain that the U.S. Army might need to re-work its diplomatic phrasebook a little, because what our man had just asked him was more along the lines of, "Hey, buddy, where's the shithouse in this dump?"

It was, I was informed, an excellent icebreaker, and his working relationship with that particular local dignitary was among the best he had during that assignment, but still. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.