Customer Reviews

Dictionary of Russian Obscenities

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This miniature booklet, small enough to carry in pocket or handbag, presents definitions of Russian obscenities in straightforward manner. The book contains the very crudest sexual and scatological lingo. It is handy for deciphering street-slang and grafitti whose translation one might hesitate to inquire of one's proper Russian friends. Unlike "Dermo!", Drummond's dictionary does not include phonetic English pronunciations nor provide examples of the vocabulary in witty little phrases -- which is preferable, since it could be disasterous for foreign visitors in Russia to attempt to spice their speech with these taboo words. Moreover, some of the entries are antiquated terms now obsolete in "everyday" vulgarity. These are most useful for students of nineteenth-century Russian literature, bawdy tales, and lewd verse. Equivalent russkie slovari of English-language obscenities are nearly nonexistant; I gave my first copy of Drummond's little dictionary to my podruga in Krasnoe. She finds it useful for translating the "unspeakable" speech in American videos!

...and maybe not them, either. The book has many words and phrases, but there are no indications as to which are obsolete and which are actually useful for a traveler or a student of modern Russian. There are no transliterations, no guide to the Cyrillic alphabet, no English translations of the woodcut illustrations, and no indication as to which words are scandalous and which are merely naughty.

On top of this, Drummond gives only idiomatic translations, not literal ones. Most obscenity dictionaries do this to some extent, but many of Drummond's translations are simply wrong. (I'd cite examples, but they'd keep this review from being published.) Literal translations are funnier, and give a much better sense of what exactly a culture finds obscene.

If you're reading pre-20th century Russian literature in Russian, buy this book. Otherwise, buy Christina Kunitskaya-Peterson's "International Dictionary of Obscenities." It is much more user-friendly and has four other languages to boot.

Drummond has assembled an excellent lexiography of obscenities in Russian, which would certainly prove useful in learning "working class" Russian. However, the potential utility of the book is limited by its lack of clarification on usage. That is to say, one has no idea how old some of the obscenities are; imagine using words like "swell," "groovy," or "masher" in contemporary speech and one gets the idea.

Another shortcoming is the transliteration of some of the words: certainly many of them one would not want to use in polite conversation, but there certainly is a spectrum of vulgarity (from "darn!" to words that cannot be reproduced here.) Some indication of the strength of the words would have been helpful rather than a literal translation as provided here.

I recommend the book, with reservations: before using any language Drummond has included, you may want to run it by a close friend first.

I have the original first run publication, out of a little house in Berkeley, CA, from yesy, back in the 70's. You cannot look at this book as a serious thing, its for th coffee table and get a few laughs. David addmitted this to me, but he still thinks is sort of scholarly! Just have fun....or go out and ride a bike! of course some of the entries might be out of date, look when it was first published! Damn, we all gettin old!

who wood have thunk it that aaaaaa equals oooooffff in rusian? i am a rusian that loves to party with his badself. i memmorized this entre bookk. weinerschnitzel is my favorite word