If you want to rock it old school, just use Yiddish.
If you want an entire dialect of profanity - mat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mat_(Russian_profanity)
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/09/15/dirty-words-2
Dostoyevsky claimed that a Russian could express the entire range of his feelings with one word, which he dared not write. That word is khuy, a term for the male sexual organ, which along with pizda (“cunt”), and blyad’ (“whore” or “bitch”) and the verb ebat’ (“to fuck”), are the cornerstones of mat, which derives from the Russian word for mother, as in yob tvuoy mat, meaning “fuck your mother.”
I thought fuck was also an endlessly applicable word, depending on the intonation. I’m now wandering what mat I cannot transfer to English directly 🤔
Isn’t it more about all the suffixes/prefixes? Fuck can’t do:
- A: Okhuyeli?! (Have [you] gone mad?!) Nakhuya (why) dokhuya (so much) khuyni (of stuff) nakhuyarili (you have loaded up)? Raskhuyarivay (unload [it]) nakhuy! (out of here)
- B: Khuli?! (What for?) Nikhuya! (No way!) Nekhuy (No need) raskhuyarivat (to unload)! Nakhuyacheno ([It] got loaded) nekhuyovo! (quite well)! Pokhuyarili! (Let’s go)
Some of them can be translated as the fuck? with correct intonation or with short word addition. нахуярили means either to beat up someone (fuck up someone) or to fuck up something or to drink a lot of alcohol (get fucked up), but yeah this one is not translatable without additional words. Расхуярить means to violently disassemble something.
But you’re right something like ебануться is kinda hard, as it implies surprise/dismay without any sexual subtext, while its forms would be more accusatory like ебнулись? is close to saying you fucking donkeys. While ебаться is completely sexual word, and very heavily one at that.
Classic scene from The Wire, where two detectives solve a cold case using only variations of “fuck”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdfwFDZGnUk
Yeah this what I’ve had in mind or british/australian swearing. This scene can be translated with all four russian swear words directly and make sense tbh.
But also is there english equivalent of something like ‘poshlo po pizde’, go by the way of cunt (direct translation, sorry), meaning ‘entered a spiral of fuck ups’?
It either comes from mongols or from old slavic term for pine needle, I think they don’t know exactly, because the mongol theory matches timing wise word appearance (and mentioned closeness to some asian languages, indian language group in particular), but doesn’t with eastern european spread in other slavic languages.
Feel like a fake Russian for only knowing one of those, and even then because of the suka blyat meme
If you immigrated as a child you get фигня instead of хуйня, etc. V sad, takes a fair bit of browsing runet to catch up 😂
I definitely know the former, also I was actually born in the States to immigrants which might affect it
