hurl 18 January 2009
I learned a whole lot of terms for people during my Russian lesson today. It sort of came from a discussion myself and Rich had in Minsk about, as far as we could see, there were few enough ways of describing women in most languages in that (it seems) you can be Daughter, Wife, Mother, Dead.
Anyhow, there are a variety of terms available, you’ll be glad to know. Actually, one of the things is that in a restaurant you can call a waitress saying ‘devooshka’ which just means ‘girl’ and it’s not demeaning or insulting. In fact, also, in the street if a guy drops something you’d shout ‘man’ to get his attention and tell him what had happened. Also, in Soviet times everyone was ‘tavarish’ which means ‘comrade’ and there is no difference between masculine and feminine there – equality and all that….interesting.
It reminded me of a friend’s kid who has a Dad mad into Gaelic games. One of our Irish national sports is hurling, which is a cross between hockey and murder (as I read in a buke once) and the stick used is called a hurl. The wee lad was given a tiny one early on and he always said he was a little hurl and his Dad was a Big Hurl – to him that was ‘man’. I use it still as a term…
