gjm comments on Rationality Quotes November 2014 - Less Wrong

8 Post author: elharo 07 November 2014 07:07PM

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Comment author: gjm 09 December 2014 04:44:49PM 0 points [-]

Perhaps I misunderstood what timujin meant about that being "a sort of passive involuntary form", then. (But I remark that "fuck" is also a transitive verb, to put it mildly, so I'm not sure I understand what the problem is.)

Comment author: Romashka 09 December 2014 05:23:56PM 0 points [-]

Охуеть! would be Fuck me! Охуить would be Fuck [somebody] … though I don't recall hearing that form, there are synonims that are just much more natural. Sorry, this is bizarre...

Comment author: timujin 09 December 2014 05:38:39PM *  1 point [-]

As I said, охуить is not usually used on its own, and its meaning is only relevant when you derive things from it. And it is a transitive verb.

Also, this thread gives me giggles.

Comment author: Username 09 December 2014 06:22:37PM 0 points [-]

As I said, охуить is not usually used on its own

You can, of course, create a verb охуить, but I do not think that it exists in "normal" Russian speech. The adjective охуительный is formed from the verb охуеть and the fact that a vowel has changed is completely normal for Russian (compare зреть и зримый).

Comment author: gjm 09 December 2014 06:56:24PM 0 points [-]

I wasn't claiming it was anything like an exact translation! Only that there's a certain commonality between that English way of expressing awedness, and the Russian one we'd been discussing.

Comment author: Romashka 09 December 2014 07:09:00PM 0 points [-]

Yeah, well. Maybe there are suspiciously many differences in expressions of awesomeness in the two languages. I was concerned rather of an opposite mistake. I have read somewhere that in one of S. King's novels, a man was heard having sex in the next room and crying out, Der'mo! Der'mo! etc. Now, in Russian, der'mo doesn't have an 'awesome' connotation, the way shit seems to in English. It was as if he was crying, Poop! Poop!..