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vijayjohn wrote:Yep.
TeneReef wrote:In English:
aliens (foreigners)
mōdgethanc wrote:Any idea what this means/why exactly it's so offensive?Lada wrote:USA - Pindostan/Pindosia, American (nationality) - pindos - Пиндосия, Пиндостан, пиндос
Looking up something else in my largest Russian-English dictionary, my eye lit on the entry пиндос [pindós] m obs colloq pindos (term of abuse used by Russians of Greeks). I love ethnic slurs in foreign languages, so of course it caught my attention, and I googled it, wondering if this obsolete term for a Greek would have any sort of online presence. Indeed it did, but only glancingly in relation to Greeks: the first hit, the Russian Wikipedia article, explained that it had originated in southern Russia as an insult for Greeks (where of course there was more opportunity to interact with them) and had been used in that sense by Chekhov, Fazil Iskander, and Konstantin Paustovsky, among others, but that with the passage of time it had lost its ethnic specificity and come to mean 'any foreigner from the south, especially one seen as physically and morally weak.' In this sense it passed into military and criminal jargon of the 1950s-'80s (aided by its phonetic resemblance to various Russian swear words), and by the time of the Kosovo crisis of the 1990s it was available to fill a new slot, becoming an insulting term for American soldiers serving abroad, and by now (according to Wikipedia) refers to any American. (There's a great deal of discussion in the article about the origin of the word, but I don't see how it makes sense to see it as derived from anything but Pindos [Πίνδος], the name of a Greek mountain range.) This is a fascinating semantic development, reminiscent of the etymology of Tajik: an Arabic term for a member of the tribe of Tayy became first a Persian term for any Arab and then a Turkish term for an Iranian Muslim, winding up as a specific term for the Iranian population of Central Asia (mainly in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan). I'd be curious if Russian-speaking readers are familiar with пиндос and if so, in which of its senses?
I first heard "pindos" (actually, more often its plural "pindosy") used as a disparaging term for Americans around 1999. I am not familiar with the "physically and morally weak" connotation though. The word had probably been in use before 1990s in some circles, as you point out, but certainly not widely. Nowadays it seems so popular in the Russian internet jargon (in the generic, moderately disparaging sense) that I'd surmise it may gradually be losing its offensiveness.
Prowler wrote:Here we call the British bifes which means beefs/steaks. It's due to them getting sunburned fairly easily. Not a very offensive term, though.
Why do you think it's because of that and not because of their stereotypical favourite food? (See frog, Kraut, beaner, limey, etc.)Prowler wrote:Here we call the British bifes which means beefs/steaks. It's due to them getting sunburned fairly easily. Not a very offensive term, though.
mōdgethanc wrote:Why do you think it's because of that and not because of their stereotypical favourite food? (See frog, Kraut, beaner, limey, etc.)Prowler wrote:Here we call the British bifes which means beefs/steaks. It's due to them getting sunburned fairly easily. Not a very offensive term, though.
Prowler wrote:As for Germans, the slang term for them here is "Boche" which is not related to food, afaik.
Erreur CGI
Lada wrote:
Europe, europeans - Gayrope, gayropeans - Гейропа, гейропеец
Asian - narrow-eyed - узкоглазые
People with darker skin than most Russians have - black-assed - черножопые
USA - Pindostan/Pindosia, American (nationality) - pindos - Пиндосия, Пиндостан, пиндос
AndreiB wrote:чехи (litterary Czechs) - used for Chechens
кацапы katsapy - used for Russians.
I'd add "майданутые " (a very new one, I heard it on Russian TV a few months ago) for the protesters on Maydan.
Lada wrote:AndreiB wrote:чехи (litterary Czechs) - used for Chechens
Never heard before
Колорады kolorady - pro-Russian Ukrainians or may be all Russians?.
That word I learned from Ukrainian media and it comes from Colorado potato beetle whose colors look like Russian patriotic ribbon (Георгиевская лента) worn on Victory Day.
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