> Carrie wrote:
> When I took Russian in college, we were
counseled
> always to use the informal "mama" rather than
the
> proper "mat'" ... the profs never told us what
the
> actual phrase was.
>
> Mine didn't either. The closest they came was
"Vash
> mat'," meaning "Yo' mama," but humorlessly. I think
I
> once found out the verb but the wind done took
it.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Sally
>
>
The Yugoslav languages, closely related to Russian, have the
same (or very similar) expression. It is one of, if not the,
most common obscenities used and it means exactly what Carrie
suspected it does. I don't know why the more formal word for
mother is almost invariably used in this context and rarely
in others. (In Croatian and hence probably in Serbian &
Bosnian at the least, the words for mother are "majka"
(pron.
"my-ka", roughly) and "mater", the latter being the more
formal one).(In Croatian, they often throw in "pas", meaning
dog/bitch, as an adjective
: "[offensive verb] ti pas mater")
Rene
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