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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| peterlin Tetraglot Groupie Poland peterlin.jzn.pl Joined 6415 days ago 54 posts - 58 votes  Speaks: Polish*, Persian, English, Russian | Message 17 of 30 18 July 2008 at 7:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
In Hungarian prison slang frájer = hiszékeny ember (gullible person). In Russian prison slang фраер = someone who is not a criminal, a 'civilian'. AFAIK, anyway. Now with more authority: In general Polish "frajer" means roughly "loser; somebody who misses the opportunities (eg. you can be called 'frajer' if, say, a girl is visibly interested in you and you don't try to chat her up"). It's not really an insult, but not a compliment either. I think it might also be used in the meaning "client of a prostitute", but having no experience with nor interest in this industry, I simply don't know. But that's not all. In Polish prison slang, inmates (and people in general) are divided into three groups: 1. "git-ludzie" (cool people) or "złodzieje" (thieves) or simply "ludzie" (people) meaning prisoners who a) committed crimes of certain category (eg. theft, robbery, murder) and b) decided to uphold a very specific prison code of conduct. 2. "frajerzy" (plural form of "frajer") - non-professional criminals or those professional criminals who decide to break up with their past and decide that they will not follow the code. 3. "cwele" (faggots) - either people who committed crimes considered 'unmanly' (eg. child molesters and rapists) or former 'git-ludzie' who had severely breached the code (eg. by snitching; I think the Russian equivalent term for them is суки 'bitches'). People of the 1st category run the prison, of the 2nd are tolerated, of the 3rd are happy if they survive. Now, if you use the word 'frajer' with reference to someone linked to prison culture (eg. belonging to 1st category) I imagine it wouldn't end nicely. I'm almost sure that the word 'frajer' is also used at least by some members of the football hooligans subculture as a sort of contemptuous reference to anyone not in their business. Again, not a wise choice to use the word with them. As for the word's origins, I'm sure about Germanic, but unsure of German. You see, from the very beginnings prisons over here were very cosmopolitan, open to people of various ethnicities but also of different religious backgrounds. To wit, my bet is that the number of Yiddish-speaking Jews serving time in turn-of-century Russian or Polish prisons by far exceeded the number of Germans hosted there. My guess is that "frajer" is quite probably Yiddish in origin, just like many other words of Polish prison slang. Ok, enough of this rambling for now - I like the topic and got a little carried away. But before I go, a little comment on goltrpoat's words:
That's very true. Almost nothing maps exactly across languages and informal vocabulary is no exception. You really have to know the cultural context very well to use it and not to make a clown out of yourself. And even if your usage is perfectly tuned in to local habits, the mere fact that they know you are an outsider might make you look like a pretentious poseur. Sort of a rich white kid striving to sound like 50Cent. We all have to take into account that it's very hard to maintain control over speech registers in a foreign language, and also the curious phenomenon (as observed by yours truly) that for most people it's much 'easier' (ie. they are less ashamed/inhibited/whatever) to swear in a foreign language than in their native tongue. As if foreign swears were less potent than the ones you're really familiar with. Ok, so now I really go. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| goltrpoat Triglot Newbie United States Joined 5994 days ago 29 posts - 29 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, German Studies: French, Latin | Message 18 of 30 18 July 2008 at 7:16pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I suspect it's an old word (as slang words go), dating back to the early 1900s, if not earlier. I agree that it's almost certainly a German borrowing, but I'd be surprised if it didn't go through Yiddish first, widening the context in the process (just seems to make more sense historically and geographically). Rotwelsch borrows a good number of words from Yiddish as well, so there may have been some exchange there (again, conjecture). In fenya, the word means a rookie, a tourist, someone who's not savvy. I have to wonder how it made its way into Hungarian. A more modern word is "лох," which I would guess has Germanic origins as well (fish, c.f. English lox, German Lachs, Yiddish laks). There's a relatively sizable contingent of French-derived words as well, and there's a bit of a historical perspective to explain some of it. The usual story is this: after the revolution in 1917, a number of people found themselves excluded from society, in one way or another, and there was a good amount of old aristocracy and intellectuals who started joining thieves' gangs, gaining prestige, and eventually dictating rules ("the law," hence "thief in law"). These people were called zhigans (жиганы, as opposed to the later reactionary урки movement), and they had a social agenda and a wide range of education; I'm having trouble coming up with a similar long-lived illegal movement in any other culture, so that's interesting anthropologically. I suspect (I have no proof) that many foreign words were borrowed into the cant at this time (1920s), due to the unusual range of backgrounds of the participants. About "шмонать" -- "шмон" means "eight" in Hebrew. The old chestnut, as I've learned just now, is that prisoners "way back when" would warn each other about the eight o'clock inspection. Seems apocryphal (where would prisoners get watches?), but there you have it. No idea about the etymology of "халява." "Мент" could be from Latin "mentor," but that's a bit of a stretch. Most of these words were meant not to be deciphered, so there's everything from Romani words to Latin ones. Interesting stuff, once you start digging. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| goltrpoat Triglot Newbie United States Joined 5994 days ago 29 posts - 29 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, German Studies: French, Latin | Message 19 of 30 18 July 2008 at 7:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
That's correct.
Same in Russian prisons, from what I've read. Different names, though (блатные, мужики, петухи).
An interesting aside: the "thieves' code" prohibited "taking up arms for the government." So, during WW2, there was a bit of a split, where a number of people went to war and broke with tradition, and the rest, well, didn't. After the war, people ended up in prison for one thing or another, which eventually led to this huge decade-long ideological underground war, called, you guessed it, "сучья война." 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| peterlin Tetraglot Groupie Poland peterlin.jzn.pl Joined 6415 days ago 54 posts - 58 votes Speaks: Polish*, Persian, English, Russian | Message 20 of 30 19 July 2008 at 4:44am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Same in Russian prisons, from what I've read. Different names, though (блатные, мужики, петухи).[/quote] Yeah, I'm not talking from first-hand experience either :)
In Poland, I gather, any "cooperation with authorities" was prohibited, which of course included serving in the army. But there was no split in the ranks during WW2, as Poland was occupied and the prisons lost their 'cultural autonomy' so to speak. Anyway, I heard of the "сучья война" before, but not of the zhigany and French loans in fenya. Thanks for these interesting bits of info. What fascinates me is how mixed the vocabulary of most cants and underworld/secret dialects all over the Europe (and beyond) is. Lots of Yiddishisms and Romani loans, for example and many words of unidentified origin. There's a quite interesting book by prof. Jadwiga Pstrusińska, "The secret languages of Afghanistan" which traces the journeys of this type of vocabulary (thieves' argot; secret dialects of peddlers/con-men etc.) within the Islamic world, from Balkans to India. At many points she hints at the influence of these on their European counterparts. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| chelovek Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6087 days ago 413 posts - 461 votes 5 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Russian | Message 21 of 30 22 July 2008 at 4:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Would a Russian mind explaining ёбаной to me? Like, what are the different adjective forms, where can the word be placed, etc.
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| chelovek Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6087 days ago 413 posts - 461 votes 5 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Russian | Message 22 of 30 24 July 2008 at 11:39am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Anyone?
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| peterlin Tetraglot Groupie Poland peterlin.jzn.pl Joined 6415 days ago 54 posts - 58 votes Speaks: Polish*, Persian, English, Russian | Message 23 of 30 28 July 2008 at 7:42am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Why not going back in the thread and browsing the site I gave you the link to? Or the two (out of the myriad available on the Internet) I'm linking to now?
Links: http://matov.net.ru/ http://plutser.ru/mat As for the actual usage - just google the word and browse the hits, you should get a feel of how it is used. If you can't figure it out yourself, than maybe you're not ready yet for non-standard Russian. I don't think you'll be able to find anyone capable of giving you a sound grammatical overview of the word in question, unless you come across someone with degree in scatolinguistics. People just use it (or not), they rarely analyse it. **** On a unrelated note - yesterday I've read a paper on Hindi insults and apparently, ullu ('owl'; macron on the second u) or ullu ka bacca (owl's son) are words you can use to call someone stupid. Interesting, given all those western associations (owl = wisdom). It is likewise an insult to call someone 'camar'='shoemaker', for more obvious reasons. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| gogglehead Triglot Senior Member Argentina Joined 6075 days ago 248 posts - 320 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Russian, Italian | Message 24 of 30 28 July 2008 at 1:38pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I don't really understand the shoemaker thing. Could you survive without shoes?
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