Swearing as an element of the Russian national life?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

It is generally accepted, and this is literally imposed on our consciousness, that the Russian language contains many obscene words, so that even a special speech can be distinguished - Russian obscene, which allegedly half of the population of our country speaks. Russians are credited with extraordinary rudeness in their statements, without which, they say, neither the army, nor medicine, nor construction can do with us. Moreover, we ourselves seem to be sophisticated abusers, in contrast to the civilized and cultural peoples, to which we count everyone except ourselves.

However, the special rudeness and craving for obscenities among the Russian people is a delusion imposed from the outside, and not at all our national trait, since the need for verbal abuse exists among all peoples and people, and this is a reflection and embodiment of the universal human need to take revenge on the offender, to take revenge on the enemy, punish with offensive speech. Each nation has developed its own forms of verbal revenge and punishment, although sometimes they do not seem to us, Russians, to be something really offensive.

So, for example, the Japanese, in whose language there are practically no offensive words, from our point of view, insult their enemies, deliberately not using the grammatical category of politeness so characteristic of the Japanese language. In Russian it would sound like this. Instead of a polite request: “Please, open the window,” we would simply order: “open the window,” to a person whom we cannot contact with you or who are little known to us. Hindus and Kazakhs have retained a special way of offending a relative: they intend to offend, they call him simply by name, and not by kinship status - daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, brother-in-law, daughter-in-law. It’s the same as if we were suddenly called Vaska, an elderly, respected person whom everyone calls his patronymic “Vasily Ivanovich”. For Germans, accusations of uncleanness and slovenliness are extremely offensive. They exist here too, when we call someone a pig or a piggy, but for the Russians this accusation is not too offensive. It turns out that verbal abuse is a refutation of what is especially dear and important to the people: for the Japanese, the distance between people is important and they keep it with the help of the grammatical category of politeness. For a Hindu or a Kazakh, family relations are dear, and their destruction hurts them. The Germans are the keepers of cleanliness and order, and they are offended by accusations of slovenliness. But all this does not seem to us particularly offensive or shameful. Our Russian forms of insult seem to us much more obscene and offensive. And this is all because grief causes Russians, that is, grief, and this is precisely the meaning of the word insult - to cause grief, painful insult, grief to a person - we are really grieved by completely different words that touch the strings of our national soul and make them tremble and cry. It is in us Russians that these words evoke feelings of fear, shame and shame, because for us the concepts that are stained by insult are dear and sacred.

What is "swearing at Mother God"

The most terrible insult for Russians is blasphemy, blasphemy against God, an insult to the Mother of God and the saints, what was called "swearing at God the Mother." Even among non-believers, this caused a feeling of inner shudder, an instinctive fear of God and acted on a person like a powerful blow, caused moral pain and shock. Blasphemy was severely punished in Russia. In the first article of the Cathedral Code of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, execution by burning was supposed to be for blasphemy.

It is believed that thanks to such cruel measures, blasphemy has practically disappeared from Russian speech. But this is not the case. It has acquired special forms, which are expressed by the word "swear". Devil worship is blasphemy in Russian, and in living language the word devil is often used in this sense. Damn it, go to hell, the devil only knows, damn it, - all these are deliberate replacements of the Name of God with the name of the enemy of the human race, which believers were wary of and are wary of remembering. In the old days, such blasphemy was rarely used. They evoked the same horror as a direct blasphemy against the Lord, for the remembrance of the name of the devil in the mind of the Russian people, as well as of any people who have faith in God in their souls, called for help from evil spirits, just as the remembrance of the name of God called for action and to the help of the Lord and his angels. That is why swearing was forbidden among godly people, it caused a shock of the soul, as well as a direct reproach of God.

But in the modern Russian world, where genuine religiosity is almost absent, the remembrance of the devil has ceased to be a curse. Since God and the Mother of God for most of the people is no longer a shrine, then blasphemy in the form of swearing, but in fact worshiping the devil and evil spirits, embodied in the images of a devil, a devil, a "damn mother" and "damn grandmother", has become a common figure of speech, expressing our irritation and frustration.

How much we have lost the fear of remembering the devil's name can be seen in the blasphemous address to the devil, which has become a custom, in the expression “the devil, what?”. But we are faced with a question with which a person, renouncing God, seeks an answer and help from the devil. This phrase is essentially opposed to the expression "help, Lord", "give, God", "save, Lord". It contains an appeal in the ancient vocative case "trait" and the interrogative pronoun "what", put here in anticipation of an answer to the call of evil spirits. So, it turns out that we, believing swearing to be a mere splash of irritation, are actually blaspheming, calling for help and haste not God and his good forces, but the devil and demons, under various names that have made their way into our language. Following the "devil, what?" we multiply, madly, other questions to the demons: "the devil, how?" and "the hell, how much?", "the hell, who?" and "the devil, why?" … But all these are forms of communication with evil spirits, or, in other words, blasphemy.

Swearing "what the light stands on"

Another terrible type of insult is swearing, which in ancient times was called "obscene barking", likening obscene words and expressions to a dog's barking. Swearing has its origins in the ancient worship of the Russian people to the Mother of the Raw Earth, which, according to our primordial ideas, gave birth to us, wears, feeds and drinks, dresses, warms and after death gives the last shelter to our body. That is why there is an expression “to swear at what the light is worth,” because the light is there and the world is kept on Mother Earth. Mother Earth is an ancient shrine, which in the old days had to be touched with a hand before a person got up from sleep, so the Earth was asked permission to stand on her feet. The Earth was instructed to ask permission for plowing and sowing, otherwise she, mother, would not give a good harvest. They took an oath with her, eating a handful of earth, which, in the event of a lie or violation of the oath, would get a lump in the throat. That is why we sometimes, ourselves not understanding for what purpose, say, assuring the interlocutor of the business we need: "If you want, I will eat land." Until now, the oath, so necessary in human relations, is connected precisely with the earth. Because of this, we say, giving a promise “to sink into the earth”, that is, in case of a violation of the word or a deliberate lie, we doom ourselves not to rest in the damp earth, but to fall into tartarars, into the underworld, into hell. The curse “so that you fall through the earth!”, Which once caused righteous fear, has the same meaning.

Mother Earth in the Russian picture of the world is similar to her own mother in caring for her children, therefore, swearing as an insult is addressed to the mother of the insulted person and at the same time to the land that bears him. The reproach of a mother in our ideas is a desecration of the womb that bore him, and the native land that nurtured him, and such words, if the offended one respects and loves his own mother, cause the same horror as the remembrance of the devil in a person who is deeply religious and sincerely believes in God. … And although we have long forgotten the ancient rituals of worshiping the Mother of the Raw Earth, but for the most part we still love our mothers, and therefore our soul trembles and indignantly during swearing, overwhelmed with a feeling of resentment.

Blasphemy and swearing are an insult to two higher feelings in human nature - the feeling of a saint as our awareness of the holiness of our Creator in all His confessions, and a sense of the sacred as an understanding of the place of our creation, the material from which we are created, this sacred is the mother and her prototype. - Mother Earth. The Lord, according to the conviction of all religious peoples, created us from the Earth (in the word to create a root zd - means earth or clay). The earth is a place of power, a person lives and feeds on it in the physical sense of the word and it certainly compares in the depths of his soul with his own mother, who is sacred to us to the same degree. She gives birth to us, raises and nourishes us, and takes care of us until the end of our days. The sacred, as well as the saint, obliges us to reverence, reverence, saving from any reproach and desecration. And when an obscene word is pronounced with nasty lips, accusing the mother of the offended person of unchastity or fornication, he experiences a feeling of shame and horror, which is inevitable in the desecration and desecration of all that is sacred. In Polesie, there is still a belief that those who use foul language have the earth under their feet on fire for three years.

Veneration of the sacred Mother Earth was the strongest side of the pagan worldview. Our ancestors were in awe of springs, sacred groves, holy mountains. They greeted the land waking up in spring, asked her for permission to plow and sow, thanked for the harvest. The women rolled on the stubble, saying: "Nivka, nivka, give me a snare" … Christianity did not develop this tradition, but it did not prevent the peasant from honoring Mother Earth as a breadwinner and benefactor. The sacred attitude to the land was destroyed in cities, where people did not depend at all on nature and relied only on the Lord and on themselves. And the last hundred years of persecution of the peasantry have finally eradicated the class, which held Mother Earth sacred. And then swearing ceased to be an insult for many. It has become the dirty speech of rude people.

So, blasphemy caused the strongest fear in a person. That was the fear of the inevitable revenge for the desecration of God's Name and for calling demons and devils. Swearing, on the other hand, shocked a person, causing him a feeling of terrible shame. Shame, as you know, has the same root as the words chill, chill, and in ancient times this word sounded like a chill, it was an image of the strongest chill, a person seized with shame seemed to himself unprotected, lonely and naked, since he was deprived of the main primordial protectors - Mother of the Raw Earth and native mother.

Corruption of flesh and spirit

There is another type of strong insult in Russian - foul language, the use of so-called bad words denoting impurities, excrement, human organs below the belt and his physical functions. Such a perception of foul language was based on an ancient installation, through language introducing into our picture of the world the concepts of good and evil: in this case, the top meant good, the bottom - evil, and in this system the human body was divided into good and evil halves by the border of the belt.

Human organs below the waist seemed and still seem to be unclean. And the sages said: "We are all half people, half cattle."

A person who is insulted with foul words, calling him filthy or genital, the back of the body, that is, shameful, obscene, vulgar words, experiences a feeling that in Russian is called the word shame. Shame occurs when a person is verbally or physically naked in front of people, etymologically it means a feeling of horror, which covers when the forbidden is exposed. It is no coincidence that they say that he is arrogant, he mocks and scoffs about who shames someone or himself. And thus our language emphasizes that the filth of the flesh is naked, freed from the veil and exposed in all its filth for all to see. However, today foul language is not perceived by everyone as shame. People who have lost the idea of the pure and unclean of their own flesh lose their disdainful attitude to the unclean word, truly the filth of the flesh gives rise to filth of the spirit, and the speech of the Russian person is more and more filled with filth.

So the insult in Russian included three types of words that caused a kind of paralysis of the soul, the strongest shock, confusion and resentment - this is blasphemy, swearing and foul language. Blasphemy brought with it a feeling of fear, swearing caused shame, and foul language engendered shame in a person. It was about these verbal abuse that it was said that a word can kill. For such insulting words made a person, as it were, die out, having experienced grief, and in essence of the word - paralysis of the soul, since grief comes from the concept of grieving, that is, writhing and stiffening in a crumpled state. It is about the insult that the Russian proverb says: "The word is not an arrow, but more striking."

It cannot be said that people today do not understand this at all. But foul-mongers and foul-mongers have so grown their souls to dirty speech that in a decent environment they find equivalents to them, directly referring others to an unclean meaning - numerous tree-sticks, Yoshkin cats, Japanese policemen, pancakes, which cultural-looking ladies do not hesitate to remember now and gentlemen, and even children do not shy away from them - no one around is misled. They are not only a disgusting phenomenon of dirty speech, but also testify to the dirty way of thinking of those who pronounce such euphemisms.

Swearing - verbal defense

However, in addition to offensive words, leading to paralysis of the soul, in the Russian language there are abusive words that serve a person for the benefit. Indeed, the very word swearing means our verbal defense, in an effort to avoid a physical collision with the enemy and get along when expressing our aggression with words alone. As they said from ancient times, "birch is not a threat, where it stands, there it makes noise." Indeed, it is better to curse the enemy with a swear word than to open his skull in the heat. This was how the warning worked: "To scold - scold, but do not give your hands will".

Swearing or verbal defense is quite different from offensive words. From time immemorial, swearing has been used as a form of warning the enemy that he will be attacked if he does not reconcile and surrender. This is the custom of the Russian people. We do not attack the enemy from behind, as the steppe peoples do. We do not rush at the enemy suddenly, without warning, as is customary among our neighboring mountaineers. Russians tend to warn the enemy about an attack, and in this warning we, as a rule, put ritual words of reproach of the enemy - that very Russian abuse. The famous message of Prince Svyatoslav, "I'm Coming at You," which surprised his opponents so much, is an example of a Russian warning to adversaries about an impending battle. The generosity of a Slavic warrior here was usually accompanied by ritual threats to the enemy, which did not so much demoralize the enemy as encouraged the scolding one.

Indeed, the use of verbal abuse dates back to the ancient military rite of humiliation of one's enemy before a fight. Such ceremonies strengthened in the soldiers a sense of their own superiority over the enemy. The scolding ritual was so obligatory in Russian everyday culture that there is a well-known proverb on this score, emanating from the viewers interested in the fight: “Scold completely, it’s not time to fight”.

The most important thing in such rituals is the renaming of the enemy from a person to an animal, and into an animal that is easy to defeat. Fearless, harmless animals and cattle - a goat, a ram, a donkey, a pig, a fox, a dog - became the names of the opponents of the Russian warrior. They were used depending on what hurt the enemy more painfully - the slovenliness of the pig, the stupidity of the ram, the stubbornness of the donkey or the harmfulness of the goat … But the names of the predators - the wolf and the bear - were never used in battle, the confrontation with which did not promise an easy victory. Mentioned in the battle of defense animals in the collective sense: creature or cattle - also universal renaming before the fight. With an exclamation "Oh, you brute!" or "Wow, creature!" it is customary for us to throw ourselves into hand-to-hand combat.

The renaming of man into cattle was also important for the Russian because the Rusich, kind by nature, was not ready to kill his own kind, even in open combat. He needed not only to rename his opponent into an animal, but also to convince himself that he sees the enemy in front of him not in human form, but in the guise of a beast. For, as Vladimir Vysotsky wrote, "I cannot beat a person in the face since childhood." And so, in order not to hit a person in the face, this face was renamed in Russian into an animal ugly: this is how abusive threats were born - to stuff the face, give in the snout, clean the face, break the mouth, cut into the mug, break the muzzle. All the words listed here are the essence of the naming of an animal muzzle - an inhuman appearance. In this way, humiliating the enemy with his threat, a person prepared for a fight or fight freed himself from remorse that he raised his hand against a person. The enemy became like a beast for him.

In verbal defense, there is another way to rename the enemy before a fight. To justify his aggression, the fighter called the enemy by the name of a stranger, a person of an alien, hostile to us clan-tribe. Russian history has accumulated many such nicknames, engraved in the memory of the language thanks to the many invasions and wars. From the Turkic languages came to us a boob (from the Tatar bilmas - "he does not know"), a blockhead (a Tatar hero), balda and badma. This is the memory of the Mongol-Tatar yoke and the subsequent hostile neighborhood with the steppe inhabitants. The war with Napoleon was reflected in the words "skier" (French shermi - "dear friend") and trash (French chevalier). These words have gone through a complex history. They arose as a result of the overlap of ancient Russian roots and French borrowings. It was with the support of the Russian root in the word shushval (scrap, fragment, flap) that the word Chevalier was rethought, denoting a French enemy. This is how trash appeared - the name of every worthless, worthless person. The French sher ami - dear friend, was also reinterpreted in our language with the help of the Russian root - ball (emptiness, darmovshchina), ball, on ball, (for nothing) in conjunction with the suffix -yg-, known in the words skvalyga, bogey, rogue. Sharomyga, the ball skier, thus became the ironic nicknames of a beggar and a nonentity. By the way, the word bogus has a similar education. Here, the Tatar root bulda ("enough") is used, and a bummer means a drunkard who does not have the concept of "enough", that is, the ability to stop drunkenly in time. Let us also recall here the mischievous: borrowed from the French language chenapan (villain) was transformed into the word shalopai under the influence of the Russian mischievous, mischievous, and began to mean an ordinary loafer.

Newer curses for outsiders are the Greek idiot (special, different from others, alien) and the French nerd (stupid). For our language, they are also a sign of a person's inferiority, his alienation to his native community, which makes it possible to use these words in verbal defense, taking the idiot and idiot out of his circle.

Let's name one more strategy of verbal defense, which was used by the Russian warrior and every Rusich prepared for a fight. In this strategy, it is very important to warn your opponent that he will be defeated and destroyed. This is why the words for carrion and carrion are used. These are the words of a bastard and a bitch, a scum and a scoundrel, a bastard and an infection. Each of them expresses the idea of the dead in a special way. If a bastard is what fell to the ground dead, an ordinary carrion, then a bitch is a torn creature. It is no coincidence that a bear in dialects is called a bitch, which means tormenting prey. The vulture is also memorable - a bird of prey that feeds on carrion, tearing it apart. Scum is the name of the enemy, comparing him to a creature frozen to death, so is the scoundrel. The word bastard can be traced to a comparison with dead foliage piled up in a heap, useless garbage, as Vladimir Dal believed. And the word infection comes from the verb infect (that is, hit, kill), and denotes the infection of the killed in battle.

So, verbal abuse is a real defense strategy, warning the enemy about an attack, humiliating the enemy and at the same time strengthening the fighter himself before the fight. This is the story of the origin of swear words. But even today, abuse is permissible and sometimes even necessary in speech. After all, it can fully throw out a resentment against the enemy, with one squabble to exhaust the conflict and avoid assault.

Swearing - showdown with neighbors

The Russian stock of offensive words is not exhausted by offensive and abusive words. The most important part of the national life is swearing - verbal humiliation of our neighbors when expressing dissatisfaction with them and during the so-called "clarification of relations."

In the Russian tradition of communication, which has evolved over thousands of years, the sincerity, openness of a person in interaction with his neighbors was especially appreciated. That is why we consider the ideal of communication to be a heart-to-heart conversation, without which a Russian person shrinks in his own cocoon and dries up at heart. But the other side of the heart-to-heart conversation - a sincere expression of dissatisfaction with our neighbors - we also value very much, calling it "showdown". Such communication is a heart-to-heart talk inside out, it is accumulated grievances splashed out in the face, it is anger concentrated in a swear word with which we call a relative or friend of our fault. In Russian proverbs, such abusers are aptly compared to a dog that has a changeable disposition, from ferocity to tenderness: "Bark, bark, dog, and lick your lips."

The swear words that “sort things out” in our language are very diverse and colorful, since a person, swearing, seeks to express himself as brightly as possible, but at the same time not offend, not strike down, not throw mud. In the selection of expressions, the scolder, as a rule, proceeds from the installation that his irritant is, as it were, not a person at all, he is a kind of empty place that does not have the main feature of a person - a living soul.

Such is, for example, the word fool, the etymology of which is based on the concept of a hole - an empty space. Moreover, swearing, we like to emphasize that the fool is insane, headless, stupid. And to the fool we add stupidity, we claim that the fool's roof has moved down, an attic without a top. Fools are called in different ways, refreshing the force of swearing with the novelty of form: here there is an affectionate fool, and an irritated fool, and a good-natured fool, and an angry fool, and just a banal fool with a fool, as well as a fool and a fool. Voicedness is added by stable definitions of a fool - a fool can be round, stuffed, inveterate. And if the fool is not quite a fool or pretends to be such, then there are also names for this - half-fool and idiot.

Another abusive naming of a neighbor as a soulless object denotes different types of wood - here and a chock, often it looks like a chock with eyes or a chock with ears, and a log, and a log, and a log, and an oak with a club and a blockhead, and for brightness the club is called stoerosovy, that is, not lying, but standing, like a person. A tall and stupid person will also be called an oryasina - a long pole or twig. So good fellows are scolded. Let us also recall the stump, to which they add that it is old or mossy, this is how old people are reproached. Similar to the concept of a man-tree and the word dumbbell, it has long meant a wooden pillar and has the same root. Another wooden object, reinterpreted as a curse, is the shaft. Modern language adds bamboo and baobab to this list, and also, knocking on a piece of wood, we say with a sense of our own superiority over the dumbass "hello, tree!"

The curse words with the name of the neighbors are also entertaining. Thus, we emphasize that before us is not a person, but only his shell without content - that is, again, without a soul. And we choose shoes in such terms that correspond to the social status of the person we are abusing. A boot - let's say about a dull-headed military man, a bast shoe and a felt boot we will call a simpleton - a villager, a wife will use a slipper to kill her own weak-willed husband, and he will use a slipper to her stupid wife, but in any case, we speak in the sense that we have a hollow emptiness, an empty object …

The thought of their worthlessness, uselessness is offensive to a person, and the abusers take advantage of this with pleasure. The Russian language has accumulated a collection of worthlessness used in swearing. Here and the usual rubbish with garbage in the bargain, and more specific rags - torn clothes, and scraps - old shoes, as well as trash - unnecessary trash and garbage. There are funny rarities in such swearing, but also useless - a shishurok (dried snot), shushval (a piece, a shred). The word ragamuffin stands apart here, it also denotes a worthless ragamuffin, and the sound similarity of ragamuffin with a ragamuffin seems to be traced. However, a Russian rethinking of the German Ubermut (hooligan, antics, mischievous person) took place in a fool. The coincidence of the sounds of the ragamuffin with the ragamuffin and the mot gave an impetus to the development of a different meaning - a worthless reveler who squandered to the last tear. Similarly, at the end of the 19th century, the word ochlamon was formed, initially it was correlated with the Greek ochlos (people) and literally meant "a man from the people." But the vivid coincidence of the sound of this word with the root of trash gave rise to a new meaning - poorly dressed, slob.

Swearing addressed to loved ones is also characteristic of their names as animals, first of all distinguished by stupidity, harmfulness or worthlessness. The husband can call his wife a sheep, a goat or a chicken, and she, in revenge, can call him a goat or a ram. A mischievous and capricious old man is called an old bastard (the word grich is preserved in the Czech language and means an old dog), and a grumpy old woman is called an old hag (the word hag is preserved in Sanskrit in the meaning of a raven).

An important sign of intra-family abuse was the naming of their neighbors by names of alien origin - dunduk (worthless, stupid) comes from a Turkic personal name, dolt (stupid, sloppy) originates from the Finnish personal name Oliska, pentyukh (awkward, stupid) arose as a result of a rethinking of Greek name (Panteley - Pantyukha - pentyukh) when the sounds coincide with the expressive stump.

Let us pay attention to how large the number of such curses is - harmless, because they are not offensive, like blasphemy, obscenity and foul language, and do not threaten anyone like verbal abuse. In such daily abuse, each of us relieves nervous tension, irritation, which is usually caused by difficult life circumstances or fatigue in work - "without swearing, you can't do it", "without noise and wash it won't turn sour." Here it is - the true purpose of Russian swearing - "to swear - to take away the soul", which means, return to a calm state and really bring the matter to the end.

When we swear at our own relatives and friends, then there are great advantages in such swearing. Psychological relaxation occurs when a person uses all these funny names - boobies, dunduks, oryasins and sandals, scraps and felt boots. For example, you call your sloth-son telepathy and you yourself start laughing, presenting him as a clumsy bumpkin, teleporting back and forth to no avail. Or the wife in her hearts will shout to her husband: "Well, that got up like a dunce!" And this is ridiculous, and not insulting, but instructive. That is why they say in Russia: "They scold more, live more humbly", "they scold in times of happiness, in times of trouble they reconcile", "their dogs squabble, strangers do not bother."

Psychologists studied the need of people for verbal relaxation and found that when a person is constantly out of fear, or because of good upbringing, or for some other reason, he does not have the opportunity to express his negative feelings, his mind darkens, he begins to quietly hate others, and may not only go crazy, but also commit a crime or suicide. This state is called in Russian: "evil is not enough." “Evil” in verbal abuse should be enough, because this is the most harmless form of punishment or retribution for our neighbor annoying us. After that, for both comes peace and tranquility. That is why we all know: "swearing does not smoke, does not eat eyes", "swearing on the collar does not hang", and, most importantly, "without beating a godfather, do not drink beer."

So why, one wonders, have we forgotten a lot of such well-aimed, sonorous, precise abusive words, and instead of them, like a butt on the head, we cover our neighbors and distant ones with choice obscenities, swear at them and use foul language, while losing fear and shame and exposing to show off your own disgrace?

Maybe this is because we have been living for a long time in a society where people have stopped worshiping God and His Most Pure Mother? And therefore, to blaspheme Them - to swear "at God-Mother" is not something terrible for many? Perhaps cursing is in use because all these hundred years, or even more, the devil has ceased to be considered the enemy of the human race? So it was not scary to enter into open communication with him, swearing? And after all, these same hundred years, during which we so quickly forgot God and learned the devil, people in our country stopped worshiping Mother Earth and neglected the sanctity of motherhood in general. So swearing did not cause shame, first in the face of the native land, then in the face of his own mother, and, finally, in the eyes of his own children. As for foul language, its impurities are no longer perceived as shame, for people are accustomed not only to speak dirty, but also to think dirty. The whole point is that in the majority of the people we get used to thinking dirty, or even not thinking at all, we use foul language and swearing as a reflex of discontent and indignation. gaps in speech with swearing, cursing and foul language. There is even a mental illness in which a person has no speech at all, but in order to attract the attention of others, the patient spews foul language and swearing. So, unreasonably swearing and habitually foul-mouthed people are akin to the mentally ill and should be perceived as such in society.

So, the conviction, imposed in Russia today, that the Russians are some particularly sophisticated foul-mongers who do not drink without swearing, do not eat and do not live in the world at all, is deceit or delusion. Blasphemy, obscenities and foul language were considered unacceptable not only in the educated environment, but also among the common people a hundred years ago. These words carried open evil, were dangerous to society and individuals, they were avoided, they were severely punished for them. Another thing is swear words and swearing, which turned out to be an aid in sincere communication with neighbors and a way to prevent assault. Here the apt Russian word serves a useful service to this day. This does not mean, of course, that we have the right to fire relatives and friends from morning till night, but it means that we must protect ourselves and everyone around us from insults and foul language.