a possibly minority position

[Dustin Hosseini]

Well, in this particular example, Russians generally don't have euphemistic
equivalents to what English has and what native speakers of English utilize
in everyday life.  

Perhaps those words that were elicited were or are used by Russian speakers
out of humor or irony, such as when someone is drunk.  But in a public
place, people, even younger Russians, would almost always ask "Где туалет? /
А где у вас туалет?" (Gde tualet? / A gde u vas tualet? if that didn't come
through)... but, at least in the US, people rarely say 'Where is the
toilet?' but rather 'Where is the restroom?'  

But a friend of mine raised a question: what about the word "уборная"?  


On Sun, 30 Mar 2008 13:50:49 +0400, Michele A. Berdy <maberdy at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

>Dustin Hosseini wrote: "But hey, I suppose PC makes the English language
>appear more 'beautiful'  than Russian since we've learned to express certain
>concepts with several more words than necessary; i.e. the lavatory,
>restroom, W/C (water closet), the john, the porcelain goddess (I suppose I
>should say porcelain god, so that the men don't feel left out and the women
>less offended...) and last  but not least, the toilet..."
>
>Surely you don't think that Russian doesn't have euphemisms for the toilet
>and going to the toilet? I have pages and pages pages of them, including
>what you cite in English: клозет/ватерклозет (albeit,
rather rare),
>удобство, читальная, библиотека, место
для раздумий, одно место;
>белый/фарфоровый друг/пони. There are also plenty of
"polite" ways to excuse
>oneself to go to this "particular place," although I think (but would need
>more research to confirm) that among friends (young-ish) Russians are
>slightly more likely to say "пойду пописаю" than Americans are
likely to say
>"I'm going to take a pee." And there are dozens of ways in Russian -- both
>polite and crude -- to describe the processes that go on there (other than
>reading, which seems to be a cross-cultural habit). I solicited expressions
>for a couple of columns I did on this and got so many words and expressions,
>you could write a dissertation on it. Actually, surely someone has. (?)
>
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