Bulgarian Phrases

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:21 PM +0200 10/10/00, Vladimir Tsourikov wrote:
>Russian language also has "kurwa" with the same meaning "a prostitute."
>
>It's rare in modern Russian, but nevertheless is occasionally heard
>in the country region, and was in use (not a wide one though) as far
>as some 20 years ago, mostly as an insult. In fact it's somewhat a
>stronger word than 'whore', with an emphasis on filthiness or
>slovenliness, so I'd suggest 'slut' as a bit closer equivalent.
>
Just a brief note to observe that for many English speakers "whore"
would count as a stronger word than "slut" rather than vice versa.
Among other things, "slut" can have a playful self-deprecating
dimension (used increasingly by men as well as women in many
communities) while "whore" often, I suspect, remains too strongly
derogatory to be playful, whether in the original or the now trendy
form of "ho".  The two words overlap in their distribution but I
think remain distinct--as far as semantic correspondences go, the
question is whether KURVA/KURVEH more closely approximates the
'promiscuous' sense of "slut" or the 'selling oneself' sense of
"whore".

Larry
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