A moist British "no" to Brexit

[topum]

"Moist" is the early front-runner in a search to find the most-hated word in the English language. The word has topped polls in the UK, US and Canada, according to those behind the global survey. It is joined by "no", "Brexit" and "British" as the UK's four most-despised words.

"No" is least popular in the early running in the Netherlands and Germany, while "love" and "sorry" find the least favour in India.

via

Comments

[bluemeanybeany.livejournal.com]

There's this handy table

Clearly the Netherlands haven't watched enough Great British Bake Off yet to bump "moist" up into No.1

[topum.livejournal.com]

What an interesting table. I like the antonyms symmetry in the German top 4: no, love, hate, yes.

All English-speaking countries seem to share the hate towards "moist", "no" and "like" and everyone except Britain also to "hate". So Britain uniquely hates "Brexit" and "nice", the US - "stupid", Canada - "can't" and Australia - "panties". Interesting.

[darkoshi]

Oh, that's funny. I hate the word panties too, and I'm not Australian. But I can't believe such a simple word like "no" is among the least liked everywhere. And in Spain, even "yes"!?? I wonder what that is about.

Let's see, I'd suggest these words instead: slime, mold, lice, slug, lugubrious, lard, infestation.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Indians are a bit surprising with "love" and "sorry". I have always found "titillate" puzzling.

[darkoshi]

Maybe they dislike sorry, as in not liking to have to apologize, or not liking people having disappointed them, or insincere apologies. I don't know why they dislike the word love though. One of our male Indian co-workers was named Love, so the word must not be universally disliked.

[mlknchz.livejournal.com]

Coincidentally, "Sorry" seems to be the hardest word

[topum.livejournal.com]

Ha ha, yes and love don't come easy (especially to Indians it seems) and don't cost a thing.

[beautesauvage13.livejournal.com]

Ha! I saw something similar on my Facebook feed earlier today.  I think it was posted on a local radio station's Facebook page. 

I hate "trump" But that might be more connected to the orange faced toupee wearing guy then the word itself. 

Athena

[topum.livejournal.com]

Let's not let him redefine how we feel about words, ha ha!

[diejacobsleiter.livejournal.com]

Maybe you know that the most popular and widely-used word in Russian is "nothing". (And some culturologist make a logical consumption about the nihilist character of Russian culture.) It can mean really anything. It depends on the intonation you pronounce it. If somebody asks you "how are you?", you can say "nothing" and mean "not so bad, in fact! quite well!" or "still am alive, but by miracle only"...

[topum.livejournal.com]

I did not know that about "nothing" but I am trying to learn a bit of Russian here and it can be a puzzling language to learn.

One would have thought that if you know that "yes" is "da" and "no" is "niet" then you should be more or less OK understanding answers to simple yes or no questions. Well not in Russian apparently. The answer I got to one of such questions was "da net navernah" (yes no navernah)! I could not understand why the answer had both "yes" and "no" right next to each other plus some "navernah". I asked what was "navernah" and was told it was "maybe". Brilliant. So the answer to a yes or no question was "yes no maybe". Awesome. And somehow it means "Probably not". Yeah, this is going to be hard.

[diejacobsleiter.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, Russian is an adventurous language. It is not very logical, it is more poetic and impressionistic. Good for literature, bad for science and phiilosophy.

"Da net" in fact is not "yes no". It is something like "and no..." or "but no..." because "da" is an archaic (or dialect) form of "and" or "but". In old texts like folk takes you can meet phrases like "man and wife" in which "and" is expressed by "da".

And, like in any language, there are meaningless parasite words or ones added for rhythm. Russian "da" is sometimes used as this rhythmical addition to the phrase. So your "da net navernah" is "probably not" with rhythmical upbeat (anacrusa) "da" which means nothing.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Yes, they explained to me already that "da" here is something like "well" (as in "well, I don't know..." for example) (or "but", yes). I did not know that it could also be "and". Is it still used as "and" in modern day-to-day speech? It would be funny to translate "yes and no" as "da da niet".

[diejacobsleiter.livejournal.com]

No, today you can hear it only as "yes" or as "well" or "but" or rhythmical emphasizer but not as "and". But when children read old tales or literature stylized, they quite understand this "yes" meaning: "Zhili-byli (=once there lived)... ded da baba (= an old man and his wife)" . Sometimes on weddings you can hear the ancient wish to the young couple to live "in counsel (= agreement) and love", and in this formula there is "da": sovet da lubov'

[diejacobsleiter.livejournal.com]

This "da" can strengthen your expression. If you say just "niet" it's just "no". When you say "da niet!!!" it sound an little emotional, irritated. As if somebody understands you wrongly after long explanations and asks "you mean this, don't you?" - and you answer emotionally "da niet!!!"

Or somebody tells you something amazing and exciting, and you want to say something like "oh really?!", but stronger - "da ty shto?!", which is literally "but you what?!" It's not offensive but also not very aristocratic...

Or you say "leave it" or "let it go" but stronger. You can add this expressional "da" - "da bros' ty!"

Etc...

[diejacobsleiter.livejournal.com]

In fact, this usage of "da" you can never hear from foreigners studying Russian, it's too autochthonic., requires too good feeling of language.

So memorize and use this, and Russians will say "wow! he's one of us!"

;-)

[diejacobsleiter.livejournal.com]

Sorry for the abundance of comments. But suddenly I remembered that your joke da da niet was already realized in Russian literature. In Pushkin´s Eugene Onegin it appeared just like this: "da da niet", meaning "yes and no"!!! And it never struck me as odd, sounds quite natural...

When you say "yes and no" you accentuate "yes", "no", but not "and": "yés and nó". In Russian it works in the same way "dá" means "yes", but enclitic "da" means "and", "well", "but", or nothing. That's why "dá da niét" doesn´t sound odd. And your first "da niét" doesn´t mean "yes no" (and "dá niét" would mean "yes no")

[topum.livejournal.com]

Thank you that's very interesting and useful.