{"id":671,"date":"2008-09-06T15:01:58","date_gmt":"2008-09-06T14:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/burlaki.com\/blog\/?p=671"},"modified":"2016-07-06T10:30:45","modified_gmt":"2016-07-06T14:30:45","slug":"the-great-and-mighty-russian-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/burlaki.com\/blog\/2008\/09\/06\/the-great-and-mighty-russian-language\/","title":{"rendered":"The great and mighty Russian language"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My good friend Art pointed me to a hilarious bit of geopolitical news.  Those in my audience who can read Russian are strongly urged to head <a href=\"http:\/\/h.ua\/story\/128351\">over there<\/a> and read for themselves.  English interpretation may still be amusing to my non-Russian-speaking readers.<\/p>\n<p>Recognition of Abkhasian and South Ossetian independence by Russia created a new geopolitical entity, whose name uses the first two letters of the names of each of the new independent states (&#8220;ab&#8221; and &#8220;os&#8221;, respectively) and the ancient name for Russia itself.  The resulting moniker, \u0410\u0431\u041e\u0441\u0420\u0443\u0441\u044c (pronounced &#8220;ah-boss-ROOS'&#8221;), is entirely indigestible to a Russian ear, on account of meaning &#8220;I&#8217;ll shit my pants&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Kremlin strategists received welcome help in these trying times from their old Nicaraguan friends.  As Daniel Ortega&#8217;s government recognized breakaway states, it became possible to incorporate Nicaragua into the aforementioned entity.  Adding &#8220;Ni&#8221; to the beginning of a Russian word reverses its meaning, so the new geopolitical configuration now threateningly declares &#8220;I will not shit my pants&#8221; &#8211; \u041d\u0438\u0410\u0431\u041e\u0441\u0420\u0443\u0441\u044c.    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My good friend Art pointed me to a hilarious bit of geopolitical news. Those in my audience who can read Russian are strongly urged to head over there and read for themselves. English interpretation may still be amusing to my non-Russian-speaking readers. Recognition of Abkhasian and South Ossetian independence by&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15373,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"fifu_image_url":"http:\/\/burlaki.com\/thumbnails\/russia.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","_customify_content_layout":"","_customify_sidebar":"","_customify_page_header_display":"","_customify_disable_header":"","_customify_disable_header_top":"","_customify_disable_header_main":"","_customify_disable_header_bottom":"","_customify_disable_page_title":"","_customify_disable_content_vertical_padding":"","_customify_disable_footer_top":"","_customify_disable_footer_main":"","_customify_disable_footer_bottom":"","_customify_breadcrumb_display":"","_customify_header_transparent_display":"","_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-russia"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pfS5R-aP","jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/burlaki.com\/thumbnails\/russia.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/burlaki.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/burlaki.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/burlaki.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burlaki.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burlaki.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/burlaki.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burlaki.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/burlaki.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burlaki.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burlaki.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}