A Moment Of Shock

[bloodyrosemccoy]

National Depression Screening Day
UN World Teacher's Day
Republic Day (Portugal)

 

Attention, speakers or studiers of European languages!

 

I need three interjections.

 

Say you’re in the shower, doing whatever it is you’re normally doing in the shower. Shampooing up, singing opera, making those shower faces, generally in the state of meditative zen nowness that is The Shower, and you turn around AND SEE A HAIRY SPIDER THE SIZE OF YOUR FIST HANGING IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE JEEZUS CHRIST!

 

Assuming you are a native speaker, aside from the generic “AAAAAGH”, what do you yell in:

 

-German?

-French?

-Russian?

 

Bonus points if the Russian exclamation can also be provided in the Cyrillic alphabet.

Comments

[gryfindormia.livejournal.com]

French exclamations I've heard real French people use in surprise:

"Merde!" ("Shit!")

"Zut alors!" (roughly translated: "darn!")

"Quoi?!" ("What?!")

"Mince/Flûte!" (like "zut", have heard it used in surprise, but this is more for circumstances also deemed annoying/less fun surprises)

There are some more outdated ones, but I've never heard real French people use them, so I won't include them.

You want Latin as well? ;)

[viizou.livejournal.com]

French is my first language, so I can help out here.

French speakers rarely ever say "sacre bleu" in real life, so steer clear of that one. "Mince/flûte/zut" are common, but, as mentionned in a previous comment, they're quite mild, the kind of thing you say when you've missed the bus, but only have to wait 5 minutes until the next one. "Merde" is very common, but is more likely to be used alone when you, say, spill something by accident; it literally means "shit", but can be equivalent to "fuck".

If I saw a huge. hairy spider in the shower (and I'm really, really afraid of spiders), I would probably scream something like: "Putain de bordel de merde!", which isn't really translatable, but is roughly equivalent to "Holy fucking shit!" It's got Parisian connotations, though. There are variations on it: "Bordel de merde!", "Bordel de Dieu!", "Putain de merde!" or just plain "Putain!" (which literally means "whore", but is rarely thought of as that, it's just an interjection). It depends on how badly the person is freaked out.

If the person isn't a natural curser (they do exist), s/he can just scream: "Nom de Dieu!"

My knowledge of German curses is more limited, I'm not certain if one would scream "Scheisse!" (shit) in that situation, as I think it's more linked to anger. "Gott in Himmel!" (God in heaven) might work.

[gryfindormia.livejournal.com]

I was just giving her all the French exclamations at the top of my head. And though I personally would say something like "shit" or "fuck" if a situation like that presented itself, I know not others would say the same thing.

Oh yeah, "putain", totally forgot about that one. I used it when almost slipping on dog shit in Chatalet-les-Halles this summer. :)

[viizou.livejournal.com]

Sorry about that, I meant to post a new comment, but accidentally clicked "reply to this" instead... I wasn't criticizing your suggestions.

[gryfindormia.livejournal.com]

I didn't think you were doing that at all. :)