Moscow Times Article

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Fabrications, Falsehoods & Flat-Out Fibs

By Michele A. Berdy

Врут!: They're lying!

Russian has lots of ways to describe a lie, from an outright untruth to gently embroidered reality and everything in between. Лгать is the word you use to describe telling an untruth: Лжёте! (You're lying!). A liar is either лжец or лгун, and a lie is ложь. User beware: these are all fighting words, the verbal equivalent of throwing down the gauntlet.

The only exception to this is ложь во спасение -- a white lie (literally, "a lie to save someone.")

In some contexts, врать can be a synonym for лгать: Врут все! (They're all lying!) The word for "liar" derived from this verb is врун -- a very satisfying word to spit out. You can also use врать to mean "I misspoke": Сыну 5 лет. Ой вру! Ему уже 6. (My son is five years old. Oops!/That's not right! He's already six.) But врать has another meaning of "to tell a cock-and-bull story": Почему ты соврал, что ездил в США? Ты никогда там не был! (Why did you tell a story about going to the States? You've never been there!)

Враньё can be a lie (synonym for ложь), as in, Всё, что он сказал -- враньё. (Everything he said is a lie). Or it can mean a kind of "fish story" -- the embroidered half truth or fabrication that English speakers call blarney, balony, malarkey, twaddle, tommyrot, or hogwash. Он рассказывал мне про своё голодное детство, про детский дом, про болезни -- а потом я узнала, что это враньё. (He told me about his hard childhood in an orphanage, about being sick -- and then I found out that it was all hogwash.)

Брехать is another word for lying; it means to yelp or bark -- what we call in English "to lie like a dog." Other slang words for lying are like врать -- depending on the context and tone of voice, they can mean "to tell an untruth" or "to talk a lot of nonsense." For example, нести (which has the first meaning of "to carry something"): Что ты несёшь? Этого не было! (What are you going on about? That didn't happen!) Гнать ('to whip up," "to chase") is also used this way among the under-20 set. Что ты гонишь? (What bull are you shoving?) If you want to clarify -- and if you are 15 years old -- you can say гнать мульку/мульки (to tell lies) or гнать ботву/туфту (to talk nonsense, to tell a fish story).

Russian also has vivid expressions for lying designed to mess with your head. Они лапшу на уши вешают. (They're pulling the wool over our eyes, literally, "they are hanging a noodle on our ears.") Они пудрят мне мозги. (They are feeding me a load of crap, literally, "they're powdering my brain.") Or: Что ты мелешь чепуху? (What a bunch of malarkey!, literally "what nonsense are you grinding out?") Or simply: Говорят ерунду. (They're talking crap/nonsense/bull.)

In folk speech, a lie is кривда -- literally "something crooked," as if правда (the truth) were a straight and narrow path, and кривда -- a zig zag along the way. Была когда-то правда, а ныне стала кривда. (What once was true is now a lie.)

Russian folk sayings are tough on lies and liars; if you want to describe a shameless liar, you can say: Врёт, и глазом не смигнет. (He doesn't even blink when he lies.) Or try: Врёт, людей не стыдится и Бога не боится.(When he lies, he feels no shame before people or fear before God.)

How bad is lying? С правдой шутить -- что с огнём. (Playing with the truth is like playing with fire.) What happens to a liar? Соврёшь -- не помрёшь, да впереди не поверят. (If you lie you won't die, but in future no one will believe you.)

And why is it bad? Враньё не введёт в добро. (Lying comes to no good.)


Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter