MAT part 0.

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Okay, now I'll try to answer all comments to my previous post with one shot. I didn't have any intention to «provoke» the members of this community to discuss MAT or something. I just thought that

1. This issue would be very interesting for non-native speakers because there are no books that you can learn this from (perhaps, I didn't happen to find any yet);
2. MAT is a very important (IMHO) part of Russian language, culture and tradition;
3. I thought that MAT might have been previously discussed here because of 1 and 2 and asked if this was true;
4. It seems that there weren't any discussions about MAT so I'm pleased to start one (of course, if Mr. Moderator is okay with this);
5. I understand Mr. Moderator's concern about my intentions but I want to discuss Russian MAT in a strictly linguistic way.

So... should we start, okay? My English isn't too well yet so I'm sorry for any inconvenience.

MAT generally means abusive language that's usually banned from printing. Lexically MAT covers the following areas:

• insulting words;
• words related to parts of human body and sexual interaction
• usually pointless, parasitive usage of these words in speech just in order to amplify it.

Until the 1991 there weren't any official researches on the origin and other questions about MAT. Russian people started to use MAT long ago. There is a version that MAT was brought with Tatar-Mongol invaders in 13th century but some people think that MAT was invented by Slavic tribes themselves long before that. The first works of literature that contained MAT date back 18th century. Famous Russian poet Alexander Pushkin reportedly is the author of many poems written with the usage of MAT.

The usage of MAT is officially banned from printing, it can't be used by public people, e.g. politicans and celebrities. Of course, there are exceptions like Valdimir Zhirinovski, the leader of Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia (well, actually he became famous because of his... mmm... language) or singer Filipp Kirkorov who using MAT insulted a female reporter last year. Mat is considered a hooliganism, the user of MAT is punished according to clause #158 of the Administrative Code of Russian Federation but you understand that it's impossibe to enforce that law. Of course, nobody would talk using MAT to a militiaman or boss because this can cause problems but many people (especially men, teenagers, criminals, army) do so towards their peers or subordinates. MAT in presence of woman is considered intolerable but some women also use it widely.

The very interesting thing about it IMHO is that Russian MAT is unique in some way — one can express everything (really everything) using nothing but words of MAT.

Next time: MAT part 1: General vocabulary.

Please leave your comments and questions — this will help us decide if this issue is really worth discussing or we should stop.