Целую vs. До свидания

[krepsen.livejournal.com]

Can you say "Целую"  at the end of a letter to a friend instead of  "До свидания" ?

Comments

[mr-uef.livejournal.com]

depends on your acceptable intimacy level, but otherwise perfectly ok.

[grafinok.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[seraph6.livejournal.com]

Yes, you can, if the letter addressed to the close friend or relative.

[oryx_and_crake]

To a relative, yes. To a friend, I don't think so, but depends on how close you are. I would not recommend it.

[ex-roumor.livejournal.com]

yez u can to a friend. its ok.

[rqrmarine.livejournal.com]

in Russia kiss is a sign of a very intimate friendship, between men mostly unacceptable)
Though pretty common, if you address your close relatives.
"Обнимаю" is more neutral to my mind.

[upthera44.livejournal.com]

+1

Russian penpals often write "Обнимаю" to me. It's the verb 'to hug', which is of course less intimate than to kiss.

[ars-longa.livejournal.com]

I usually address that to my mother, sister, and my closest female friend. And my hubby, of course. No one else, and I wouldn't be comfortable if I tried. But then, I'm old school. :)

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

"New school" would go with some terrible "чмоки" anyway, I'm afraid :)

[oryx_and_crake]

Oh, yuck
some people also say цёмки, цёмкать, it's really horrible

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

[throws up]

[philena.livejournal.com]

Why? What's so dreadful about it? (i.e. What does it mean, where does it come from, why does it offend "old-school" sensibilities?)

[oryx_and_crake]

It means "kisses" or "kiss you". As to where does it come from, it's probably from "чмоки" ("чмок" is a Russian onomatopoeic for kissing sound) pronounced with horrible tacky girlie-girl cutesy-cute lisping.

[upthera44.livejournal.com]

haha

[sid0rina.livejournal.com]

I've never heard the words цёмки or цёмкать from my friends in Russia, but my Ukrain friend often uses this and for me this sounds unusual and, yeah, horrible. %(

[warpod.livejournal.com]

If you are straight male then it can only be addressed to female and vice versa.

[level42.livejournal.com]

that's not true.
it's perfectly acceptable for female friends to kiss each other without being lesbians. mind you , in old Russian culture it was customary for males to kiss each other on the cheek - remember Brezhnev? :-)

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Not only on the cheek. The "Russian kiss," the normal way Russian adult males greeted each other on major Church holidays only an hundred years ago or so, consisted of three strog kisses on their lips :)

[wire-shock.livejournal.com]

Brezhnev is not old Russian culture, it's Soviet culture.

[level42.livejournal.com]

I assume that at that point in time Russian culture essentialy became Soviet, or do you mean that Brezhnev himself was not Russian?

[wire-shock.livejournal.com]

Brezhnev was Russian.

The thing is, Soviet culture was not a natural development of pre-revolutional Russian culture, it actually was in conscious opposition to it.

[milene-chan.livejournal.com]

You can adress it to a very close friend, relative or boy/girlfriend.

[wire-shock.livejournal.com]

Won't do for straight males (although could do for father and son, I guess)

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

It's OK if you're very close or intimate or are relatives.
(These days) it's OK if you both are close girlfriends (not necessarily lesbians:).
It's generally unacceptable if both are men (yes, the infamous homofobia:). However, from my personal experience I can tell that my grand dad would kiss everyone in the family on the lips, including me and my dad every time after a long parting/separation. My dad has done that just a few times as I recall (once in my 20'es) for the same reason. I guess, among relatives this bears the (nowadays vanishing) meaning of caring and loving, no matter what the gender is and what fobias the society develops.
So, bear this in mind and you should be OK :)