Las múltiples caras del culo

DISCLAIMER: El post de hoy es fruto de uno de esos domingos primaverales en que bajo las persianas para sumergirme en un olvido procrastinador y mentalizarme para la semana siguiente.  Uno de esos domingos que no afronto con una caña en La Latina.

Mi estado mental  me ha hecho reflexionar sobre las múltiples facetas lingüísticas del culo, o mejor dicho, de “culo”. Pocas palabras hay tan polivalentes como esa en español, lo cual no extraña dado que lo escatológico suele ser un pozo desde el cual extraer abundantes giros. Ya la definición de la palabra en el DRAE resulta hilarante al decir en su primera acepción “conjunto de dos nalgas”. ¿Se imaginará alguien un culo con más de dos? 

Pero es sobre todo en las expresiones que contienen la palabra donde se explora la metáfora hasta sus límites más inesperados. Hay culos móviles: así que podemos ser en español un culo de mal asiento (culo viajero), o una persona que ninguna dificultad tiene para mover el culo (culo fitness), y tanto mover el culo a veces puede hacer que nos encontremos en el culo del mundo (culo lejano).  Algo nos puede ir de culo cuando va marcha atrás (culo reverso) o cuando va mal (culo adverso).

También existen culos más obscenos entre los cuales destaca el culo receptor por el que se da y toma en un acto sexual (culo anal, valga la redundancia) o fastidiando a alguien (culo cansino) (o siendo a pain in the arse) hasta que uno esté hasta el culo (culo superávit). Además, está el culo vulnerable que se nos queda al aire (culo ventilado y desamparado), lo cual a veces nos puede obligar a lamerle el culo a alguien (culo adulador). El culo contenedor es por donde podemos solicitar que una persona se meta algún bien indeseado. Cabe recalcar que el culo obsceno anal descrito con anterioridad se convierte a veces en lejano por ser equivalentes las expresiones a tomar por culo (culo distante-obsceno) y en el culo del mundo (distante a secas). Por fin, se dan también culos aritméticos rellenos del número 5 y un sinfín más.

Y que la guindilla sobre ese pastel fraseológico sea una de mis expresiones favoritas inglesas: I don't give a rat's arse!, con el poderoso significado de Me importa un pepino.. o un culo de rata (culo roedor). Como probablemente este artículo a la mayoría de los lectores (si es que llega a haber alguno).

How The Ukraine became Ukraine: markedness and politeness

Today I was talking about the current events in Ukraine to a group of students and each time I pronounced the name of the country I did so hesitantly, which resulted in inconsistent article use and haphazard alternation between Ukraine and the Ukraine.

One of the basic rules of English grammar states that proper names denoting countries shall be used without a preceding article. Some common exceptions to that principle are names 1) containing common nouns; 2) referring to geographical features normally used with articles (seas, mountains, rivers, deserts); 3) some of those referring to regions and 4) plural names (hence The United States, the Netherlands (just like the Highlands of Scotland), the United Kingdom, (The) Congo, The Bahamas, The Philippines, the south-east, the south, the Middle East), though it is just a strong tendency. It should also be borne in mind that singular country names in -land have no article (Holland, Iceland, etc.) but -land /ənd/ is normally unstressed there and treated phonologically more as a suffix than a proper noun.

Given the rules stated above, (the) Ukraine is special for the following reasons. 

First of all, although the exact etymology of the name of the country is uncertain, “Ukraina” is probably an illustrative region denomination meaning “borderland” and containing a common noun. (In fact, the word “kraina” in my mother language means “land” as well.) Therefore, the Ukraine would adhere to the trend stated above assuming the awareness of the original meaning of its name amongst those who dubbed the country the Ukraine. 

Secondly, the country recently changed its status from being part of the Soviet Union (the Ukrainian Soviet Republic) to becoming an independent country after centuries of being considered more a region than a country in its own right. The outcome seems to be that nowadays it is both grammatically and politically incorrect to say the Ukraine: grammatically because country names are not used with articles (unless the rules stated above are applicable, which is clearly not the case), and politically, because the country itself has preferred to drop "the" as a way of linguistically reasserting its independence in official documents, as can be seen in the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine.

Thirdly, the perceived regionness of the name Ukraine seems to be corroborated by the fact it is interpreted as a region description when used with a preposition in the Slavic languages (including Ukrainian and Polish), where different prepositions are used for regions and countries. Apparently, there is now a tendency to officially use the "country preposition" amongst the official Ukrainian bodies. In fact, even in English, the articleless version has been spreading exponentially over the past two decades as the graph below shows.

Summing up, the Ukraine, being an exception to the non-use of article with country names, may now be considered impolite in English being a marked (=less frequent/atypical/irregular) form: linguistically different from other countries yet similar to geographical features or regions. Of course, there is nothing linguistically derogatory in using articles with country names, as occurs in French (with all countries) or German (non-neuter ones) where the use of articles is unmarked (=perfectly regular) and thus causing no alarm. But markedness in the Ukrainian case seems to have been interpreted as discriminatory after the change in the country's status, which is confirmed in the following quote from a BBC article:

"The Ukraine" is incorrect both grammatically and politically, says Oksana Kyzyma of the Embassy of Ukraine in London.

"Ukraine is both the conventional short and long name of the country," she says. "This name is stated in the Ukrainian Declaration of Independence and Constitution."

Ukraine it is, then.

Read more at:

http://mentalfloss.com/article/32098/why-did-ukraine-become-just-ukraine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Ukraine