What words, phrases or signs do you use and how do you get your partner’s attention?
The last time we were in Paris my wife and I came down with a stomach bug that gave us explosive diarrhea. Now, rather than say we have diarrhea and need to rush home we say we’re “feeling rather Parisian”.
Russians used to go to the sea through Latvia, during the Czarist times. They often got sea sick. A case of any kind of gastric distress became a “trip to Riga.” (I learned this in a Russian language class. It may not be true, but I intend to believe it, regardless if it’s actual truth. Please correct me if I’m wrong. I’d like to know if I’m being unreasonable. It’s a sign of strength of character )
Native russian speaker from Riga here, never heard this expression in my life.
Well obviously it doesn’t mean that in Riga. You have to go farther inland to hear it.
In Russian “to throw up” sounds like "rygat’ ". So the story and the usage looks plausible (especially for some of Sant Petersburg folks).
It’s also possible it’s a hopelessly dated and archaic idiom that no modern speaker would recognize but was still fairly popular when that language course was first written, or something. It only takes a decade or two for a phrase to disappear from common usage sometimes.
Or maybe (since it references “czarist times” the phrase was already crazy dated and old but the Russian-speaking Englishman who wrote the course saw the phrase somewhere, thought it was funny, and so put it in. Wouldn’t put that past this world of ours either.
By the way, the Riga sounds like “Ryga” in Belarusian. So this idiom should not have been outdated. Just a bit artificial. But to be artificial is okay if you want to avoid direct naming of unpleasant things. I believe that “travel to Riga”=“poyekhal rygat’”=“go puke” is a meme for a lot of native Russians around Saint Petersburg.
It’s totally ok that some teacher include that meme into their course. This is totally recognizable for a native speaker (like for me in my late thirties).You will be really surprised how many local silly names exist for menstruation. “Red day of the calendar” - allusion on communist holidays. “Red army arrival day” - no explanation is needed. “Relatives from Krasnodar just come” - Krasnodar is literally “Red Gift”, so it’s obvious again. “The critical days”, “these days of the calendar”… I’ve heard all these variants in the wild by my own ears.
P.S accidentally found an independent confirmation regarding Riga https://translate.google.com/?sl=auto&tl=en&text=https%3A%2F%2Fcyberleninka.ru%2Farticle%2Fn%2Fbolezni-i-ih-frazeologicheskie-evfemisticheskie-nominatsii-v-russkom-angliyskom-nemetskom-frantsuzskom-yazykah &op=translate
Oh I wasn’t by any means intending to cast shade. I was just speculating on possibilities, from the phrase being more popular inland to the phrase being unheard-of for various reasons.
I don’t speak Russian and have never been closer to Russia than Prijedor or Zagreb, so I am by no means an authority and I’m not trying to contradict anyone.
If I tell my partner that something drains the color out of a room, she knows that whomever I’m talking to is a bigot/phobe and we leave. More often than not though, she’ll ask me who it is and tell them off.
This is amazing, I love it.
Well, sometimes she is a bit overprotective, once she punched someone who wasn’t respecting my pronouns LOL.
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My wife knows that if I say “Honey, I need to do that thing with my butt” she knows I have to poop, with everyone else listening blissfully unaware.
That sounds so much worse than just saying you need to poop.
That’s pretty slick, might have to steal it
Ok but don’t use it in Canada I can’t risk people learning what it means around here
They know.
Korean
We never use each other’s first names in normal conversation. If one of us were to address the other with our actual name it would immediately set off an internal alarm.
None. My wife doesn’t know about tact, or the polite white lie or anything like that. She doesn’t have time for that bullshit. It’s one of her endearing qualities.
Pig-Latin but very fast. Decades of practice.
Nice try.
A “look” is usually enough to let each other know something is up.
We haven’t really figured out how to communicate what that “something” is though and always end up more confused than informed.Most people around us usually get it so isn’t really a “secret” language, but my wife and I are big Simpsons fans so we talk in quotes all the time.
One that gets a lot of play is “I’m going… to… stalk… Lenny and Carl” for when we’re going somewhere but really sure what we’re going to do
During the pandemic, my wife and I became more expressive with our eyes, because of our masks.
If I notice her going neutral face with her eyes, I know she’s about to get upset. Where if my eyebrows pretty clearly tell my mood to her.
Apparently my eyes go soft when I’m being silly. I enjoyed hearing it but I have no idea what it means
Been told almost verbatim the same thing, no idea what it means either. Friend in question said they knew me for years before they were able to notice it.
That’s interesting! Glad someone can share my confusion hahah
when one of us says something to someone else (usually our kids) that is going to screw both of us over the other says it “shut up, net face”
What does it mean?
I can’t believe I didn’t get a Simpsons reference. Shame on me.
Instead of spelling it out or code, my wife and I will use increasingly obscure synonyms to hide our conversations from the kids.
They figured out “frozen confection” meant ice cream, so I need a new one.
I do this as well. I can’t say I’ve kept a lot of secrets, but at least the kids have a large vocabulary.
This is how we started too, but as our kid gets older it just all becomes part of his vocabulary. He already has a really peculiar vocabulary to begin with so add our code words to it and it’s just… very interesting.
Hypercooled dairy sugar blend
Lacto-saccharine sounds better
Subzero dairy
‘ice cold milk.’ Could be talking about a glass of dairy, or a delightful dessert.
Chilly Cattle?
“Paying bills” == having sex
For us, it’s “Paying bills” == “Paying bills”…
So once a month?
Uh, different bills have different due dates, yeah that’s it
Logic checks out.
Movie quotes. It’s amazing how many questioning looks we get from other people when quoting movies to each other.
Get in there, you big furry oaf; I don’t car what you smell!
Who’s “Scruffy-lookin”?!
