6

I would like to congratulate someone I know well for his 50th birthday.

Would the following be considered good, ok, bad or very bad?

С днем рождения, старый пердун!

yglodt
  • 169
  • 4
  • 1
    Thanks for all the answers. Difficult to say which one I should consider "the" answer since they all share some truth. To honor that I'll upvote all and mark none as answer. – yglodt Oct 09 '16 at 21:12
  • "Алкаш" уж лучше тогда. :-O – bipll Feb 09 '17 at 21:37
  • Do not say like that if you met a person for the first time; otherwise, you will get punched or slapped on your face:) – sweetgirl16 Feb 22 '17 at 01:59
  • 1
    Be careful with this one. You need to know a person very well and have a really close relationship with him to call him "пердун" otherwise your chances of getting a smack in a face are very high. Reminds me of a Grand Torino movie scene where Walt talks to his barber friend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtSJOUOEJ8o – Konstantin Gerasimov Feb 23 '17 at 11:16

5 Answers5

12

Depends on the terms you're on with this person, because this is quite offensive, i mean it could be taken as a friendly banter by a good friend and as an insult by a stranger.

I think it's as strong as its English equivalent "Happy Birthday, old fart!"

shabunc
  • 37,983
  • 5
  • 90
  • 152
Баян Купи-ка
  • 19,674
  • 1
  • 24
  • 47
  • 3
    More offensive actually. The English variant isn't polite, but it's still much softer than the Russian one. – Kaworu Oct 20 '16 at 07:45
9

Don't! You will definitely spoil the celebration. Or at least remind that person of his age. Do you know the meaning of the last word? I bet you don't. Look it up in your dictionary.

We don't capitalize letters in С днём рождения!

V.V.
  • 21,696
  • 1
  • 31
  • 61
  • Why so aggressive? So many !!!!! – VCH250 Feb 10 '17 at 19:27
  • Being expressive is not aggressive (a poem, lol, btw.there's only one! ) – V.V. Feb 10 '17 at 19:37
  • 1
    Actually using slang expressions is not encouraged for language learners. Imagine a person which hardly speaks English, but attempting to use slang words. Most of the time you'll wonder "maybe he used the wrong word to express something different?". – Artemix Feb 22 '17 at 11:20
8

Depends on the person's sensitivity and sense of humour really. If in doubt, don't.

Anyway, you might find this useful: старый пердун has a Soviet-era slang form, старпёр (parodying the Communist knack for acronymising everything), which comes across as less risqué and which should be familiar enough to a person of that age.

Nikolay Ershov
  • 19,285
  • 2
  • 40
  • 80
2

Using your scale it's "bad". Definitely, it's not that "very bad", but still "bad" enough.

Matt
  • 15,277
  • 1
  • 21
  • 40
2

It really depends on the level of your relationship with the person in question. Quite acceptable actually between very close friends, in my circle at least.

Alex
  • 401
  • 2
  • 4