CHASTITY OF LANGUAGE

By Lyubov Tsarevskaya

It turns out that qualities like shyness and chastity that are characteristic of some people can also apply to a language. And Russian is one such language.

“There are no words in the pure form of the Russian language — other than medical terms — that describe physical intimacy between a man and a woman,” says Vasiliy Irzabekov, author of a popular book “The Mystery of the Russian Word”. “It is unfortunate that young people reduce the dizzying range of emotions and feelings associated with love to a notion of “making love”. Come to think of it, this non-Russian expression so common among younger people doesn’t make sense. Love is a feeling. How can one possibly engage in a feeling? One can feel love, be engrossed in a feeling of love… or in other feelings. Can one make pity or disappointment or envy?”

“As a matter of fact,” Irzabekov goes on to say, “the Bible that contains no bigotry describes romantic intimacy in a very dignified way, “he got to know his wife… or he has knowledge of his wife”. The Russian word for a bride is “Ne-vesta” which literally means “unknown, unfamiliar”. The groom, her husband-to-be doesn’t know her yet.

Like all other religions that have preserved the idea of sanctity, Christianity speaks out against so-called “sexual liberty”. There is a beautiful Russian word tselomudrie which literally means “wholeness and wisdom” and expresses one’s spiritual and moral dignity. Not only does it imply a physical innocence of the body, but also one’s wholeness and non-duality in terms of the person’s attitude toward his or her moral imperative, honour, law, and family.

It is very fortunate that at the beginning of the 1941-1945 War against Nazi Germany the moral standards of the Soviet people were high. That was one of the key factors of our victory. One noteworthy fact: German medical doctors who examined Russian teenage girls who were brought to Germany from Nazi-occupied territories for forced labour, commented, “This country is impossible to defeat: Their girls are all virgins.”

It is unfortunate that in this world of sexual liberty and debauchery the concept of chastity is not very popular. In the meantime, history knows instances when sexual licentiousness led to ruination and death of entire peoples.

The Golden Horde that lasted over two centuries left a horrible legacy in the consciousness of Russians and in their language as well. “Mat” or obscene and curse words as well as “koshchunstvo” or desecration of sacred symbols, which is a derivation of “koschun”, a tatar punitive corps who burned cities and libraries and drove thousands of people to be sold as slaves at the slave markets of Asia and Europe. He who curses with “mat”, or uses obscenities, desecrates the name of a mother or mat’ in Russian, defiles the sacred notion of motherhood and insults the Mother of God. “The ground is burning underneath him and the Blessed Virgin is praying for him.”
Linguists maintain that about 80% of words in the Russian language have Church Slavonic roots.
NE-besa (or “heaven”) literally means “no demons”.
Prechistaya, Preneporochnaya, Prisnodeva are all descriptions of the Mother of God — All pure, immaculate, chaste, Virgin.
Purity is the essence and the foundation of Russian spirituality. Chastity — in the collective consciousness of Russians — is an eternal virtue, just like motherhood…

Source:The Voice of Russia