Love the blue eye shadow, mr. putin

Last edited Sat Aug 24, 2013, 11:44 AM - Edit history (1)

True story. Every time I try to talk to a Frenchman about Vladimir Putin, and his crackdown on gay and trans people, I keep inadvertently referring to him as “Vladimir Whore.”

It’s not intentional, though I enjoy the irony of it.

You see, in French, they spell and pronounce Putin’s name “Poutine.” Like “routine,” but with a P.

But when you try to frenchify the American pronunciation of Putin (poo-tin), which is a natural thing for anglophones to do when speaking the language, we drop the “in” and making it a nasal sound like the “o” in “on.” So it comes out “poo-TO,” which means “whore.”

It can also mean “f*ck” and lots of other nasty things.

http://americablog.com/2013/08/funny-thing-putin-means-whore-french.html