... in response to repetitively seeing "generous"..., posted by Curious on Sep 25, 2005There are quite a few words mis-used by the FSU gals. But it is not their fault, it is the fault of the Russian-English translation dictionaries, etc.
Most common is the word greedy. To westerners, greedy means that you take a lot.
But to FSU gals, greedy means a person who doesn't give much.
The word they should be using is stingy.
So to FSU women, generous is the opposite of their concept of 'greedy.' So, to them, a generous person is not greedy and will give them a lot in terms of things having monetary value. But, of course, this covers a lot of territory from the very innocent wish to have a man who can provide the basic necessities of life on the one hand, all the way to the wish to have a rich man who can indulge all their fantasies. So we really don't know what they want when they specify generous.
Another word that is mis-used is clever.
In the west, clever often refers to a person who is fairly bright, but who uses his/her talents in 'not so honest' ways to make money, etc. Cunning and clever, etc.
The better translation would be for them to use the word 'intelligent' rather than clever.
However, in the FSU thinking, 'intelligent' covers three concepts: 1) clever (or our smart), 2) educated, 3) cultured.
So it is interesting that FSU women mostly specify they want clever (smart) but rarely specify the educated and cultured part.
Since you cannot ever re-educate all of the women you might write to concerning these slightly 'mis-used' words, the next best thing is to understand what they mean as I have written above.
