IT’S A hot night in Serres, northern Greece. The bars are full of the long, lean and beautiful: I’m curious as to why so many apparent Aphrodites and Apollos are out on the streets. I’m told the town has a large sports university and it looks as though most of the basketball team are out drinking. Next to me, a group of young well-heeled Greek girls, glossy and gleaming are talking animatedly. Every other word is malaka, but patently no one is taking offence.
Anyone who was at the screening of Soul Kicking during the Cyprus Film Days will be more than familiar with this word. It more or less made up the entire script. But the English subtitles translation was as unrelenting as the most aggressive rap, with endless unrepeatable swear words – many being phrases that even hardened hacks find hard to say. So I was confused as to how this apparent swear word was obviously being used by a group of nicely brought up girls in provincial Greece. Surely they weren’t saying all those things to each other?
As we all know, obscenities depend on tone and context. Working for an American Embassy School some years ago, I was horrified on my first day to have my English sensibilities shocked by eleven-year-olds telling me that a poem “sucked”.
To my Anglo- Saxon ear, that word was as about as bad as it got. I soon realised that the picture conjured in my mind was not the same as the one in the Travis Jr’s mind and I blush now as I remember trying to explain to him why that particular phrase was unacceptable.
So, I was intrigued to know how this word “malakas” was being construed by the lovelies next to me. Like a lot of young Greeks they spoke good English. They laughed when I told them that I had seen a film set in Athens that used the word continually and that the translation was really shocking, making Reservoir Dogs sound like Enid Blyton.
Well, we use it all the time to friends, they said, but not to people we don’t like. There are phrases you can use, they aren’t nice. Basically it means mate, one told me. I asked them if their fathers minded them using it. They told me they would never say it in front of their parents, it was just used among themselves as a sort of code of acceptance. Being one of the lads, reclaiming language, asserting their independence, etc.
These girls were well-educated and middle-class. Even as they spoke to me they were using it mixed in with the English to each other to express disagreement. It was always followed by laughter. I had the feeling it was the equivalent of us using “you daft bat” teasingly.
There are whole university departments carefully studying the linguistics of changing language use and what I felt here was living proof of transforming gender roles, it has always been considered un-ladylike to swear: nice girls just don’t do it. Of course, that is rubbish; say certain words with a posh accent and they have always sounded totally acceptable. Use swear words with a teasing tone and they become loving.
It’ll be a while before I have the confidence to use the word “malaka” even though academics are saying that amongst young Greeks it is now the commonest word you will hear. The Rough Guide rightly warns that you can get it wrong and revert to its original/literal meaning of “wanker”.
I don’t think I’ll test drive it yet on a tooting taxi driver anytime soon but nevertheless, I was pleased when as I left the girls on the table said, “Good luck, angliki malaka” (English wanker) – least ways, I think they were being nice!
??
??
??
??
