Thread: God's Name

Interesting comment by Ramil.

I guess Misha is referring to something along the lines of this.

Originally Posted by Commandment #2 from Exodus

Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

I.e. one should NOT say "Oh my God", Jeeesus Christ!!! or anything like that.

I have noticed that Russians say "Боже мой" quite a bit, but it never sounded very bad to me. To me, that expression seemed more like "Oh dear" which is really innocent in English.
I think it's particularly older people that seem to use "Боже мой" in films. Am I right? What precisely does it mean?

More on this topic:
My Russian text book made a specific point of saying that the word "бог" should not be capitalized in Russian. (It's not explaining the reason, but I would guess that this is a post-1917 "spelling rule", or what do you think? Also, it didn't explain why the pronunciation is more like "бох", but I guess it might be old fashioned spelling. )

For info: This should be capitalized in English, although lately here in England there is a quite aggressive atheistic campaign going on (they even advertise on the buses and in the Underground!! ) They make a big point of not capitalizing the word, contrary to normal spelling rules. Personally I dislike this campaign.

Originally Posted by Hanna

More on this topic:
My Russian text book made a specific point of saying that the word "бог" should not be capitalized in Russian. (It's not explaining the reason, but I would guess that this is a post-1917 "spelling rule", or what do you think?

Yes, you are right. In modern Russian it works like in English. If you are Christian and writing about Jesus oh Jehovah you should capitalize the word Бог. And if you are mentioning some pagan god you should not.

Originally Posted by Hanna

For info: This should be capitalized in English, although lately here in England there is a quite aggressive atheistic campaign going on (they even advertise on the buses and in the Underground!! ) They make a big point of not capitalizing the word, contrary to normal spelling rules. Personally I dislike this campaign.

But in that image the word "GOD" IS capitalized, all the letters are capitalized.