# What nationality do you scare your children with?



## Basaloe

I dont know if this is common all over the world, but in Sweden we have expressiond which says "The russian comes" or "Watch out for the russian". This is because Russia was very close to invade Sweden a couple of decades ago but still people are somewhat "afraid" of "the russian". Do you have similar things in your culture?


----------



## Mei

Hi there,

My parents used to talk about someone called "Coco"... "if you're not a good girl Coco will come and will eat you" but I wasn't scared because there was a character in the Sesam Street show called "Coco" so I was happy he would come to visit me, hehe  

I heard that, I don't remeber where (maybe Sicily), parents used to say to children something like "if you are not good the Almogavars will come and they will eat you" and... well I would be sooo scared with the Almogavars in my room!!! 

See you around!

Mei


----------



## Musical Chairs

In Japan, people "should not go to the beach alone (especially at night) or else the North Koreans might kidnap you." Which isn't such a crazy thing to say because it has actually happened.

Edit: No such thing happening in the US, at least nothing widespread.


----------



## sokol

In Austria, there surely exist lots of prejudices against certain nations (as do virtually everywhere, I'd say), but rarely children are scared with them.


There is only one remarkable exception, and I'll put a warning symbol before it as this will be considered as politically incorrect: sometimes they are told to beware of  gypsies.
This isn't typical, though; more usual would be to scare them off with the 'black man' _(der schwarze Mann) _which, however, is _not _meant ethnically but may probably refer to the chimney sweep, or to bearded men (in generall - I've seen more than once children scared of by men just because, it seemed, of their beard), or even to the black one of the Three Kings paying a visist to Jesus in his crib (I'm not sure anymore if it's Caspar or Melchior or Balthasar: they go from house to house between New Year and 6th of january, and the black one has a black painted face which, sometimes, will scare little children).
(So probably meant ethnically somehow?)

Cheers, Herman


----------



## Sepia

None, except maybe the Klingons.

I mean we grew up with being scared of the "Russians" and thinking of the "Americans" as the good guys. Things have changed - we have Russian friends and American friends and both nations have presidents that have attacked democracy several ways. What good should it do teach children to generalize some other nation as enemies (except the Klingons of course)? 

Noone should try do that.


----------



## alexacohen

I have never heard of anything similar here in Spain.


----------



## panjabigator

alexacohen said:


> I have never heard of anything similar here in Spain.



Same here.  My parents never tried to scare me.


----------



## Paulfromitaly

I guess that in Italy the bogey man still goes like hot cakes and he's usually not from a specific country.
However we translate bogey man as "uomo nero" (black man) in Italian, therefore some racist people might suggest that the "uomo nero" comes from Africa.


----------



## DiabloScott

panjabigator said:


> Same here. My parents never tried to scare me.


 
Never been threatened with Los Moros taking you away?  Maybe your parents had.



Paulfromitaly said:


> I guess that in Italy the bogey man still goes like hot cakes and he's usually not from a specific country.
> However we translate bogey man as "uomo nero" (black man) in Italian, therefore some racist people might suggest that the "uomo nero" comes from Africa.


 
"Mommy, the Turks are coming to get me"... no?

Could be my Spanish and Italian friends are unique.  I think Basaloe has a point.


----------



## panjabigator

DiabloScott said:


> Never been threatened with Los Moros taking you away?  Maybe your parents had.



Perhaps back in India they may have made threats about Muslims taking them away, but the only tradition I'm aware of is the "Boogy man."  But in the "child speak" of my house, "boogy" meant "mouth" (as childish as the word "tummy"), so I had nothing to fear but fear itself.


----------



## Joca

Basaloe said:


> I dont know if this is common all over the world, but in Sweden we have expressiond which says "The russian comes" or "Watch out for the russian". This is because Russia was very close to invade Sweden a couple of decades ago but still people are somewhat "afraid" of "the russian". Do you have similar things in your culture?


 
As far as I can remember, children in Brazil were not scared with people from other nationalities, but usually with mythological beings, among which the most common was the "bicho-papão", a man-animal who would eat the child if she were naughty or disobedient. Perhaps in some special cases, gypsies were mentioned or even the "preto velho" (the old slave). We have never used these things with our kids, but maybe some parents keep doing these things, still falling back on the bicho-papão.


----------



## Trisia

There is already another thread dealing with things/creatures that spook children at night:
Bogeyman and other fictional characters to scare children

So back to the topic... 

Over here children used to be told that gipsies would come and get them if they misbehaved.

There's another things parents say, when their children eat too fast or they're rushing in someplace: "Easy does it, the Turks aren't coming." (not a nice thing to say, I know, but it made sense years and years ago)


----------



## Einstein

I may be wrong, but I believe that in Italy they talk about the Turks because at one time there were Turkish pirates in the Mediterranean.


----------



## Paulfromitaly

Einstein said:


> I may be wrong, but I believe that in Italy they talk about the Turks because at one time there were Turkish pirates in the Mediterranean.



Actually we sometimes say "mamma li Turchi!", but never to our weans..


----------



## alexacohen

DiabloScott said:


> Never been threatened with Los Moros taking you away? Maybe your parents had.


Neither I, nor my parents were ever threatened with "the Moors" taking children away. 
We live in a city which was Moorish for over 800 years. But people are proud of their Moorish heritage, not scared by it.
Perhaps what you say is true somewhere else.

NOTE: I'm not sure how to translate "moro" o "morisco" into English. The Spanish Muslims were called so, and it is not a demeaning word.


----------



## Stiannu

Paulfromitaly said:


> Actually we sometimes say "mamma li Turchi!", but never to our weans..


 
We also say that "_cose turche_", literally "Turkish things" or "Turkish stuff", have happened, meaning horrible and scary events.


----------



## anthodocheio

sokol said:


> In Austria, there surely exist lots of prejudices against certain nations (as do virtually everywhere, I'd say), but rarely children are scared with them.
> 
> 
> There is only one remarkable exception, and I'll put a warning symbol before it as this will be considered as politically incorrect: sometimes they are told to beware of  gypsies.


 
The same thing happens in Greece, as far as I am concerned.. 
I think, that what they used to say to children was “The gypsy will take you away and …sell you!”



Trisia said:


> Over here children used to be told that gipsies would come and get them if they misbehaved.
> 
> There's another things parents say, when their children eat too fast or they're rushing in someplace: "Easy does it, the Turks aren't coming." (not a nice thing to say, I know, but it made sense years and years ago)


 

That reminds me of the big bad wolf…


----------



## Kangy

In Argentina it's very common to make fun of people from Galicia (Spain).
Jokes about _gallegos_ are very usual here.

But scaring children with certain nations, nope...


----------



## sokol

Paulfromitaly said:


> I guess that in Italy the bogey man still goes like hot cakes and he's usually not from a specific country.
> However we translate bogey man as "uomo nero" (black man) in Italian, therefore some racist people might suggest that the "uomo nero" comes from Africa.



Your 'uomo nero' seems to be the exact same person as our 'schwarzer Mann'. 

Meaning - it's more a figure like the bogey man and most likely not ment racial, neither in Italy nor in Austria. As our two countries are culturally linked through long tradition, it may be that both our 'black mans' stem from the same source, whatever that one may be.


----------



## mirx

My mom used to scare me all the time saying that the "los húngaros" were going to take me away. 

As I grew up I learned that she actually meant, gypsies. And that Hungarians was just a word she sometimes used instead of gypsies. I don't think she ever thought she was making racist remarks against a whole country. As far as we were concerned the Hungarians were also Mexicans except that they lived in groups and travelled all the time.


----------



## Paulfromitaly

sokol said:


> Your 'uomo nero' seems to be the exact same person as our 'schwarzer Mann'.
> 
> Meaning - it's more a figure like the bogey man and most likely not ment racial, neither in Italy nor in Austria. As our two countries are culturally linked through long tradition, it may be that both our 'black mans' stem from the same source, whatever that one may be.



Yes, especially here in Northern Italy the Austro-Hungarian Empire had a strong influence on our culture and I'm quite sure the origin of "uomo nero" and "schwarzer Mann" are the same.
Needless to say that it used to have no racial meaning whatsoever, bearing in mind that children couldn't be scared by someone they had never seen, that is a black person (my grandparents told me that the first black guys they had ever seen were American soldiers, during the Second World War).


----------



## Outsider

I can't remember ever being frightened with people of a particular nationality. I'm curious to know what other Porutuguese users have to say...


----------



## SaveTheManatees

I have heard parents tell their kids to watch out for "the terrorists", meaning Arabs/Muslims. Most people aren't that blatantly racist, though.


----------



## samanthalee

My mother don't believe in using bogeyman. But my friends' parents would scare them with "if you are naughty, the Sikh will come and get you". I don't think it is a racist remark because we actually respect the Sikh soldiers a lot. The Sikh Regiment was the most ferocious unit in the British India Army and had done a lot in protecting my country during WW2. But they do look fierce and forbidding. 

It has been 60 years since WW2, not many remember the might of the Sikh Regiment. So the use of Sikh as a bogeyman has waned somewhat in Singapore.


----------



## theo1006

Reading this thread, evidently it is not very often that children are being scared with nationalities, more often with strange-looking people and other races.

Unlike the Santaclaus of the US, the Santaclaus of Netherlands' folklore is a white bishop from Spain. While he rewards good children with presents, his servant Black Peter (portrayed as an ethnic African in 16th century Spanish attire) puts naughty children in his bag and carries them with him to Spain.
Around December 5th dressed-up Santaclaus and Black Peter make their rounds among Dutch families. Black Peter usually is a white teenager, whose face has been blackened with charcoal.
I once attended a family gathering in Surabaya, Indonesia, where they had adopted the Dutch custom. However, Black Peter was an Indonesian boy in his own skin, whereas the face of Santaclaus had been whitened with powder.

The repertoire of the late folk singer Victor Jara of Chili contains a lullaby _Duerme duerme negrito, _(Sleep little black boy) with has the lines: 
_Y si negro no se duerme
viene el diablo blanco,
y zap!  les come los patitas._
(If the black boy does not sleep,
the white devil will come,
and _zap!_ eat his little legs.)

So the scaring of children with the opposite skin color goes both ways.


----------



## Stiannu

theo1006 said:


> The repertoire of the late folk singer Victor Jara of Chili contains a lullaby _Duerme duerme negrito, _(Sleep little black boy) with has the lines:
> _Y si negro no se duerme_
> _viene el diablo blanco,_
> _y zap! les come los patitas._
> (If the black boy does not sleep,
> the white devil will come,
> and _zap!_ eat his little legs.)
> 
> So the scaring of children with the opposite skin color goes both ways.


 
Lovely song.
But maybe Victor Jara was reversing the habit on purpose, to surprise his audience and show the absurdity (or relativity) of skin-based prejudices. 
Black users (especially from South America?) could confirm or not.


----------



## Skybleak

Basaloe said:


> I dont know if this is common all over the world, but in Sweden we have expressiond which says "The russian comes" or "Watch out for the russian". This is because Russia was very close to invade Sweden a couple of decades ago but still people are somewhat "afraid" of "the russian". Do you have similar things in your culture?



Heh, it looks like you don't have the utmost confidence in Finland being able to block the Russians before they reach you... 

I can't remember similar scare tactics in Finnish, but this did remind me of some excellent song lyrics: the song _Eurooppa_ by _YUP_.

It's basically about a father scaring his little boy with "the Europeans". In Europe (across the great ocean) everything is horrible, the Europeans are horrible and a judge might convict someone to "six years of Europe". If you don't respect others and go to bed in time, the "bad uncles" and "weird aunties" will come and take you to Europe. Et cetera.


----------



## Suane

In Slovakia, parents sometimes say to their children (but it rarer nowadays) that they will give/sell them to Gypsies (but this is maybe defined more as an ethnicity than nationality, I don't know).


----------



## Chazzwozzer

anthodocheio said:


> The same thing happens in Greece, as far as I am concerned..
> I think, that what they used to say to children was “The gypsy will take you away and …sell you!”


They say it here in Turkey, too. If a mother were angry at a kid, for example, she might also say something like "I bought you from Gypsies, anyway!"


----------



## alexacohen

> Originally Posted by *anthodocheio*
> I think, that what they used to say to children was “The gypsy will take you away and …sell you!”


I have just remembered that "if you don't behave the gypsies will kidnap you" was said in Galicia (Northwest Spain) too. I have to assume this was said in places where gypsies wandered through, but not stayed.
 Because it was not said in the place where I grew up (Southeast Spain). Gypsies in my hometown are proud of their culture but are not "wandering" gypsies. No parent would dare threaten their kids with such a phrase. Mr. Gypsy's family has owned the best candy shop in town for over two centuries.
 Every kid threatened with the "kidnapping" would have been delighted and not scared. So maybe the silly phrase is used only locally.


----------



## Nanon

theo1006 said:


> The repertoire of the late folk singer Victor Jara of Chile contains a lullaby _Duerme duerme negrito (...)_



Sorry, but the quote originally comes from the repertoire of the late Argentinian folk singer Atahualpa Yupanqui. It is not the original, thus not the only existing, version. If I am not wrong Víctor Jara, but also many others (Daniel Viglietti, Mercedes Sosa...) sang a rather similar version. The words to Atahualpa Yupanqui's version of the lullaby are here.

However black or Indian babies are not always scared with "white devils". See here the words to the (delightful) lullaby "Drume Negrita" sung by Bola de Nieve (I chose this link because of the Spanish - English text).


----------



## ayupshiplad

sokol said:


> or to bearded men (in generall - I've seen more than once children scared of by men just because, it seemed, of their beard)


 
Yes! As a child I was always terrified of bearded men, even running away from bearded uncles because of some immense fear I had of them, which was instilled by my parents for some reason...I really wonder where this fear of bearded men comes from!


----------



## sokol

ayupshiplad said:


> Yes! As a child I was always terrified of bearded men, even running away from bearded uncles because of some immense fear I had of them, which was instilled by my parents for some reason...I really wonder where this fear of bearded men comes from!



Highwaymen do have beards - at least in children's books here in Austria.
All the evil guys in films do have beards.
(Well, not all of them, true. But the _really _evil ones do have ...)
Famous pirate Blackbeard, of course, is bearded, too.

Might be a constant in culture, fear of bearded ones.


----------



## Fleurs263

My parents didn't need to scare me with the threat of someone from a different country; they did the job well enough themselves.


----------



## samanthalee

ayupshiplad said:


> Obviously that doesn't work in multicultural cities etc, but not everyone has that much exposure to foreigners I suppose!



Actually it does work in multicultural cities, as long as the "bogeyman" is of a minority group.  The example of Sikh-in-Singapore is evidence (or _was_ evidence, since parents nowadays don't scare their children with Sikhs anymore).


----------



## LaReinita

My parents never used any specific nationality to scare us.  My parents never said this to us, but I've heard this before  "You better behave yourself or we'll send you off to the circus" . .  something like that.  That seems scarier to me than any one nationality of people . . . LOL . . (I hate clowns!)


----------



## panjabigator

Actually, now that I think about it my parents _did_ make idle threats about shipping us off to India if we didn't shape up, but I mostly wanted that (and they're too nice to actually do that).  I believe other Indians I know also had the same thread.  Conversations went like this: "You think you have everything made for you, huh?  I'll send you back to India, so you can appreciate bleah bleah bleah."

So to generalize, I was scared by my own nationality!


----------



## bentleywg

DiabloScott said:


> Never been threatened with Los Moros taking you away?  Maybe your parents had.



I don't remember any adult expressions about Moros when I was growing up in Peru in the 60's and 70's, but us kids did have a non-threatening one. Whenever we were up to something and one of the kids was assigned to be the lookout, his instructions were to be sure that there were no "moros en la costa" (Moors on the coast). I didn't realize the historical significance of this till I was grown up.


----------



## HUMBERT0

bentleywg said:


> I don't remember any adult expressions about Moros when I was growing up in Peru in the 60's and 70's, but us kids did have a non-threatening one. Whenever we were up to something and one of the kids was assigned to be the lookout, his instructions were to be sure that there were no "moros en la costa" (Moors on the coast). I didn't realize the historical significance of this till I was grown up.


 Same here in Mexico, we also had to be on the lookout for Moors on the coast “cuida que no haya moros en la costa”, Spanish colonizers must have been weary of them, knowledge that the last of the Moors had just been pushed back across the sea to north Africa, was probably still on their minds when they sailed to the new world.


----------



## Chtipays

mirx said:


> My mom used to scare me all the time saying that the "los húngaros" were going to take me away.
> 
> As I grew up I learned that she actually meant, gypsies. And that Hungarians was just a word she sometimes used instead of gypsies. I don't think she ever thought she was making racist remarks against a whole country. As far as we were concerned the Hungarians were also Mexicans except that they lived in groups and travelled all the time.




That is funny (about the Mexicans) but in Mexico is the same about the Hungarians, at least in my mother's town in the mountains of Veracruz. 
So, when I went to Hungary, I sent a postcard to my mom telling her that I could not find any Mexican children yet, but that I was still looking.


----------



## nobbs

I don't think that such threats are common nowadays in France. Maybe "je_ vais te vendre à des Gitans!_", but have never heard it.

One remark, though: "_Sois sage ou l'ogre va venir te chercher!_" (be quiet or the ogre will take you away): I think I heard that the word "_ogre_" comes from "_ougre_" or "_hongre_" -> "_Hongrois_", Hungarian.

mirx' mom was right, then.


----------



## badgrammar

Funny, panj, about the threat of shipping you off to India!  The only time we make any similar comments to out children, in jest of course, is I saying stuff like "I bet I could find you work weaving carpets/making bricks in India"...  which we say because once the whole family was watching a documentary about child labor and saw children doing that - 14 hours a day!

Otherwise, my parents would occasionally threaten to "Sell us to the gypsies" (the word gypsy just meant to me a lady in pretty clothes who belly-danced and lived in a cool caravan.  Dad would occasionally say "The commies are coming", but really more just for the fun of it, not as an actual threat.


----------



## patman0623

In the US, we were traditionally most scared of the Russians, though it was far enough back that I barely remember it. Today, our national bogeymen would be Islamic terrorists.

As for Gypsies, there such never were very many of them in the US, so we haven't worried about them much (though my grandfather had a horror story of a band moving through a section of New York City in the 30's).


----------



## Cath.S.

My mother used to warn me about "les Romanichels" (=gypsies) stealing little kids, and the boogeyman, but I never believed in the latter and felt rather attracted to the former's lifestyle. My companion, who was born in the early 1950s; used to hear threats about the Germans - I suppose that didn't scare him much since he became a German translator.


----------



## Mr Punch

Paulfromitaly said:


> Yes, especially here in Northern Italy the Austro-Hungarian Empire had a strong influence on our culture and I'm quite sure the origin of "uomo nero" and "schwarzer Mann" are the same.
> Needless to say that it used to have no racial meaning whatsoever, bearing in mind that children couldn't be scared by someone they had never seen, that is a black person (my grandparents told me that the first black guys they had ever seen were American soldiers, during the Second World War).


It's nice to know that your cultures are enlightened enough nowadays to not consider this as a racist slight, but with respect, this post is not logical at all! 

1) Children are often scared by things they've never seen! How many children do you think have seen trolls or even gypsies?!  

2) Furthermore I think it's highly likely given early European explorers' comments about Africans having heads in their chests and eating other people and being 8 feet tall etc etc that both of these expressions (along with many other cultural steretypical figures: Black Peter, the Moor in Morris Dancing etc) used to refer specifically to Africans/darker skinned races. This is directly relevant to the way the language has grown up and culturally pertinent too! 

A lot of language has grown up along racist/culturally insensitive lines without modern speakers necessarily being aware. E.g. the expression 'beyond the Pale' meaning outlandish (itself a xenophobic cultural distinction!) or barbaric ('bearded'?!   )  or just beyond cultural acceptability has two common etymologies, both of which refer to racial stereotypes. One is the Pale being the boundary of civilized (read: sympathetic to the English!) Ireland, and one is the Pale refering to Poland (beyond which there were presumably very bad people). Of course nowadays, like you, we just use it as an expression, but I think we should be aware of these expressions' cultural background.



HUMBERT0 said:


> Same here in Mexico, we also had to be on the lookout for Moors on the coast “cuida que no haya moros en la costa”, Spanish colonizers must have been weary of them, knowledge that the last of the Moors had just been pushed back across the sea to north Africa, was probably still on their minds when they sailed to the new world.


Interesting. So in Peru and Mexico the threat of the Moors is still used (or was until relatively recently) but in Spain most of the people here say it isn't. Maybe it fell out of use for reasons of early PCness or maybe because of the long history of having lived so closely with the Moors in some areas.

Incidentally, my Catalonian friend said that the people in northern Spain often use the Catalonians as a threat, but I don't know if that was just his sense of humour!

In the UK, I know that a lot of people used to be threatened with the gypsies, though I never was.


----------



## Stiannu

Mr Punch said:


> It's nice to know that your cultures are enlightened enough nowadays to not consider this as a racist slight, but with respect, this post is not logical at all!
> 
> 1) Children are often scared by things they've never seen! How many children do you think have seen trolls or even gypsies?!
> 
> 2) Furthermore I think it's highly likely given early European explorers' comments about Africans having heads in their chests and eating other people and being 8 feet tall etc etc that both of these expressions (along with many other cultural steretypical figures: Black Peter, the Moor in Morris Dancing etc) used to refer specifically to Africans/darker skinned races. This is directly relevant to the way the language has grown up and culturally pertinent too!
> 
> A lot of language has grown up along racist/culturally insensitive lines without modern speakers necessarily being aware. E.g. the expression 'beyond the Pale' meaning outlandish (itself a xenophobic cultural distinction!) or barbaric ('bearded'?!   ) or just beyond cultural acceptability has two common etymologies, both of which refer to racial stereotypes. One is the Pale being the boundary of civilized (read: sympathetic to the English!) Ireland, and one is the Pale refering to Poland (beyond which there were presumably very bad people). Of course nowadays, like you, we just use it as an expression, but I think we should be aware of these expressions' cultural background.


 
Well, Paulfromitaly has a point in that the word anciently used for black-skinned men was _negro/i, _so the expression _uomo nero_ didn't immediately refer to African men, but to a more general and imaginary man associated with the colour black (which is the colour of the night, fear, death, etc.). 
Of course, if you identify the fear for the foreigners and the unknown as forms of racist prejudices, in its own way the _uomo nero_ is an expression of proto-racism. But certainly not in the same way that contemporary racism and xenophobia are.


----------



## Mr Punch

Stiannu said:


> Well, Paulfromitaly has a point in that the word anciently used for black-skinned men was _negro/i, _so the expression _uomo nero_ didn't immediately refer to African men, but to a more general and imaginary man associated with the colour black (which is the colour of the night, fear, death, etc.).


Yes, I know the words are actually different. In English we have a more subtle distinction. We have _negro_ and its historical implications, and then we have _blacks_. I would hold that the use of _blacks_ nowadays is not so common and certainly a little racist in tone, although it can be acceptable in a conversation as a shortened form of _black people_. This distinction may be hard to spot but nevertheless exists.



> Of course, if you identify the fear for the foreigners and the unknown as forms of racist prejudices, in its own way the _uomo nero_ is an expression of proto-racism. But certainly not in the same way that contemporary racism and xenophobia are.


In the bad old days going back to Medieval players, the old depictions of black people were _really_ black: hence my reference earlier to Black Peter, and the Black-a-Moor who  if I remember correctly was in the English translation of Strewelpeter (sp? Straw Peter...?) which although not used that way in my day was definitely one of the scarier impressions to be left on me. There is no doubt that this Black-a-Moor character was used to scare children for centuries in the UK in the same way as the Moors had been in some parts of Spain. It's understandable of course: in reality invasion by the Moors in the days when atrocities committed by both sides were particularly horrific in the popular imagination and to a large extent in reality, and the Moorish traditions in victory were largely unknown, was a very real fear.

So I'm not saying that xenophobia (in its literal sense) and racism are the same, but I am saying that of course one begets the other. This is clearly seen in the progression of our language over the ages: there is no distinction between reality and fantasy. A black man was really considered pitch black and this in turn was associated with dirt and expressions of evil. Although it was never tolerated in my family, when I was a kid it was common to assume black people were dirty (early '70s) and it's a slur that you still hear nowadays.

It was mixed even more into the language with expressions like _jigaboo_, equivalent to _nigger_ but with even more of a use as cognate with _bogeyman_ through _bugaboo_.

Mods: personally I think that although it's more serious in tone than the original poster intended, the development of racist language over the years is directly relevant to the subject of what nationalities we use to scare our children, so I'd appreciate it if this thread wasn't split.


----------



## cherine

Mr Punch said:


> Mods: personally I think that although it's more serious in tone than the original poster intended, the development of racist language over the years is directly relevant to the subject of what nationalities we use to scare our children, so I'd appreciate it if this thread wasn't split.


*Actually the development of racist language is off-topic, so I hope this discussion ends here. If you're interested in discussing such a language, please contact the moderator of the Etymology and History of Languages forum, maybe we can have an interesting linguistic discussion there.*

*Now, I'd like to invite all those who post -or want to post- in the Cultural forum to read the forum's guidelines before posting.*
*I also hope that we could all remember that the discussion of personal opinions is beyond the scope of this forum.*

*Thanks *


----------



## Mr Punch

Thank you for your opinion and restraint, Cherine.


----------



## Etcetera

Basaloe said:


> I dont know if this is common all over the world, but in Sweden we have expressiond which says "The russian comes" or "Watch out for the russian". This is because Russia was very close to invade Sweden a couple of decades ago but still people are somewhat "afraid" of "the russian". Do you have similar things in your culture?


A couple of decades ago? Are you sure you didn't mix up _decades_ with _centuries_?

Seriously, I've been thinking and thinking on the subject very carefully, but it seems to me that scaring children with this or that nationality is quite uncommon here. I've never heard a parent telling his child that a gypsy might come and take him if he wouldn't behave.

But I can tell that there are some nationalities that do scare the Russians. Gypsies, for example, or people from North Caucasus. 

Nationalists are more scary, though.


----------



## Lugubert

Basaloe said:


> I dont know if this is common all over the world, but in Sweden we have expressiond which says "The russian comes" or "Watch out for the russian". This is because Russia was very close to invade Sweden a couple of decades ago but still people are somewhat "afraid" of "the russian". Do you have similar things in your culture?


I'm a 65 year old Swede, and I have never heard any similar phrase spoken in earnest. I know of no real Russian threats to Sweden since the Russian army lost the battle at Swedish Sävar in 1809.


----------



## alexacohen

Mr Punch said:


> Incidentally, my Catalonian friend said that the people in northern Spain often use the Catalonians as a threat, but I don't know if that was just his sense of humour!


Must have been his sense of humour. I've lived in the North of Spain for quite a lot of years and I can assure you that what your friend said is not true.


----------



## Victoria32

sokol said:


> Might be a constant in culture, fear of bearded ones.


When I was growing up, beards were definitely out of fashion! I've always regarded men with beards with suspicion, my mother's view was that a man with a beard was hiding something - nothing mote sinister than a weak chin, I presume.

Beards are aesthetically unappealing in my opinion.

AFAIK, parents in NZ didn't scare their kids with any particular nationality or ethnic group, mine certainly didn't... 

Vicky


----------



## JazzByChas

Well...I am old enough (being a child of the 1950's) to remember when just about everyone in the world was apprehensive about the Communist threat.  So...when I was young, we talked rather derisively about the "Commies"  We also laughed at the idea (ironically) about things being "made in Japan" (inferring that they were cheap and shoddy).  Well, obviously, things have changed a bit since then.  Russia is now a country trying to recover from the corruption that the Communist government created.  And Japan now makes very good products.

So, in my humble opinion, any more, there are no "nationalities" that represent a threat to us, other than militant Islamics, who wage a "holy jihad" (which is anything but "holy").  And, since 09/11/2001, when radical muslims brought about the death and destruction of many innocent people, we are rather wary of "Al Qaeda" (sic) and its many factions.

But as for talking to my children, I don't really use any nationality to represent a "threat" to deter their bad behavior.

Although, we might occaisionally use the "bogeyman" or tell our kids to avoid "strangers" or other suspicious characters.  Quite honestly, I tell them to be afraid of ME...I will make thier lives miserable if they don't behave! (prerogative of a father).

Ciao!


----------



## Etcetera

JazzByChas said:


> Although, we might occaisionally use the "bogeyman" or tell our kids to avoid "strangers" or other suspicious characters.


But I believe telling kids to avoid strangers and suspicious people is very common, and it's really necessary to remind them of that. By the way, in Russia even adults are told to avoid "suspicious characters" and report them to the police.


----------



## nobbs

Etcetera said:


> in Russia even adults are told to avoid "suspicious characters" and report them to the police.


Gosh. That is scary.


----------



## Etcetera

nobbs said:


> Gosh. That is scary.


Just a safety precaution. After a series of explosions (including an explosion in a metro train in Moscow), it's seen as a necessary measure, and no one complained so far.


----------



## veracity

Basaloe said:


> I dont know if this is common all over the world, but in Sweden we have expressiond which says "The russian comes" or "Watch out for the russian". This is because Russia was very close to invade Sweden a couple of decades ago but still people are somewhat "afraid" of "the russian". Do you have similar things in your culture?



I don't know any nation to scare the children with in Hungary.

But when I was a child of 3-4 years old it happened to me. A much bigger boy shouted at me when I was playing near our fence: The Russians are coming! It was in 1960.  In Hungarian Russians means oroszok. The word "a rosszak" (meaning the bad) sounds very similar to "oroszok". I thought oh the bad are coming, let's run away. It became a reflex to me. Big boy shouts and I run crying. It happened I run to my grandfather. He asked what was the matter. I told him. He burst out laughing. From that time on I started shouting "The Russians are coming!" too. With my friends we were running the streets of the village shouting and screaming it like a verse. 

Much later my grandmother told me a lot of stories how she hidden my mother in secret places when the Russians were coming in reality. Raping young women by the Russians were a common thing.


----------



## Zsanna

I think we should still emphasize that Hungarians do not threaten their kids with the Russians (or anybody else, as you rightly put it) in the sense this topic would like to know.
I would just add that in my vocabulary "oroszok" (= Russians) -- if not denoting a nation -- indicates (in a half funny way) that there are an awful lot of people in a given area ("sokan vannak, mint az oroszok"). I cannot say it evokes fear of any kind for me... 
Mind you, it is certainly the question of age as well. 
My grandparents spoke about them with caution, too. (Although I think they did not only suffer, I got the impression that Russians did some generous things as well... Apart from "sending away" the Nazi soldiers that we could not do by ourselves!)


----------



## veracity

Zsanna said:


> I think we should still emphasize that Hungarians do not threaten their kids with the Russians (or anybody else, as you rightly put it) in the sense this topic would like to know.
> I would just add that in my vocabulary "oroszok" (= Russians) -- if not denoting a nation -- indicates (in a half funny way) that there are an awful lot of people in a given area ("sokan vannak, mint az oroszok"). I cannot say it evokes fear of any kind for me...
> Mind you, it is certainly the question of age as well.
> My grandparents spoke about them with caution, too. (Although I think they did not only suffer, I got the impression that Russians did some generous things as well... Apart from "sending away" the Nazi soldiers that we could not do by ourselves!)




Nobody around me had hatred against the Russians in general. But I have never got similar impressions as you have.

GENEROUS - This is something I would never use in connection with the Red Army. I am absolutely sure that this my feeling is shared by the vast majority of my fellow Hungarians.


*Did the RED ARMY any generous things in your country?* This could be a very interesting topic in another thread. Maybe I will start it but the idea is yours, I leave it to your consideration for the next couple of days, Zsanna.


----------



## Zsanna

I did hear that they gave food to kids (although they were extremely poor themselves), they helped my grandparents in small ways like chopping wood, etc. (They occupied their farm for a long time and emptied it from food and other items. I heard they "loved" watches specially. On the other hand, they did not rape my grandma or my aunt...) 

Anyway, why couldn't one expect an occasional human reaction from a human being? (Not by the Red Army as such, obviously...)


----------



## veracity

The Russian people (my wife spent some time in Russia and got many friends, she was actually a Russian teacher in a secondary school, so I also know something about her friends, and a lot of really generous things) should not be mistaken for the Red Army.
Never the people but always their armies were the threats to other people.
I agree, we should (and generally we do) expect human reactions from human beings. And not just occasional ones.
Fairy tales should be listen to by children, (Távolban egy fehér vitorla...) but I don't think that I will tell this kind of fairy tales to my grandson in the future.


----------



## Setwale_Charm

Etcetera said:


> But I can tell that there are some nationalities that do scare the Russians. Gypsies, for example, or people from North Caucasus.


With Chechens in the lead. A Chechen friend of mine has recently sent me a satirical poem about children being scared nowadays with a BIG SCARY HAIRY CHECHEN with a bag of explosives.
 It should be acknowledged though that the immigrants from the North Caucasus often contribute to the stereotype by the way they treat young local women, for example.


----------



## Zsanna

A lot of pain and injustice could have been avoided in human history if we considered the human being before anything else. (Such as a nationality, an army whatnot...)


----------



## JazzByChas

Zsanna said:


> A lot of pain and injustice could have been avoided in human history if we considered the human being before anything else. (Such as a nationality, an army whatnot...)


 
This is very true...but considering the nature of imperfect humans, this rarely happens, sadly. Someone will always use people of another nationality to be a scapegoat or a "bogeyman."


----------



## Setwale_Charm

JazzByChas said:


> This is very true...but considering the nature of imperfect humans, this rarely happens, sadly. Someone will always use people of another nationality to be a scapegoat or a "bogeyman."


 
This is very natural though. People have formed groups which share or are supposed to share some common qualities and this is very often too, just as often as unfair. But in other cases we should take national peculiarities into account.

 Of course, our ability to cope with differences shall be as explained in the extract quoted in your signature. Incidentally, this particular extract was given to me as basis for my daily devotional for the congregation. Thank you for reminding me, I still have to finish that


----------



## Etcetera

Setwale_Charm said:


> It should be acknowledged though that the immigrants from the North Caucasus often contribute to the stereotype by the way they treat young local women, for example.


That is true. 

At the same time, I sometimes hear people say that men from North and South Caucasus often behave more gentlemanly towards women than Russian men, mostly due to their more traditional upbringing.


----------



## Setwale_Charm

Etcetera said:


> That is true.
> 
> At the same time, I sometimes hear people say that men from North and South Caucasus often behave more gentlemanly towards women than Russian men, mostly due to their more traditional upbringing.


 
This is true too. All the times that I have been in trouble in Russia, I 've always only been helped by the North Caucasus people and once by a Buryat I think, this depends rather on which social strata they themselves come from.


----------



## Etcetera

Setwale_Charm said:


> I think, this depends rather on which social strata they themselves come from.


Yes, and I am sure good people can be found everywhere, in every country and of every faith.


----------



## DickHavana

anthodocheio said:


> The same thing happens in Greece, as far as I am concerned..
> I think, that what they used to say to children was “*The gypsies will take you away and …sell you*!”



When I was a child, my mother told me the same. . 

But more usually, the Spanish figures of  "el coco", "el hombre del saco" (bogeyman), etc. must be stateless.

_Mari_, the _lamias_ and another figures used in the Basque tales to scare the children were 100% Basque,  but the legend of the_ lamias (_beauty women with duck feet_) _could refer an strange ethnia that lived in a little valley of the Pyrinees, the _agotes_, that were rejected and in the Middle Age were dressed with an special disctintive with a duck's foot.


----------



## Raluca1981

In Romania: "If you're naughty I'll sell you to the gypsies" or "Gypsies will take you away under their large skirts". Honestly, that scared me, because there were a couple of really ugly, dirty and ever drunk gypsy women and their husbands were simply huge and nasty, whereas their kids would always steal our toys and our snaks on our way to school. Oh, those days...


----------



## Setwale_Charm

DickHavana said:


> When I was a child, my mother told me the same. .
> 
> But more usually, the Spanish figures of "el coco", "el hombre del saco" (bogeyman), etc. must be stateless.
> 
> _Mari_, the _lamias_ and another figures used in the Basque tales to scare the children were 100% Basque, but the legend of the_ lamias (_beauty women with duck feet_) _could refer an strange ethnia that lived in a little valley of the Pyrinees, the _agotes_, that were rejected and in the Middle Age were dressed with an special disctintive with a duck's foot.


 
Don't you think that in the situation when gypsies from certain countries are the key actors on the European human trafficking scene, these warnings may be a little more than just "mother's scare tales"?


----------



## DickHavana

Setwale_Charm said:


> Don't you think that in the situation when gypsies from certain countries are the key actors on the European human trafficking scene, these warnings may be a little more than just "mother's scare tales"?



I always thank: "They are poor, what the hell they want more mouths to feed?". 

I suppose that the wandering life f the Gypsies was perceived as dangerous. At the same, I suppose that when Jewish lived in Spain the myth was: "Be careful... the Jewish can take you away... and eat you!". 

The Spain of the 60's was very closed and I suppose the Spanish gypsies weren't really kidnappers. The fame preceding them? I don't know.


----------



## Setwale_Charm

DickHavana said:


> I always thank: "They are poor, what the hell they want more mouths to feed?".
> 
> I suppose that the wandering life f the Gypsies was perceived as dangerous. At the same, I suppose that when Jewish lived in Spain the myth was: "Be careful... the Jewish can take you away... and eat you!".
> 
> The Spain of the 60's was very closed and I suppose the Spanish gypsies weren't really kidnappers. The fame preceding them? I don't know.


 
Well, I was talking about trafficking, i.e. selling, not keeping and I was not actually thinking so much of Spain as the Balkans, Romania in this instance. And I suppose, having to admit that the gypsies in a certain area, for instance, are prone to stealing, it would be only natural for people to be scared of them and the communal psych always takes things further. 
I mean there is a lot of prejudice in it but not always. For instance, decades ago, during the simmering conflict between two ethnicities in the south of Russia, both the Ingush and the Ossetians (or rather their radical groups) practised kidnapping each other children. So it was only natural that mothers taught children to beware of the other ethnic group. I am not sure this should qualify as "scare tales".


----------



## DickHavana

Setwale_Charm said:


> Well, I was talking about trafficking, i.e. selling, not keeping and I was not actually thinking so much of Spain as the Balkans, Romania in this instance. And I suppose, having to admit that the gypsies in a certain area, for instance, are prone to stealing, it would be only natural for people to be scared of them and the communal psych always takes things further.
> I mean there is a lot of prejudice in it but not always. For instance, decades ago, during the simmering conflict between two ethnicities in the south of Russia, both the Ingush and the Ossetians (or rather their radical groups) practised kidnapping each other children. So it was only natural that mothers taught children to beware of the other ethnic group. I am not sure this should qualify as "scare tales".



Of course. Obviously, the curious moral codes of the Gypsie people (usually, for a Spanish Gypsie, things as to steal a non-Gypsie man (a _gadjo_, a _payo_) not are too bad) contributes all this.

I suppose that a lot of "scare tales" can be based in real facts (old rivalities, wars, ethnic confrontations...). I remember that a teacher told us at school that in Holland, mothers scared their children with "el Duque de Alba". I don't know if that is real. I suppose too that in the Serbian tales, the evil is Muslim, and in the Muslim Balcanic traditions, the evil is Christian.


----------



## almondeyed

In Turkey the parents scare their children with gypsies and cannibals :S

But I know that in some European countries they use us (Turks) for scaring the children. Yes there are and were some Turks to be scared of but I'm not one of them ...Really!


----------



## BehindtheDoor

Suane said:


> In Slovakia, parents sometimes say to their children (but it rarer nowadays) that they will give/sell them to Gypsies (but this is maybe defined more as an ethnicity than nationality, I don't know).



Same here.

For very little children it is rather common "the man of the bag" [I assume this is a version of the famous bogey man], "the witch" and "the coco" [assume "coco" is some type of unespecified monster]. But, oh, my... that is nothing compared to "behave well or I'll call the Gypsies to take you and you will have to dance with their goat"...


----------



## Grop

BehindtheDoor said:


> [assume "coco" is some type of unespecified monster]



Couldn't that be a communist? Here in France, cocos are communists.

(However I don't know of any people who would scare children with communism).


----------



## BehindtheDoor

Grop said:


> Couldn't that be a communist? Here in France, cocos are communists.
> 
> (However I don't know of any people who would scare children with communism).



No its use is well documented since the 15th century.


----------



## natasha2000

In Serbia, we do not scare children with any nationality, but it can be a BABA ROGA, which may be an aquivalent to Russian BABA YAGA...

In the other hand, recently I heard that in some parts of Greece and Albania some still scare their children with Catalans, due to the horrible memory to Almogavars, Catalan mercenaries who were serving the Byzantine emperor, Andornicus II. In 1305. Andronicus's son, Michael, ordered murder of their leader, Roger de Flor, and killed many of them in Constantinopla and in other Greek cities which produced "Catalan revenge" - devastation of Greek lands during almost two years. So, I read somewhere that, besides de curse "Let the Catalan revenge gets you!" Greek and Albanian people also scare their children with Catalans...

I would like if someone Greek or Albanian can confirm this, since it seems pretty incredible... 

(I am giving the link to Spanish article of Catalan revenge, since there is no English article, but unfortunatelly, Serbian article is more informative, not only about Catalan revenge, but about Almogaveres, too).


----------



## Aldhameer

In Bosnia,alongside with witches,wolves were gypsies.They would say that they would take you away.Gypsies(Roma) are still the lowest class,some consider them inferior,etc. I disagree.


----------

