# What does it mean in Romanian: "Bulă"?



## franknagy

[QUOTE Irinet's joke]Oh,  absolute truth,  not a joke.
A new one with our traditional  jokes' hero,  _Bulă_ (_bubble_,   în English). Theoretically, the joke might be inspired from the  "Indecent Proposal" movie,  practically,  it comes with the hardships of  life. 

_Bulă is asking his father:_[/QUOTE]

The world _"bula"_ in Hungarian means _"sexy girl"_ with big arse and breast. [Bean poles excluded.] *It is used between two male speakers about a girl without her hail*: _"Micsoda bula!" or "Jó bula"_. Boy must not tell it a girl:_ "Jó bula vagy."_. The speaking boy must not say it to the listening boy if the girl is the other's sister or sweetheart.


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## irinet

Hi, 
*Bulă* (= 'bubble' as I already mentioned in the thread of jokes) was 'born'  in the communist era,  as an urban character,  symbolising the national discontent during that horrible regime in a kind of a) ironically bitterness or of b)  collective humour. He was like a 'breach' in the system,  keeping us alive with our bubbles of hopes for a better future or incarcerated thoughts waiting for the right moment to escape!  Once the communism collapsed,  *Bulă's* aura faded apparently for (1) the economic and social changes that keep a whole population so busy in facing all these up, and now that we have been freed,  and we have got accustomed to this tornado of transitions,  *Bulă* seems to revive from the ashes, and other 'bubbles' of doubt,  fear, inferiority, etc.  have been floating in the air.  But,  it's more than obvious that he's not the same *Bulă* as he used to be,  sometimes dumb,  clumsy, shy, innocent,  and other times,  definitely determined,  mischievously sly, and being a 'smart ass'. He,  as well as his creators,  has been reinvented and have undergone major changes since the motivations or the basic societal  rules have been dramatically distorted. 
To sum up,  I feel like each and every of us is *Bulă*,  and we all have created our bubbles of endless expectations again. Will they pop-up sooner and wiser than last time,  that I don't know!


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## farscape

Like many others, including the author(s) of *this* article in wikipedia, I  believe de name Bulă is the slang name for penis, misspelled by  replacing the first letter p with a b. I like _irinet_’s view on  what Bulă represents and presumably many Romanians agree: in a 2006  survey organised by the Romanian TV on the first 100 Romanian  personalities, Bulă ranked 56th... Way to go Bulă 

That’s  another character measure of the smart-ass, self deprecating and  quintessential Romanian, we all know as Bulă. I’d like to think that  somehow Bulă is a contemporary version of Mitică, the character created  by another famous Romanian, the playwright and writer Ion Luca Caragiale.

Later,
f.


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## irinet

Wow,  I have never think of Bulă in that way,  Farscape!  If that be true,  I'll withdraw my statement in which I said that Bulă is us in different moments of our life! Imagine a country of Bulă, a bloke like that,   what would it be like?! 

_Of course,  I am joking,  but I can't manage 'smileys'  on the WR to show you that!_

However,  if I recall better,  I know of using 'Bulă'  your way,  when men are very angry and have a fight,  then,  indeed,  there's an immediate switch to various and colourful pejoratives.  '_Bulă_' is a very good example of pejorative use,  and would be pronounced with a strong pitch on the '*b*'  consonant,  to send a strong message of 'threat'  to the interlocutor,  in that '*b*'  or '*p*'  could be the same. Yes,  I would call this an innovative _urban induced phoneme-switching by pitch_,  of this _paronymic pair_.  But that does  not exist!


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