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I would like to congratulate someone I know well for his 50th birthday.

Would the following be considered good, ok, bad or very bad?

С днем рождения, старый пердун!

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  • 1
    Thanks for all the answers. Difficult to say which one I should consider "the" answer since they all share some truth. To honor that I'll upvote all and mark none as answer.
    – yglodt
    Oct 9, 2016 at 21:12
  • "Алкаш" уж лучше тогда. :-O
    – bipll
    Feb 9, 2017 at 21:37
  • Do not say like that if you met a person for the first time; otherwise, you will get punched or slapped on your face:) Feb 22, 2017 at 1:59
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    Be careful with this one. You need to know a person very well and have a really close relationship with him to call him "пердун" otherwise your chances of getting a smack in a face are very high. Reminds me of a Grand Torino movie scene where Walt talks to his barber friend youtube.com/watch?v=GtSJOUOEJ8o Feb 23, 2017 at 11:16

5 Answers 5

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Depends on the terms you're on with this person, because this is quite offensive, i mean it could be taken as a friendly banter by a good friend and as an insult by a stranger.

I think it's as strong as its English equivalent "Happy Birthday, old fart!"

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    More offensive actually. The English variant isn't polite, but it's still much softer than the Russian one.
    – Kaworu
    Oct 20, 2016 at 7:45
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Don't! You will definitely spoil the celebration. Or at least remind that person of his age. Do you know the meaning of the last word? I bet you don't. Look it up in your dictionary.

We don't capitalize letters in С днём рождения!

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  • Why so aggressive? So many !!!!!
    – VCH250
    Feb 10, 2017 at 19:27
  • Being expressive is not aggressive (a poem, lol, btw.there's only one! )
    – V.V.
    Feb 10, 2017 at 19:37
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    Actually using slang expressions is not encouraged for language learners. Imagine a person which hardly speaks English, but attempting to use slang words. Most of the time you'll wonder "maybe he used the wrong word to express something different?".
    – Artemix
    Feb 22, 2017 at 11:20
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Depends on the person's sensitivity and sense of humour really. If in doubt, don't.

Anyway, you might find this useful: старый пердун has a Soviet-era slang form, старпёр (parodying the Communist knack for acronymising everything), which comes across as less risqué and which should be familiar enough to a person of that age.

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Using your scale it's "bad". Definitely, it's not that "very bad", but still "bad" enough.

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It really depends on the level of your relationship with the person in question. Quite acceptable actually between very close friends, in my circle at least.

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