"Russians have no word for freedom"

You hear about it a lot, but did Ronald Reagan ever actually say this? Which speech was it in? Is there a transcript online?

The best I could find using Google, as I’m sure you could too:

You might look around here: http://cstl-cla.semo.edu/Renka/Modern_Presidents/reagan_speeches.htm

The word ‘hoax’ does not appear in any dictionary. :wink:

Yeah, but I haven’t found any references to it being a load of crap, either. It just seems to be accepted with no actual evidence.

Strange, but hoax is in my dictionary. American Heritage.

hoax n. 1. An act intended to deceive or trick. 2. Something that has been established or accepted by fraudulent means. --hoax tr.v. hoaxed, hoax·ing, hoax·es. To deceive or cheat by using a hoax. [Perhaps alteration of hocus.] --hoax“er n.

I didn’t see your winking smiley.

Of course the word ‘hoax’ is in the dictionary. The word ‘gullible’, however, isn’t.

Why is ‘long’ a short word, yet ‘abbreviated’ isn’t? :confused:

I have never heard this before.

This says from a BBC interview from Oct. 1985, but again, there’s no transcript.

And whose cruel joke was it to put an “s” in the word “lisp”?

And why doesn’t onomatopoeia sound like anything?

'Course it does! It sounds like an incontinent Italian who lost the key to his front door.

Apparently Bush did say that the French have no word for entrepreneur. If he did, he was correct. Obviously it is a French word but just means contractor. I regularly see vans with “entrepreneur electrique” or similar things on them, but it just means contractor, nothing special. The French have borrowed the word–if it is a word–“entrepreneurship” with essentially the same meaning as in English.

Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. So find out how to say “Nothing left to lose” and then you know how to say “freedom” in Russian.

Sincerely,

Me and Bobby McGee

Snopessays he didn’t say it.

свобода

So which are you being in this case?

I used Google and clicked Translate This Page, and it doesseem to mean freedom ( mouse over the word Freedom ).

But is that the word they used in voice-over in the Russian release of Braveheart, at the very end? You know the scene I mean.

Apparently, it is:

Translation: Wallace, gathering his remaining strength, cries “Svoboda!”