Fenya.

Tamlin Magee (last seen here in 2024) has a piece in BBC Future about the Russian cant language called fenya: When would you hide in a raspberry? Why don’t you want to be a sixer? And what does it mean to go to the akademiya? Russian often takes slang to complex levels, such as through Mat, its linguistic system for obscenities. But even a “matershchinnik” (a well-practiced master of swearing) might find the above phrases nonsensical – unless, of course, they are familiar with Fenya, the language of Russia’s colossal prison system. This language of criminals has been deployed by underworld figures for centuries to puzzle and evade. But during the 20th Century, its curious mixture of double entendre and loan words ballooned in Soviet prisons. With German, Greek and Yiddish influences, Fenya is brimming with confusing hidden meanings. In Russian, “babki” literally means “grandmas”, but in Fenya, it also means “money”. “Varezhka” means a “mitten” but also a “mouth, while “khalyava”,…