What’s “bavovna” and why is it funny?
During the last 8 years Russian propaganda machine has shaped and gradually implemented a version of Orwell’s Newspeak from “1984” which is vastly used by government affiliated media. Its goal is to soften the narrative or to twist it in order to distract Russian population from problematic issues.
Some of the classic examples from the modern Russian Newspeak dictionary are:
price correction — price rise
negative growth — recession
fumigation — fire
soil saturation — flood
special military operation — war
fake — truth, factual information
The word, which led to a mishap in question, is “explosion”. Somewhen around 2015 Russian news outlets started to call any accidental explosion inside Russia “хлопок” [ˈkhlaw-pock] with the accent on the second syllable which means “flap” or “pop”. This same word but with an accent on the first syllable means a completely different thing — cotton. However, in Russian writing accents are almost never emphasized so one usually expected to understand the meaning of the word from context.
In the end of February 2022 Russia not only invaded Ukraine but also attempted to invade its infospace. Failing to recruit any Ukrainian native speakers, Russian telegram channels, which masked themselves as Ukrainian, had to solely rely on google translate.
Needless to say, soulless translation engine failed to understand the context of the messages therefore Russian “flaps” and "pops” became Ukrainian “cottons”. Cotton in Ukrainian is “бавовна” [ba-ˈvov-nah].
Ever since Ukrainian telegram channels refer to any explosion within Russia proper or anywhere within the occupied lands as “bavovna”, mockingly complying with Newspeak.
@kie_vit
