Other countries' attitude to swearing

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Bollo

Failed Tech Bro
Location
Winch
I believe I'm right in saying that English is pretty much the only language in which swearing is dominated by sexual and scatological imagery. Almost all continental languages' oaths are religioncentric...they find our obsession with sexuality/bodily functions baffling. Why would you root your most toxic terminology in pleasurable activities?

Mrs Dr B taught me some Urdu swearwords, which are based on Muslim religious taboos. No surprises that "dog" and "pig" appear, but my favourite translates approximately as "bad meat!".

When we're at my inlaws, my FIL will usually have a Bollywood film on at volume 11. It's a rule that in every Bollywood film there's a point where someone calls somebody else "you bastard!" in English.
 

Ian H

Ancient randonneur
I've always found it hugely perverse that our newspapers will happily fill their pages with the most tawdry, salacious, unhealthily prurient gossip about the private lives of individuals, usually accompanied by unpleasantly voyeuristic images, often of young people barely over the age of consent, but the moment anyone says a slightly "naughty" word, the asterisks are out in force and public decency is deemed to have been kicked in the balls.

daffodils.

Not all newspapers.
 
I used to work with a young woman from Provence. Between talking to her and watching Spirals, I extended my vocabulary no end.

I spent many happy months as A Young Person, over the years between leaving school and leaving uni, working voluntarily on a rare breeds quasi-organic farm in the Gironde - an area with somewhat of a reputation for 'earthy' language. It came as something of a surprise to me when I realised quite what some of the vocab I'd picked up actually meant. I mean, I'd learned it from a 5 year old, often while sitting around the dinner table with, among others, his parents. Fortunately the light dawned fairly swiftly at the start of my degree. In French.
 

smutchin

Cat 6 Racer
Location
The Red Enclave
Not all newspapers.

True. The Guardian tends to avoid asterisks, though it has got them in trouble a few times – I remember the furore when the Guardian ran a piece about Michael Richards' bizarre onstage racist outburst and quoted the N-word uncensored. And Gillian Wearing's Feck Cilla Black artwork on the front cover of G2.

Even middle-class yoghurt-knitters get sensitive about these things.
 

mjr

Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
French uses sexual and scatological gros mots at will. Foutre*, merde, petit con, etc,

*A French friend, completely familiar with expressions like fout le camp (F off), c'est foutu (it's fecked) had no idea that foutre has sexual origins (le foutre = sperm) because the word is in such constant use.
The English subtitles for a certain producer's French films used to routinely translate some more elaborate f word expressions as weird phrases like "flying steaming dung heaps" which was often funnier than the comedies.
 

captain nemo1701

Space cadet. Deck 42 Main Engineering.
Location
Bristol
I saw the recent (April) episode of the Sky at Night which featured an online interview with the author of The Martian. He mentioned 'frickin' and 'BS' and the interviewer looked a bit embarrassed:laugh:.
 

gavroche

Getting old but not past it
Location
North Wales
If you stopped Aussies swearing, very few of them would have anything to say at all. F*****g is probably their main adjective.
I think it is the same in Devon. My son in law uses the "f" word in every other word. To be fair, I think he doesn't even realise he is doing it but it can be very embarrassing when we go out ( unless it is in Devon of course).
As for the French, I am always amazed and disgusted at the amount of swearing I hear on the French radio. It wasn't like that when I lived there . It seems that decency is a forgotten value nowadays.
 

winjim

Smash the cistern
I've always found it hugely perverse that our newspapers will happily fill their pages with the most tawdry, salacious, unhealthily prurient gossip about the private lives of individuals, usually accompanied by unpleasantly voyeuristic images, often of young people barely over the age of consent, but the moment anyone says a slightly "naughty" word, the asterisks are out in force and public decency is deemed to have been kicked in the balls.

daffodils.
It is weird that the Sun will asterisk the word t*ts, but print it next to an actual picture of some actual tits.
 

winjim

Smash the cistern
I remember watching a documentary about a brothel in Nevada where some of the girls were upset about the madam's swearing. Said madam was a gruff middle aged Mancunian who had to explain that where she was from the word 'bloody' was part of everyday speech and not considered swearing at all.
 

MarkF

Guru
Location
Yorkshire
The Spanish swear like troopers, it's an integral part of their everyday language, I like to listen to the kids and grandparents in neighbourhood playgrounds, the "C" word is thrown around for fun. Nobody bats an eyelid. I know loads of really bad Spanish phrases and use them at work when people jazz me off. There are some that seem absolutely extreme to us , all are scat/sex/relative (usually mother) related,"I shoot on your dead mother" is one I've often heard, er..........................but not used.

Edit:- Like others I find "Pollas en vinagre" (Dicks in vinegar) funny but don't know what it means.

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I had a girlfriend in Montreal, she was French Canadian but always switched to english for profanities - she said there sometimes wasn't anything quite.....as expressive in french
 
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