cursing

[Mr. Tea]

The Englsih language is incredibly creaative in this regard. In French for example, one cannot string together swear words in the same way, or (I believe) conjugate new swearwords (fuckwit, fuckmonkey, tossclump) with anywhere near the same amount of latitude that English speakers are allowed.

It's fucking great.

German is incredibly agglutinative though, so it must be the complete opposite of French in this regard. Let's see: Gottverdammt Arschlochschlampe! Hey, not bad, huh?

 

[Spike]

The Englsih language is incredibly creaative in this regard. In French for example, one cannot string together swear words in the same way, or (I believe) conjugate new swearwords (fuckwit, fuckmonkey, tossclump) with anywhere near the same amount of latitude that English speakers are allowed.

It's fucking great.

Disagree! In French a string of expletives can reach as far as your vocabulary will allow, as you can extend by placing "de" in between each swear word. A bit like saying "son of a bitch", but more like "son of a bitch of a cunt of a shit of a dickhead" etc. etc.. Doesn't really grammatically make sense but when I was in France sometimes really drunk old men manage to keep going for almost two minutes, delivered at the top of their voices while obviously smoking a Gauloise

 

[Dunninger]

German is incredibly agglutinative though, so it must be the complete opposite of French in this regard. Let's see: Gottverdammt arschlochschlampe! Hey, not bad, huh?

Yes, you could concatenate endless swear strings in german, but the pool of cool offensive words is considerably smaller than in english.


@zhao: nice, I'll forward the compliment

 

[baboon2004]

Disagree! In French a string of expletives can reach as far as your vocabulary will allow, as you can extend by placing "de" in between each swear word. A bit like saying "son of a bitch", but more like "son of a bitch of a cunt of a shit of a dickhead" etc. etc.. Doesn't really grammatically make sense but when I was in France sometimes really drunk old men manage to keep going for almost two minutes, delivered at the top of their voices while obviously smoking a Gauloise

interesting, but yes. my french ex did in fact say that you could kind of get around it by doing what you just said. But it's SO clunky and static (in that 'fuck' can be used as about 18 different parts of speech in English) by comparison.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I'm sure I've linked to this on here before, but in Russia there's a patois language based entirely on swearing.

 

[empty mirror]

i thought this thread would be about black magic

just looked up the etymology and curse may come from the Old English word "curs" which means "a prayer that evil or harm befall one", which, you know, we know---but it maybe the meaning has been extended to sexual parts, asshole, cunt, dickhead, because they are the points of entry for a curse? a plague on both your houses via penis and anus!

there is a mention of "curse" also being connected with the french word for "anger"----that is convenient of course.

anyhow---the people in my locale curse according to caste. it seems to be a blue collar thing here. i only had one professor that cursed in class, my favorite, a subversive magician of sorts, with tenure.

 

[Mr. Tea]

just looked up the etymology and curse may come from the Old English word "curs" which means "a prayer that evil or harm befall one", which, you know, we know---but it maybe the meaning has been extended to sexual parts, asshole, cunt, dickhead, because they are the points of entry for a curse? a plague on both your houses via penis and anus!

And 'bless', which you might reasonably regard as the antonym of 'curse', comes from an OE verb meaning 'to sprinkle with blood' (blod ('blood') -> verb bletsian/gerund bletsung -> modern blessing).

there is a mention of "curse" also being connected with the french word for "anger"----that is convenient of course.

anyhow---the people in my locale curse according to caste. it seems to be a blue collar thing here. i only had one professor that cursed in class, my favorite, a subversive magician of sorts, with tenure.

Which French word is that? I can only think of 'ire' and 'colere'.

Swearing is the great leveller in Britain, everyone does it. Except maybe Daily Mail-reading lower-middle-class petit-bourgeois snobs, but they can shitting well fuck the fuck off. The cunts.

 

[empty mirror]

And 'bless', which you might reasonably regard as the antonym of 'curse', comes from an OE verb meaning 'to sprinkle with blood' (blod ('blood') -> verb bletsian/gerund bletsung -> modern blessing).



Which French word is that? I can only think of 'ire' and 'colere'.

nice. bless you! ha

O.Fr.: curuz "anger"

 

[Sick Boy]

I'm not really sure which curse words are even offensive anymore. "Fuck" has been dethroned - you can hear "fuck" on South Park after like 9PM on network television.

Racially or politically sensitive words still have the power to make people very uncomfortable. I don't think Lester Bangs' "Last of the White Niggers" shirt would be any less (possibly more!) offensive than it was then. Or Lenny Bruce banging on about niggers all the time (although what he prophecized came true regarding that word).

Faggot is now a word people really don't like either.

My favourite curse words are ones like these that even their utterance is morally wrong. I can't say "nigger" even if I'm not using it to racially belittle a black person.

Cunt is still really bad in North America. I get a free pass using it though because I'm British. People seem less surprised when I say it.

 

[Corpsey]

Picked this book up last week

which addresses this topic. I'll report back later, if I can be fucking bothered.

 

[dubble-u-c]

Shit! I couldn't resist this opportunity.

The village of Fucking Austria:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucking,_Austria

 

[Sick Boy]

Speaking of shifts in perception, and also reported by a frightfully small number of people:

David Letterman apologizes to Bill Hicks' mother and takes the blame for pulling Hicks' spot on the Late Show in 1993 shortly before he died of pancreatic cancer. He played the lost clip of it on his show on Friday.

Full article here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20090203.CROSBIE03/TPStory/Entertainment

“I love Letterman, but every time I go on, we have tiffs over material. They love me, but his people have this fictitious mainstream audience they think they play to. It’s untrue. It doesn’t exist.”

In response to then-producer Robert Morton telling him he must "understand [Letterman's] audience".

“Your audience! Your audience is comprised of people, right? Well, I understand people, being one myself. People are who I play to every night, Bob. We get along just fine.”

 

[zhao]

reminds me of the howard stern movie: so he fought all his life for the god given right which the fascists are trying to take away: the right to... use bad words.

what a hero...

see also Larry Flynt movie - substitute "bad words" with "look at nudie pics"

 

[zhao]

that photo is rad with the 2 bikes casually thrown on the grass as if the riders did not have time to properly park them...

 

[Sick Boy]

reminds me of the howard stern movie: so he fought all his life for the god given right which the fascists are trying to take away: the right to... use bad words.

what a hero...

This is so wrong I'm not even sure why I'm pointing this out.

 

[zhao]

This is so wrong I'm not even sure why I'm pointing this out.

so you think he is a hero for defending the freedom of asinine speech?

 

[Sick Boy]

so you think he is a hero for defending the freedom of asinine speech?

Clearly, yes.

 

[nomadthethird]

The german word is "ficken" and as far as I know it originally meant just rubbing and grinding. But today it's only used for intercourse.

I've never really compared the swear word ratio of german vs. english, but I'd say germans swear about as much. As someone said upthread it's nearly always "scheisse" or otherwise shit-related, the english language is a bit more creative in that department. I think the use of swear words related to sex is much more common in english, so maybe that stands out for german ears.

There you go! Ficken. But isn't there a Dutch version too?

 

[nomadthethird]

I think the difference you're noting is that English has more colorful language slang for the vagina and penis than German, which is very clinical about body parts, Zhao.

Younger Germans say "scheiss-" everything, but then again, that's their only real curse word. If they had more I bet they'd use them.

 

[nomadthethird]

Faggot is now a word people really don't like either.

This isn't true, it's like "queer" for the gay community, I think, more and more--faggot has been reappropriated. My gay friends call themselves and one another faggots all the time.