About swearing in your mother tongue...

KindGrind · Post by **KindGrind** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 3:25 am

I believe that swearing give lots of flavour to a language. I also think the idea that it's used only by the lower castes of society is a widespread misconception.

You may be aware of it -or don't give a damn-, but the most intense swearing words in Quebec have to do with church words. Almost the whole ecclesiastical lexicon, really, although of course they vary in use/intensity. While the equivalent of hostles, Christ, chalice, virgin, and of course tabernacle are very common/the most intense, lesser words like eucharist, sacrament, baptism and stole are also considered "swear" words and are used very often to spice things off or get your point across. Note that pretty much like the "f word", these can be used as adjectives, nouns, adverbs, etc.

How's swearing in your mother tongue (if different than English?)

Specineff · Post by **Specineff** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 4:46 am

You already probably know the english and spanish equivalents... but I've always liked "Chingon" which means "Fucking awesome."

jonny5 · Post by **jonny5** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 4:54 am

tabernac!!!

i say fuck....and shit.....and its fun to say tabernac

and merde...merde alons......my french teacher in school taught us that

this is going to be a great topic KG

out of curiousity do you now why quebecois use church words as curses?

and in my experience people in quebec swear A LOT

especially cabbys.....and they all smoke(exaggeration)

smokey foul mouthed lot, the quebecois

buncha heathens

but ya....back on topic.....im irish.....we swear in english....a lot.....

Stormwatch · Post by **Stormwatch** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 7:01 am

You don't frighten us, English pig-dogs! Go and boil your bottom, sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you, so-called Arthur King, you and all your silly English k-nnnnniggets. Thpppppt! I don't wanna talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries! Now, go away, or I shall taunt you a second time-a!

Lordstar · Post by **Lordstar** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 9:35 am

Stormwatch wrote:You don't frighten us, English pig-dogs! Go and boil your bottom, sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you, so-called Arthur King, you and all your silly English k-nnnnniggets. Thpppppt! I don't wanna talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries! Now, go away, or I shall taunt you a second time-a!

*claps*

KindGrind · Post by **KindGrind** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 11:56 am

Haha. This always struck me as the funniest part of the thing.

Not sure people around here swear more than others, but it sure is rather distinctive.

Chingón is certainly interesting, as it can both mean terribly nice or plain terrible.

mufunyo · Post by **mufunyo** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 12:07 pm

In Dutch you can swear with body parts (knob, cunt), or with diseases (cancer, cancer-sufferer), or with curses ("get cholera!"). Of course there are also creative ways to combine them, and we also use imported english swear words like fuck and shit.

What always strikes me as ironic is that certain types of people will comment "my <insert random relative here> has cancer! that's not nice to say!", when you use cancer as a swear word.

Hello, swear words aren't meant to be nice?

That said, I wonder when AIDS will enter common Dutch vocabulary...

PROMETHEUS · Post by **PROMETHEUS** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 1:32 pm

putain de merde vous faites chier avec vos topic à la con, allez vous faire foutre! (j/k)

Swearing in france revolves around bitches, sex and shit I guess.

glitch · Post by **glitch** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 1:41 pm

mufunyo wrote:That said, I wonder when AIDS will enter common Dutch vocabulary...

the moment it grows some punchier consonants i reckon. ^_~
(or once we figure out that unlike cancer, aids IS an STD. who on earth came up with kankerhoer (cancer-whore)?).

yeah Dutch cursing is embarrassingly stupid.
i once heard that we're unique in using diseases as curse words. i doubt that's true, but i can't think of any examples in other languages...

also with this habit of adding genitals to the front of a word for emphasis, we got these pricelessly pleonastic combinations like kutwijf (cunt + derogatory word for woman).

Lordstar · Post by **Lordstar** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 2:02 pm

I hit my little fimger and as i reeled in pain i screamed AIDS! which my dad found helarious. Only the week before that he was bitching about a joke someone sent to me via a paypal payment which proclaimed I had aids which he said

Aids is not funny. Seems its quite helarious after all.

emphatic · Post by **emphatic** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 5:09 pm

I use a variation of cunt-whore and whore-cunt when I'm really pissed off.
In swedish fitt-hora or hor-fitta. I remember Will Ferrell being a fan of this combo as well (as seen on the extras on the Old School dvd).

Emph

bcelmo · Post by **bcelmo** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 5:16 pm

you might not be aware but, according to studies which i cannot refference but know they exit, the three languages that have most swear words are:
1. Hungarian
2. Romanian
3. Russian
Out of this i speak romanian. I can post pages upon pages of swearings, but the most used ones are:
Du`te`n pizda matii - means something like go to your mothers cunt or fuck your mom
Sa`mi sugi pula - means suck my cock
Du`te`n mortii matii - which means go to your mothers dead or go die
Pula - cock (the "hard" word for penis)
Putza - dick (the lighter word for penis)
Pizda - pussy
Cur - ass
Muie - blowjob
Cacat - shit
Btw this words sound fuckin funny when spoken even for romanians

jpj · Post by **jpj** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 6:24 pm

PROMETHEUS wrote:putain de merde vous faites chier avec vos topic à la con, allez vous faire foutre! (j/k)

Swearing in france revolves around bitches, sex and shit I guess.

playing online street fighter 2, i'm getting quite a good vocabulary of french swears ^_^

KindGrind · Post by **KindGrind** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 8:23 pm

Very interesting how French (from France) and even English swear words are soft words that we borrowed in Quebec French. I witnessed this scene today at lunch:

A child (7 years old or so) drops something on the floor. He says what's considered a very bad word -even more so for a child-, "osti"(hostle). Now his mother replied: "Hey! Watch your language!" The child said went on saying: "Yeah I know... Fuck." To what the mother replied: "Now that's better".

Same happens all the time with "bordel" (brothel), "merde" (shit) and "putain" (whore). Obviously there aren't very sofisticated words you would use and abuse in a diplomatic meeting, let's face it, but they're not really considered bad per se.

Regarding Dutch, that's very interesting/intense. Cancerwhore! Jesus that sounds terribly harsh. Nice stuff.

I was aware of the amount of bad words in Romanian (same language family as French) but never had examples of the thing.

EDIT: Formatting.

Elixir · Post by **Elixir** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 8:37 pm

Yeah, I swear. English is my main language and I swear quit a bit, not directly at people but ti add emphasis into what I'm saying. It really depends on the situation.

Ozymandiaz1260 · Post by **Ozymandiaz1260** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 8:40 pm

In American English we don't use diseases as curse words but we'll say stuff like 'I hope you get ass-cancer because you're a faggot' or something equally as retarded. I don't know, does that count? When I think of swear words, I think of the words that are so horrible that they get censored out of television shows lest children be exposed to them... I know it's not like that in most countries, so what exactly constitutes a swear or curse?

Post by **spadgy** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 9:04 pm

I love swearing and certainly feel it adds flavour to language, and love the way an insult can also be a term of affection with even the harshest swear words.

If you don't know Viz magazine, you should. For years it has had a section in the back called the Profanisaurus that compiles reader's swear words that they send in. Occaisionally they bring it out in book form, and the last one had something like 10,000 or 12,000 entries (only English swearing). The charm of the Profanisaurus is as much the way the definitions are written as much as the swearing itself.

If you go to The Viz Website, click Profanisaurus, and then click 'Fucky Dip' it picks a profantit at random each time... Enjoy!

Finally, most UK swearing focuses on the toilet and genitals.

Ozymandiaz1260 · Post by **Ozymandiaz1260** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 9:14 pm

spadgy wrote:Profanisaurus

This is awesome.

ForceDevice · Post by **ForceDevice** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 11:03 pm

English needs more swear words.

Also, could anyone who speaks spanish here tell me if "anda a cagarse" is REALLY an equivalent to "fuck you"? A friend of mine who's a spanish teacher told me that, but it sounded like a joke, so...

Post by **BulletMagnet** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 11:27 pm

spadgy wrote:Finally, most UK swearing focuses on the toilet and genitals.

I thought you guys had a fair chunk of religious-themed ones...if memory serves "bloody" is one (as in Christ's blood, I think, though it sounds like it's relatively mild as curses go)...this one doesn't apply today at all, but going back to my days as a drama major I remember "zounds" ("God's wounds") as another one. Of course, I could be way off.

No_not_like_Quake · Post by **No_not_like_Quake** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 11:37 pm

estie d'enfant d'chien tabarnac!!!!!!!!!! I'm bilingual, mostly orally, excuse the poor spelling

Observer · Post by **Observer** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 12:25 am

ForceDevice wrote:English needs more swear words.

Also, could anyone who speaks spanish here tell me if "anda a cagarse" is REALLY an equivalent to "fuck you"? A friend of mine who's a spanish teacher told me that, but it sounded like a joke, so...

mmm, not so sure. We don't have a direct equivalent to "fuck"/"fuck you". And it's "Andá/Andáte a cagar" (at least down here in Argentina). The direct translation is "Go take a shit!" You also have a similar one: "Andá/Andáte a la mierda", which means "Go to shit" but actually means "Go to hell"

Ah, guys, I'm already laughing at all our insults. Humanity can be quite creative in that field. We have a core exclamation that can be pretty much extended like a ship with multiple modules: "¡La puta madre que lo/la/te parió!", whose translation could be: "the fucking bitch that conceived you/him/her." That phrase can be used in a situation of extreme frustration/stress, when you are trying to achieve something and everything ends up wrong.

Now, over here that simple phrase can be 'flavoured' with hyperbolic use of the "r" in order to get something exaggerated and over the top like: "¡La remil recontra reputísima madre que lo remil recontra requeteparió!" LA RE-QUE-TE-RE-RE-RE. Get away from that person before it explodes in anger and destroys the world!

KindGrind · Post by **KindGrind** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 1:00 am

No_not_like_Quake wrote:estie d'enfant d'chien tabarnac!!!!!!!!!! I'm bilingual, mostly orally, excuse the poor spelling

Hahahaha. This does sound like home

@Observer: I've always been fascinating by the argentinian: "La concha de tu hermana" (Your sister's fanny) and thought it was extremely funny/weird/harsh. I,ve heard it quite often, mostly spoken by people that were very pissed... Is it really common?

@spadgy: This is indeed amazing(!) Real entertaining stuff!

Observer · Post by **Observer** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 1:28 am

KindGrind wrote: @Observer: I've always been fascinating by the argentinian: "La concha de tu hermana" (Your sister's fanny) and thought it was extremely funny/weird/harsh. I,ve heard it quite often, mostly spoken by people that were very pissed... Is it really common?

Ahahahahaha! Hell yeah! You made me laugh. This could be an equivalent of "Fuck you!" said in a really angry tone. You have the exaggerated version: "La REconcha de tu hermana", which is like re-assuring it

and can be combined with other swearing to compose long paragraphs of insults... even if the guys has no sisters. And, yes, it's quite frequent next to the universal "Hijo/a de puta" (direct translation: son of a bitch)

Then you have a "conchudo/a", which in essence is a "pussy", an annoying person doing annoying shit, a 'tard, a stupid, but far more offensive.

Yeah, I realise some of our insults might be a bit weird, especially because this is like DoDonPachi, we chain insults nonstop but when we drop the bomb the chain doesn't break.

Oh my, you reminded me of the soccer matches where one side will start yelling all sorts of profanities to the other guys only taking short pauses between the bombardment of insults and obscene chanting. A River vs. Boca is a sight to behold. The fans play their own match there.

Lordstar · Post by **Lordstar** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 1:29 am

the website still has them but you could always resort to amazon. . . or not
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listin ... 430&sr=8-1

Talking about calling people swears as in terms of endearment I call my dog the little shit bag but i say it in a very loving way. My ex was called bitch face becuase when i used to watch her talk behind her friends back about them and it was kind of a sly dig while being a term of endearment. She loved the nick name.

ForceDevice · Post by **ForceDevice** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 2:11 am

Observer wrote: mmm, not so sure. We don't have a direct equivalent to "fuck"/"fuck you". And it's "Andá/Andáte a cagar" (at least down here in Argentina). The direct translation is "Go take a shit!" You also have a similar one: "Andá/Andáte a la mierda", which means "Go to shit" but actually means "Go to hell"

I see. Thanks for the explanation.

There's an equivalent to this last one in portuguese too, "vá pra/à merda", which means exactly the same thing... on the other hand, though we have our own version of the fucking bitch one, "puta que (te) pariu", we usually mean something like "oh shit!" when we use it.

It's kinda funny to see swearing is one of the most similar aspects between portuguese and spanish.

Post by **Icarus** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 2:18 am

spadgy wrote:If you don't know Viz magazine, you should. For years it has had a section in the back called the Profanisaurus that compiles reader's swear words that they send in.

I haven't read Viz for ages, and thanks for reminding me about it. The Profanisaurus is one of the funniest things to come out of Viz for ages (not including the Amiga game which was great fun...).

KindGrind · Post by **KindGrind** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 2:32 am

ForceDevice wrote:
Observer wrote:The direct translation is "Go take a shit!" You also have a similar one: "Andá/Andáte a la mierda", which means "Go to shit" but actually means "Go to hell"
I see. Thanks for the explanation.

There's an equivalent to this last one in portuguese too, "vá pra/à merda"

It's kinda funny to see swearing is one of the most similar aspects between portuguese and spanish.

We have exactly the same in French, too. "Va chier", quite literally go take a shit. I guess all Romance languages share that one.

bcelmo · Post by **bcelmo** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 11:38 am

KindGrind wrote:
ForceDevice wrote:
Observer wrote:The direct translation is "Go take a shit!" You also have a similar one: "Andá/Andáte a la mierda", which means "Go to shit" but actually means "Go to hell"
I see. Thanks for the explanation.

There's an equivalent to this last one in portuguese too, "vá pra/à merda"

It's kinda funny to see swearing is one of the most similar aspects between portuguese and spanish.
We have exactly the same in French, too. "Va chier", quite literally go take a shit. I guess all Romance languages share that one.

Romanian is a romance language and it doesn`t have a specific swear for "Go take a shit". There is one like "Go to a shit"(Dute`n cacat) but your just sending the person step into it or something, your not telling him to go take a dump

MJR · Post by **MJR** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 12:53 pm

there are lot of finnish swearwords translated at youswear.com

http://www.youswear.com/index.asp?language=Finnish

it's usually more effective when you hear it, though