Naughty words: What makes swear words so offensive?
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This wouldn't fly today, as people online will post anything, but in 1992, it literally did not get airtime or newspaper coverage because no newspaper would print it, and no TV network would even allude to it.
I understand avoiding the "n-word" because of America's still ever-present latent racism, and I can kinda understand avoiding the "f-word" because of a schizophrenic attitude to sex based on Puritan "family values", but I'm still at a loss whenever I see all kinds of other letters of the alphabet pop up now and then with no indication what the speaker is actually trying to refer to.
EDIT: Apparently HN ratelimits me whenever I get downvoted. Yay for passive aggressive auto-moderation.
[1] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cunt+(Scottis...
Women from Glasgow certainly use that word. Just as frequently as men. That's not to say all women, or all men, but in equal proportion.
I feel like as a non-native speaker I must be missing a significant cultural subtext everybody else seems to be painfully aware of (similar to how someone who's never heard of racial segregation and slavery in the US would be confused why the "n-word" strikes such a nerve).
Why is it that the word is so much more offensive in the US (and England too, apparently) than, say, certain parts of Scotland or Australia?
It's similar to the word 'fanny'. In the US, it seems it means 'bum'. The word 'fannypack' would translate to 'vagina pack' in the UK, which is pretty funny to hear. The equivalent in the UK is bumbag, where bum is the non-offensive version of arse (which is ass in the US).
Or, for those offended by my slew of filth above, similar to the old chips-crisps problem. American Chips = British Crisps. British Chips = American Fries.
A cunt is loosely defined as a horrible person. To say "he's a proper cunt" is to say "I really don't like him" or "he is deliberately unpleasant".
It always amazes me that rich/educated people swear a lot and poor/uneducated people swear a lot but in between (middle-class) everyone is ultra polite. At least that is what I found from the limited (as one person of course experiences cannot be very broad) set of meetings in NL/UK/US.
Makes sense though. The poor don't have anything to lose by offending someone else, and are likely the people who would be most offended by some curse words in the first place. The rich don't care because everyone else looks up to them for their money anyway, who's going to call them out? The middle class have everything to lose if the wrong person is offended by what they say.
I one took a long taxi trip across Glasgow. The driver was cheery, amiable, very Glaswegian, and almost incomprehensible; and I'm Scottish! I could understand about 50% of everything he said, because 50% of what he said was 'fucking'. He used it as an adjective on (as far as I could tell through his accent) every noun. It seemed to be used as a flavour enhancer --- good things were fucking great; bad things were fucking awful. Rain was fucking wet, the roads were fucking slippery, as it was nighttime it was fucking dark, etc, etc. It certainly wasn't being used in its literal sense.
I'm not part of that subculture, but I didn't find it the slightest bit offensive, merely interesting and rather weird.
Also it turns out that the police officer lied about the whole thing.
It means commoner. Most people first hear it in high school english class... for me it was Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.
"Prolet" is a social slur with similar implications as "pleb" (when used as an insult): unsophisticated, unskilled, bottom feeder, likely unemployed living off welfare and drunk.
"Proletarier" OTOH simply means "proletarian", i.e. a worker. It's not used in colloquial language but historically occurred in politics (for obvious reasons) and still pops up in some contexts.
While "Prolet" is entirely derogatory, "Proletarier" is either neutral or positive.
While the English "plebian" seems to date back to Roman times, AFAICT the German "Proletarier" is relatively recent (i.e. early communist era).
In the end this was just my predefined view of what a "swear" word was, clouding my judgement, and everyone had a good time. My in-laws later explained to me that although they knew "swear" words were meant to be offensive, they couldn't wrap their heads around why/how, and as such happily yelled "Cunt!" as easily as they would "Potato!".
To put it into perspective, I've seen nearly every word on your list in different childrens cartoons/anime.
That being said, there are a number of words that are NEVER appropriate out of starting a fight. Probably not as many as English, but I can think of about 20 or so off the top of my head.
But the best languages for swearing are probably the latin languages such as French Spanish and Italian. They have all very colorful expressions and a high variety of ways to express them. English and American English are extremely limited in comparison.
I mean, yes, fuck you isn't imperative, but I can totally imagine someone saying that in certain situations.
"Wash the dishes!...And fuck you!"
so I can imagine it happening when theres more of a stop between the two imperatives
The 2nd challenge is even easier, you just need good timing :)
It translates as "devil"
Well worth watching by the way, it's a humorous take on Star Trek and Babylon 5. The effects were made by a render-farm of PCs in their kitchen whilst a bedroom was set up for blue screen work. It was even shown on Finnish national television.
Kind of like those Quebecois swears, perkele manages to be both rude and formal: it's used in Finnish translations of the Bible for "Devil".
I'm also not convinced exclamations like "Gottverdammt!" (similar to the Dutch phrase) and "Verfickte Scheiße!" (closest equivalent to "Fuck!" I can think of) are offensive in the same way. Outside of deeply religious groups the former would mostly be frowned at for being needlessly elaborate ("Verdammt!" would suffice) whereas the latter would be frowned at for simply being obscene -- quantity vs quality basically.
I also can't find anything in the article properly addressing the use of swear words for other things than intentional vulgarity or insult. The "escalation" theory doesn't work for exclamations in reaction to pain/mistakes/mishaps (e.g. dropping something heavy on your foot). It doesn't seem to address the existence of minced oaths either (which from the starting point of actual swearwords actually de-escalate by acknowledging the offensiveness of the unminced oaths).
It's a selection of bizarre stories about some even more bizarre characters. In one of them, the hero, who is a loser wannabe rapper, gets into a shouting match with a rival rapper. The dialogue goes, "Fick dein Mütter! Fick dein Hund! Fick dein ... etc, etc." Then he pisses himself, hides under a bus, and is eventually taken home by the bus driver.
So, anyway, that's how I remember imperative informal verbs in German.
"Mutterficker" OTOH just doesn't sit right. If you're going to insult someone's mother, just call them "Hurensohn" (i.e. call their mother a prostitute).
Fun fact: "Hurenkind" is also a technical term (though these days the far less offensive "Witwe" translated from the English "widow" is often used) to describe a paragraph with its final line cut off from the page. The line itself on the next page is called "Schusterjunge" (or "Waise", from "orphan") -- "cobbler's boy".
Also, I'm totally going to have to find my own copy of Deutsch für den Ausländer.
I'd argue this is unfortunate, since many people are quick to take offense without first examining the specific intent or context behind a word's use in a particular situation.
Moreover, the listener is complicit in this grossness because it's the listener's mind which generates the imagery. Gratuitous swearing isn't merely ugly: it actively lowers the tone of a conversation. Sometimes the tone needs to be lowered. But now it's harder for sensitive listeners to think, so we risk losing the benefit of their wisdom.
It also assumes vigorous sexual intercourse (i.e. "fuck") is gross, which is either extremely prude or childish.
I'd argue that some swearwords actually merely signify intensity and can be entirely neutral to the "tone of the conversation" (in terms of the subject matter and concepts the conversation can address). If you tell someone they did a "fucking great job" the only way that would affect the conversation negatively (sarcasm etc aside) would be if the phrasing offends the other person's sensibilities.
I'm guessing the falls in the same category as the "mock insults" theory (i.e. close friends casually insulting each other to signal their intimacy rather than actually causing offense).
Interestingly, While I was a kid, I used to think that since God created Darkness and Light, he must have created both Good and Bad.... But later as I grew up, I have realized that, its the purpose and end-results of something things we do, defines it either good or bad.
A much more edifying article about the morality of swearing is this one: http://www.pement.org/docs/swearing.htm
Yours seems to be the American standard.
Oh, and in parts of Asia they eat with fork and spoon.
Martin Luther famously complained about the then-new forks, since God had given every man hands after all, hadn't he?
I remember a story how the Nazis in WW2 would identify American spies in Germany by observing how they held and used their cutlery in restaurants. Sadly, I was unable to find the story just now.
The US thing of cutting up all your food ahead of time before eating it is practically unheard of here, and the few times I've noticed people doing it it's always looked very strange.
Then again, nothing makes sense here anymore.