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Comment by ericjang | Hacker News Reader

Is this an American cultural thing, or are other cultures just as averse to public swearing?

It's not particularly more professional to cheekily use an obvious substitute in place of 'fucking', either. If you are saying "big ... fun ... rocket" or "big freakin' rocket" anyone over the age of 6 will know what you are doing and, if they are inclined to feel uncomfortable or offended, will still be so.

So for the most part I would say "either swear or don't", but if you are going to play that game, you need to be better at it, and call it something like "a big functional rocket" or "a big futuristic rocket", which is plausible, and then remain completely straight-faced, forever, never admitting in public or private there could be any other meaning for the acronym, ever. Leave historians a hundred years from now guessing.

"Wink wink, I'm not cussing!!!" is just another version of "I'm not touching you!!!".

Big Falcon Rocket?

Taboo and forbidden words apparently exist in all human cultures. There are a few other things, too, and some things that you could expect to be there are missing :)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_universal

There aren't any real swear words in Japanese. So no it's not just an American thing.

How do you explain this?

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

Fakku? That's a transliteration from English. Most Japanese speakers generally agree that Japanese doesn't "really" have any of its own swear words. Yes if you get technical there are some like those listed on that site, but generally there are not, it is a very polite language.

Try calling your female Japanese friends "manko" and see if you still have female Japanese friends.

Please see my above comment. "generally agree" and "Yes if you get technical there are some" and "but generally there are not"

You just picked out one example. That defies my definition of generally?

In my experience the public face of Japanese society is very polite, but that's distinct from what can be said with the language, and what people say with the language in private face contexts. It also varies to some degree by class, but you could say the same thing about English.

Also, loanwords like fakku are a legitimate part of the language. The katakana script is used almost exclusively for them and many sentences have them, spoken and written.

It's largely an American thing.

False. The Japanese language itself doesn't really have any swear words let alone the culture being averse to using any swear words in public.

GP asked if only Americans are averse to swearing. Japanese don't have swearing so they're not averse to it. So this is not a counterexample as far as I can see.

Americans love violence but sex and swearing is evil horrible stuff.

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