Being bilingual makes swearing easier | Hacker News Reader

Being bilingual makes swearing easier

theguardian.com

49 pointsw-m49 comments

> While your language skills can be more than adequate, not being able to fully structure your surroundings through language might leave you feeling alienated; not a part of the society you live in. Or perhaps you are perceived as rude or socially awkward for using the wrong words in the wrong emotional context

I experience this in reverse. I'm more fluent in English than in my native language so when I need to communicate with people from my home country, my speech sounds like a poorly worded translation from English (which it is in a way). It's a very strange experience.

I experience this too, especially in technical discussions where everyone involved had learned the concepts in English originally. There is this peculiar feeling when you exactly know what the original English sentence was before its garbled version got uttered in your common language.

"Liebe Alle"

"Macht Sinn" (makes sense) is almost a legitimate phrase already and "Der frühe Vogel fängt den Wurm" (The early bird catches the worm) might be soon.

Haha yeah it’s pretty awkward to be having a conversation in my native language, in my own country where I have lived almost my whole life and suddenly want to say a word and only remembering what the word is called in English.

This happens me from time to time for whatever reason. And I’m not even an expert in English. I guess in my case it comes from reading and writing a lot in English even though the language I speak to others with my mouth the most is by far my native tongue.

I know this feeling all too well. I find that the internet in my own language is very low quality compared to online content in English. If I go to a bookstore, probably 70% or more is translations of books originally written in English. So I prefer to just buy the original on Amazon. There are entire subjects I only "know" in English. Every once in a while, when having a conversation about one of those subjects, I just can't find the right words in my language. I think it happens to a lot of people here and everywhere in the world.

Affirmative. I started having problems talking about my profession at the university, since everything I read was in English, to the point the teacher complained because I was mixing English and my native language. This experience however exposed to me to the fact that I did not want to talk about my profession in my native language, because all the important stuff is in English (software development).

It’s infuriating when the word does not exist in the other language, so you search and search and end up just constructing something with several words.

Does not even need to be a complex word: cheap for example does not have a word in french, you need “pas cher” (not expensive) or “bon marche” (~good deal)

We all forget a common word from time to time.

I guess if you have backup word stored in different part of brain, it gives you more options.

I get this too. I moved from France when I was young and after more than two decades spent in England speaking French is often quite challenging and frustrating.

I’ve made a point to start reading in French again and to make efforts to at least write in French a little every day to get back into it.

An acquaintance of mine of German origin had lived most of her life in the US. She spoke fluent and unaccented German but said that when in Germany, she preferred to speak English because she was so out of step culturally that it was easier to be coded as a foreigner than a time traveling native.

I do find it that I reach for an English swear word far easier and with less effort even in the context I should perhaps refrain from saying it. Especially in work context when expressing dissatisfaction. Funny enough whenever I hit my self I will always reach for my mother tongue (Croatian) swear expression. For the shear ability to to be creative when swearing, Croatian/Serbian beats English and so does Italian. A professor of mine 'swears' that for him Portuguese is the best or at least 'juiciest' for swearing.

I'm a Polish expat in English speaking country and have the same experience. When I screw something up at work I just swear in Polish as it's not as obvious to people around me as it would be had I used a profanity in English.

Also, love to listen to heated, swearing-heavy exchanges from Italians or Spaniards. Don't understand a word but it sounds awesome :)

love that your hn handle is so creative with an english swear word :)

Well, the premise was bit-charmer but too late did I realise most people would read it like you did :)

However I, too, would like to see more dogs bear arms.

Does that overlap, I wonder, with the LISPers who would like to arm bears?

French living in non-french countries for many years here.

My conscious swear words have switched to English now, for small things.

When I'm hurt or really in trouble though, French kicks in unconsciously.

What I like about French way of swearing is that it can be infinite since the words are linked together. Most French swear words are descriptive, which means you can almost postpone the subject indefinitely and continue swearing:

"^putain de bordel de chiotte de saloperie de merdasse mal foutue de... [<insert description>]* de merde$"

I was born in Croatia but grew up in Amsterdam and have been living for 20+ years in the US. In Holland swearing involves a lot of diseases.. for example klerelijer (cholera sufferer) kankerlijer or krijg de kanker (cancer sufferer, get cancer) In Croatia it's more like fuck your mother (jebem ti mater) God fucks your mother (jebo ti Bog mater)

In Istria we have a nicer version of telling someone to fuck God (jebi Boga) Marry God (idi Boga ženit)... you would say that to family members when you don't want to be vulgar but the message is still more or less the same :-)

Haha, as a fellow Istrijan I agree with you on the differences in regional swears between Istrians and other Croats. This swears are also some of those that I use and I think you described the use well, as in these are tolerated around "family table". Usually I use combination of Porco/a (pig) + relevant religious icon pronounced in a badly Italian accent when properly upset.

p.s- sritno Novo Lito (using my father side ikavica, found in Karojba town region)

Long ago, when I was eradicating casual swearing from my speech, I began by swapping the swear words for innocent words like "yowza", "geepers" and non sequitur foreign phrases like "un deux trois!" or "Cinco de Mayo!" (try it, said forcefully they work). This has evolved to non-existent words... "Jinkers" being my casual favorite as it has no sound-alike swear words the way "fudge" does. However, when something unexpected and shocking happens, such as mashing a thumb with a hammer or such, a string of implosive nonsense erupts from my mouth that would make Yosemite Sam proud. Normally this happens in private or only around folks who know me. But once it happened when I was buying some car tires & thwacked one of my fingers. Out it came. When I realized what I was doing and stopped, I looked over at the sales person. They had this shocked and confused expression. They had no idea what I had said, but I had clearly conveyed something. Perhaps this is how language began?

In a sense it makes swearing harder, because hitting the right tone in a language that is not your mother tongue is sooo hard. An no, just trying to never ever swear is not the solution because you will not know where the line exactly is and staying away from anything possibly offensive will make your communication boring and inefficient too.

Also, movies are a great way to pick up L2s but not necessarily the best way to learn in exactly which registers swearing or its avoidance fit...

Absolutely, what really spoiled me even more is (the early) Reddit. I learned a lot from it but the language that was cultivated there is certainly not how grown up people speak to each other in English speaking countries. Reddit is not the only culprit but the one - for better of worse - that probably influenced my English the most.

Even worse, you might pick up regional terms which have different impact elsewhere. Mexican Spanish has some common swear terms that are super offensive elsewhere in the Spanish speaking world. Even within Mexico, it varies by region and context.

> maybe bilingual couples have a communicative advantage?

That would be the happy path but This seems to cut both ways depending on mood: benefit of the doubt has to be stretched when you don’t master the language (and cultural references etc) but you can also be maliciously misinterpreted in wrong ways (opposite of benefit of the doubt). Then, switching languages mid argument takes on significance and so on.

Oh, I love this. My native tongue is Lithuanian, which doesn't have such power swear words, compared to Russian or English. I live in the UK, so all the public swearing is done in English. At home, I switch to Russian swear words,even though we only speak Lithuanian or Engish in our family.

My guess as to why swearing in particular is easier would be that it’s mainly due to classic conditioning. When you’re a kid, you tend to learn through punishment (e.g parent telling you off) which words are not acceptable before you really understand what the words mean. Being told off is an aversive stimulus and you form an emotional association to the sound of the word. Later you might learn that these words can be wielded to excite others too, either to make them upset or to just to increase the emotional impact of something you say. In a second language, you’re less likely to have been conditioned that way, or at least as strongly. Regardless, I’ve definitely noticed the effect myself with English being my second language, even though I do swear a fair amount in my native Swedish too.

Living in Finland, it's always weird hearing what would be very strong English swear words on television/radio during the daytime - explicit James Blunt and Alanis Morissette lyrics on pop radio for example - which probably wouldn't be allowed in the UK atleast.

I'm bilingual, and I think I might have a slightly different personality in English than in Spanish.

It definitely has to do with how things feel when processing them in one or the other. English is more detached for me.

I remember one guy actively trying to get me to rile up in a business setting. Had he spoken spanish I might have fallen for it, but since he was using english, his word's emotional content was dulled, so I was able to fend off the attack much more easily.

Also, "fuck" is such a fantastic word.

I have found that being at the receiving end of cursing in your non-native language appears to greatly reduce the effectiveness of the cussing as finer points and nuances get lost in the translation compared to being reprimanded in my native language.

It’s odd hearing foreigners curse in English because it seems they haven’t quite earned that right. You know their mothers never washed their mouths out with soap!

Someone upthread said something similar about apologies also being easier (to deliver) in a second language: I bet that just as a non-native speaker's English cursing feels oddly empty or off to native speakers, apologies come off as insincere. At least that's how I feel about formal apologies in my second language: I can know all the fancy form language, but delivered without the accompanying deeply-socialized guilt/remorse/shame it's just so much hot air.

The English (especially American) puritanism makes the language poorer in my opinion.

What to Americans might sound very offensive to an English person is just an interjection.

In other cases it can "go around" like the French-Quebec where the swearwords are church related

Right. In Hungary we're weirdly proud of how elaborate our swearing is.

And it's way way more offensive than anything usually used in English. In English it's just mostly isolated words, fuck, fucking, shit, cunt etc.

In English, if you hit your toe against the kitchen cabinet, how would people react if you said: "oh, may that rotten stinky whore God fuck his dirty dick into the sky!" And you come up with it on the fly, this is just an example. Obviously people don't talk like this all the time anywhere, but I don't think this level of offensiveness is usual in English.

It's not only swearing, it's much easier to say "sorry" in a foreign language than in your own.

For example in Polish there's 3 words for sorry:

- przepraszam (mostly used when it's a serious matter)

- pardon (mostly used ironically or in small matters by old people)

- sorry/sorki (mostly used ironically or in minor things by young people)

Interesting. I've found myself being more expressive and using a wider range of tones speaking English than in my native language.

This is absolutely true. When i translate english insults to my native language(zulu) they sound so heavy and so evil.

I love being able to swear profusely in three languages - it confuses the hell out of people.

As a Swede I can confirm that this is "så fucking jävla sant".

I let google translate pronounce it and the tone with which it does so fits perfectly.

The writer seems to conflate bilingualism and multilingualism. Nowadays most non-Anglosaxons are bilingual at minimum, I wonder how much it helps to speak three, four, five languages when you stub your toe.

Ahh caralho! fuck puta de mi vida, cyka blyat..

And outside of the west, monolinguism is rare. Speaking two or three languages is the norm for the majority of humans.

Citation?

Thats exclusively reserved for mother tongue.

As knowing a foreign language is the norm outside anglosphere, I'd expect most people to understand bilingualism as simultaneous bilingualism: "Simultaneous bilingualism is a form of bilingualism that takes place when a child becomes bilingual by learning two languages from birth." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simultaneous_bilingualism

I don't know how many people are simultaneously bilingual rather than learning a second language later on. I'd assume more English speakers are the latter than the former.

I didn't know either but it seems to be common (>25% of world population): "It is estimated that half of the world is functionally bilingual, and the majority of those bilinguals are 'native speakers' of their two languages."

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