Re: Vulgarity

On Thu, 3 Jun 1999, John Cowan wrote:

> Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
>=20
> > > You mean like "Your mother's so fat" jokes?  But I love those!
> >
> > Ai! Typo here - I mean humor_less_... But out of curiosity,
> > how does the obesity of ones mother mean she's of easy virtue?
>=20
> It doesn't.  To be accused of being fat, though, is far more
> insulting to Americans than to be accused of being "of easy virtue";
> it implies an utter lack of self-control.  Fat people are one
> of the few minorities who may still be openly spoken of with contempt.
>=20
Ah, I see. I don't think it's so severe in the Netherlands,
although that may just be because there are, according to
statistics, less extremely obese people. And of course, it
depends a bit on what one thinks is the line between pleasantly
well-filled and fat.=20

I think I might have been guilty of this too, when I made the
unpleasant proprietor of the Pinewood in Broi extremely obese.
I don't think I have really thought about this issue in the Charyan
context - the frequent shortages of food could mean that a plump
figure is prized, and I know of one person, Qunir tan Loreq,=20
the wife of a butcher in one of the better quarters that her=20
husband is the more fond of her because she's not as thin as=20
a stick (_pening tan bay logh tauga_), but plump as milk
(pahang tan foy=E9 logh ga).

>=20
> I once collected a story, which I no longer have, about a Dutch teenager
> moving to South Africa some 15-20 years ago and being placed in
> an Afrikaans class.  He was asked to write an essay about himself
> and his family and then read it aloud.  Unfortunately, it contained
> the sentence "My father breeds animals", which (perhaps under English
> influence) has quite a different meaning in Afrikaans!
>=20
Took a bit of thinking, but yes, the grin is here...

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt