Re: Swearing in other cultures (was Langmaker.com and...)

On Thu, 3 Mar 2005 13:48:15 +0100, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote:
>
> Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> writes:
>
> > Quoting Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>:
> > > In Hindi the worst insult is to call someone _sálá_ "wife's brother"
> > > because it implies "I've f*cked your sister".  Thus the word has
> > > to be used with discretion even when speaking of one's actual
> > > brothers-in-law!
> >
> > Possibly a linguistic urban myth, but I heard that in parts of China, the
> > ultimate insult is to tell someone "I'm your father", which of course implies
> > "I fucked your mother". I suppose they were much amused by Star Wars.
>
> Hmm, I only know 'His/Her mother's!' as a very bad Chinese insult, but
> I don't know many...  This seemingly strange insult is insulting by
> cultural agreement, it seems, and the real insult is just not
> explicitly expressed. :-)
I once wrote a co-worker from the former Soviet Union a note telling
her that her mother had called, and wrote "tvoja mat' zvonila". She
later told me that she was startled at first, and advised me to write
"tvoja mama" next time.

What I had written was grammatically correct, she said, but was
uncomfortably close to "tvoju mat'", which is another such
insult-by-cultural-agreement, since there's no verb (it's merely
"your-ACC mother"), though I believe there's a canonical expansion
using a certain verb which is part of "mat" (Russian swearing; that
term, in turn, I believe comes from this "canonical insult" involving
"mat'").

Still, I found this reminiscent of what BP said about "...even when
speaking of one's actual brothers-in-law".

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
Watch the Reply-To!