Re: OT: Slang, curses and vulgarities

B. Garcia wrote:

>
> * Can those of you from England and Ireland confirm that "cunt" is not
> offensive at all and used all the time there?
Well, I can't absolutely confirm it, but there's an element of truth in it.
Certainly, it might be weaker and used a bit more often, and lots of people
who swear all the time will include "cunt" just as much as "fuck", "bollocks"
etc. But there's still a taboo in many circles. Lots of people whose utterances
are 50% strong swearwords don't use it at all, or save it for genuine swearing.

But (to reverse direction again) it seems to me like the taboo on the word
"cunt" is a feature of global English which has taken root here, and that
natively, so to speak, it's just another swearword. So both attitudes occur.

I guess the person who contributed that comment was Irish; hard to imagine
anyone else using the phrase "England and Ireland" like that :). I'm speaking
from an Irish perspective, basically, but to some extent I would say similar
things about England, em, Britain.

s.
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