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Re: OT: Slang, curses and vulgarities

From:Stephen Mulraney <ataltanie@...>
Date:Monday, January 31, 2005, 17:20
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. -- What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he Stephen Mulraney were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning http://ataltane.net sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent? ataltane@ataltane.net -- Richard P. Feynman http://livejournal.com/~ataltane