Re: OT: Slang, curses and vulgarities

On 29 Jan 2005, at 5.47 am, Gary Shannon wrote:

> Have any of you taken any of your conlangs down the
> path toward slang, curses, cuss words and vulgarities?
> I was just wondering because it seems like every
> natlang has it's dark underbelly.  (Often hidden from
> view, however. After two years of high school German
> and a year of college German I was left with the
> impression that the German people were hyper-polite
> and had no way to cuss each other out or hurl vile
> insults at each other.  Such things are never
> mentioned in "polite society" and certainly not taught
> in a high school language class.)
Maybe not in your high school classes, but most definitely in ours!
Typically if the language teacher was away, another teacher (fluent in
the language being taught) would take the class as an extra; seeing as
they didn't really know what that class was doing it was far from
uncommon for them to teach impolite language. Very necessary for
sounding normal, anyway. (And this was the best state school, and one
of the best schools, in Victoria ... but if teachers can't talk to
students, how can they be expected to teach?)

Also, it's the kind of thing everyone in the schoolyard talked about:
swear words in other languages. I don't think *any* of my peers ever
had the impression that everyone was always polite in another language,
even if they didn't know how to be impolite.

> But what about in conlangs? Can a you curse like a
> drunken sailor in your conlang?  Seems to me that's an
> important part of any language.
I haven't got that far yet.

--
Tristan.