Re: OT: Slang, curses and vulgarities

Hello!

On Friday 28 January 2005 19:47, Gary Shannon wrote:

 > Have any of you taken any of your conlangs down the
 > path toward slang, curses, cuss words and vulgarities?

Unfortunately, this is one of the things still to come.
Words that have to do with the areas of shame (e.g. the
sexual facilities) as well as things and actions considered
to be disgusting or bad (excrements for example) are
predestined to become curse words, aren't they?

 > (Often hidden from view, however.

Unfortunately, yes. One of my English teachers once told us
better to avoid cursing in a foreign language if you're
visiting the respective country.

Interestingly, "f*ck" and "sh*t" have made it into the
German language although we have of course own words for
these. Even more interestingly, "(to) kick ass" means
something positive in English ("Oh my f*cking god, that's
kicking loads of ass, man!"). It's the same with
"geil" in German: Actually, "geil" means "hot,
horny". And, although they are related to one another,
cursewords may have a different level of vulgarity in
different languages. In one of the recent English lessons,
our teacher told us that "sh*t" is considered to be worse
than "f*ck" in English. In German, it's just the other way
round.

 > 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.

Heh. I know only a few English coursewords, the ones used in
the media. But I have no idea how to curse in French. I
only know that "merde!" means "sh*t!". The worst we learnt
from our French textbook was "Zut alors!", which was
translated as "Verdammt und zugenäht!" or something equally
old-fashioned.

 > Seems to me that's an important part of any language.

Agreed. Cursing is a part of culture. Most certainly,
there's not one single day where you haven't cursed.

Carsten

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