Re: USAGE: Dirty words (was: USAGE: Re: Dutch v or f)

Maarten wrote:


>> Van: Jan van Steenbergen
>
>> When I came to Polish to study, one of the first things I did was buying
a
>> bunch of pornography, in order to learn the words that you cannot  find
in
>the
>> dictionaries. This turned out te be really helpful. It gave me a much
>better
>> understanding of the kind of talk you hear on the street, which is full
of
>such
>> words. A necessary prerequisite for a translator, I think...
>
>So, jumping to the ultimate conclusion, you are a advocating the use of
>pornographic texts in schools, especially in language classes?
>
Well, it would certainly get the students' attention! :-) But never in
America.........where the current flap involves a book published by the
Univ. of Minnesota Press-- it dares to suggest that sex between adults and
_teens_ [at least] may not necessarily always be harmful or "abusive". (Come
to think of it, I've known some mighty aggressive 15-17 year-olds......)

Re Jan's original post:  In the olden days (before porn was so widely
available), it was suggested you take a lover.  But that might not always
work, if the lover turned out to be repressed or squeamish about using such
words........  In those days too, one had to go to great lengths to find
porn in print.  There were the Olympia Press editions of the Marquis de
Sade, but the translation was so antiquated and "lit'r'y" that your new
vocabulary would be quite quaint.  The only way it helped me-- I learned
"verge", so did not need to ask for a meaning when I heard Spanish
"¡vergas!"

Porn videos are much more fun, but, strangely ;-),  lacking in dialogue.