“白痴” (moron or idiot) counts as a swear in zh. “抐屎” (to churn shit) isn’t a swear in zh-min-nan.
In French putain is a swear, an insult and a punctuation for daily regulation conversations.
It's interesting to see what qualifies as a swear in different languages.
Submitted 1 day ago by YICHM@lemmy.world to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
Comments
synapse1278@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 7 hours ago
Forget the swear words, actual slurs get used lol. I hear my parents casually use the term “低B” or “傻仔” when refering to autistic people or people with Down Syndrome. There is zero Political Correctness, its so fucked. You have a slight depression issue and its suddenly shameful. These things are hidden from statistics so they seem rare, but yet every village seem to have a few of those people. They get treated so badly. Socially ostricized. Everyone talks about it like “Did you hear about their family, their kid is a 低B” on phone call gossips. And with One Child Policy, if their first child is a son, they couldn’t have another child*, so their bloodline is dead, they can maybe apply to get permission from the government to have another child, but it could be too late, fertility issues with old parents, you know… so the parents are shunned. The kid will never be allowed in a “normal” school. Universities kick students out after they got accepted, because they found out about their autism diagnosis. No “ADA” equivalent. So cooked.
(*For context, in rural areas, if the first child is female, they can apply for permission to have another child, two is the absolute max limit, even if their second child is female, that’s it. If first child is male, that’s it, no more. Its patriarchy basically, male-preference in society )
9point6@lemmy.world 1 day ago
My favourite is the difference between French french and Canadian French.
Many the uniquely Canadian French swears are oddly religious compared to French french
Horsey@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Québécois sweats are literally church vocabulary words. You could probably just use any church vocabulary in place of the common ones and I’d understand what you meant.
psoul@lemmy.world 1 day ago
This. How did Christ, chalice and tabernacle become an insult ?!
slazer2au@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It varies within english too.
Cunt is an offensive term in British English while it is a term of endearment in Australian English
9point6@lemmy.world 1 day ago
FWIW I think it’s mostly gone the Aussie way in the UK over the past decade unless you’re taking to a pensioner
kip@piefed.zip 1 day ago
I’ll confirm this, my english mother in her 70s who happily uses swears of all strengths up to and including fuck used to screw her face up in a scowl if you dropped a cunt in conversation, but now doesn’t bat an eye
48954246@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Context is very important there. I definitely wouldn’t recommend calling random people in the streets cunts
wewbull@feddit.uk 1 day ago
This is one of the reasons I think education in languages are really important. It makes you realise that language is just an encoding of a thought. The sounds are irrelevant. The choice to try to insult is key. Just because somebody used a word you do or don’t take offence to doesn’t matter. The important part is whether they meant to cause you harm.
ik5pvx@lemmy.world 1 day ago
You know a language when you can understand if the waiter at the restaurant is insulting you
You really know a language when you can get back at him
teft@piefed.social 1 day ago
You really know a language if you have a friend who only speaks your second language.
wewbull@feddit.uk 1 day ago
My french is good enough for the first part, and it’s practically non-existant.
MattBlackAlien@lemmy.world 1 day ago
In France: s/if/how
psx_crab@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Mak kau hijau (your mom’s green) is a swear word in malay
hakunawazo@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
psx_crab@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
DagwoodIII@piefed.social 1 day ago
Your mom is green?
OR
The greens your Mom owns?
psx_crab@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Ya like specifically mean the colour of your mom. Maybe there’s a second meaning i’m too ching chong to understand
rumschlumpel@feddit.org 1 day ago
Many languages have using the wrong level of familiarity/honorifics as a personal insult, while e.g. in English this only exists in the form of adresses for royals (which is sometimes used mockingly).
blave@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Whatever you say, your highness…
rumschlumpel@feddit.org 1 day ago
Silence, peasant!
Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Sure thing princess.
teft@piefed.social 1 day ago
I don’t ever swear in spanish because their swears never feel strong enough. Carachimba (pussy face) just doesn’t have the same ring as motherfucker. I do love listening to natives swear in spanish, though. It really rolls off the tongue when you’re fluent.
psx_crab@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Because the language is quite…sexy.
Not as sexy as irish swearing at me, that’s for sure.
kelpie_returns@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
Irish for you? That’s Scottish for me. I once saw a woman yelling at her brother in public with a heavy, heavy Scottish accent and a head full of inky black curls taking rapid to the wind. It woke something deep inside of me.
“And yeh dinney thenk tae arsk, yeh daft cont?! What in the fahk is wroung weth yeh?!” Unnf. Heart still flutters at the thought and idk whats wrong with me so dont ask unless its in a Scottish accent and you are being very critical plz
rumschlumpel@feddit.org 1 day ago
Hijo de puta (or was it “de la puta”?) seems fairly strong? Though kind of misogynistic.
OfCourseNot@fedia.io 1 day ago
It has many variations: 'hijoputa', 'hijo de puta', 'hijo de la gran puta', 'hijo de la gran putísima', 'hijo de mil putas'...
XeroxCool@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Son of a bitch (unmarried woman) / bastard (born outside of wedlock). Both are pretty casual at this point in my American region. My grandmother meant it if she said it, though. But this all turned around, possibly nationally, in 2015 with the release Nathaniel Rateliffe’s hit single, SOB.
teft@piefed.social 1 day ago
If you want to sound native say it like hueputa. It’s a contraction and how they say it when angry. Make sure you put the emphasis on the “pu”.
DagwoodIII@piefed.social 1 day ago
Also, things change over time.
“Strumpet” used to be a pretty bad insult.
cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 hours ago
My favourite example of this is Hab SoSlI’ Quch in Klingon, which means your mother has a smooth forehead. Of course, Klingon is a made-up language from Star Trek, but, they had to figure it out as they went along. I don’t think there was a formal Klingon language in the 1960s when the race was introduced. The language became official and learnable in the 1990s or 2000s. And “your mother has a smooth forehead” most likely comes from Worf’s son Alexander, whose mother is human. So Klingons are like 3-5x stronger than humans, and this definitely includes the females. Star Trek VII established that backhanding a Klingon woman was part of a mating ritual (this was sort of played for laughs, but also, a man hitting a woman is never really funny), so the idea was, a Klingon man is not a real man if he has a human woman for a mate, because it means he can’t handle a Klingon woman. Now, a lot of races have weird rules about dating outside your race, and it’s disgusting. Star Trek was playing to that. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with a Klingon man finding love with a human woman (and IIRC we never met her, but Worf would go on to get married to a Trill named Jadzia Dax on Deep Space Nine, and while Trills are interesting, they’re no stronger than humans, so similar point). But Klingons are all about honour, so when someone told Alexander “your mother has a smooth forehead,” they were saying his father lacked the honour to mate with a true Klingon woman, and that dishonour was hereditary.
I like Japanese cursing. The ones I know aren’t about what you are, it’s about what you lack. Baka is everyone’s first Japanese word, it seems like, and it means idiot, but it’s more like… “one who lacks sense.” They’re shaming you for doing dumb shit. Or “hentai,” which means pervert (it also means porn, but, like, the kinky shit, but it really means someone who would watch that), but it’s more like “one who lacks tact.” The less common one, “aho” is exactly what you think if you know English curses. Often translating to “jerk,” it’s literally just “asshole” with fewer letters, and means the exact same thing. Except it’s more like “you lack kindness.” It’s the difference between flipping someone off when they cut you off in traffic (cursing in English) vs giving them a thumbs-down (cursing in Japanese). One makes them hostile toward you while the other gives them more of a chance to reflect on what they did. And maybe that’s the point.
I wanna know if you can curse in Loxian, but only two people know it, and they’re two of the most gentle souls on the planet, and one of them made the language, so I highly doubt you can curse in Loxian. Loxian was made by Roma Ryan, and the only other speaker of the language is the Irish singer, Enya — who Ryan writes songs for and has done for 40 years. This is what it sounds like. Yes, it sounds like Gaelic — it’s meant to. They actually came up with a whole back story for the language. The Loxians are just Irish people in the future who traveled to the stars, first by way of Mars, then through the Loxian gate (which I guess is like a Stargate in space, like Stargate Universe had?) to travel to a faraway galaxy. So it’s like future Gaelic/Irish. And she has four other songs in Loxian. Yeah, probably no swearing in Loxian… I mean, can you even imagine Enya so much as saying anything unkind about anyone?
Personally, I prefer English swears. Wanker, tosser, bugger(er), they’re quick, they’re dirty, they’ll usually get you in a fight… but maybe you make a friend by the end of the night.
gramie@lemmy.ca 5 hours ago
In Sesotho, a language of Southern Africa, there are no swear words, however there are insults that (I was told) may cause someone to want to fight or even kill you.
Those insults: