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Survey: vulgarisms of different languages | ||
Tags: Swearing | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 9 of 25 22 April 2010 at 12:34am | IP Logged | |||||
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I did the survey and was again reminded of how inoffensive Norwegian swear words are - at least those who are commonly used. I was quite surprised to see that in Spain I could meet nice ladies who without blinking would use swear words, that I could not have managed to say in Norwegian no matter how much money they had payed me.
If we want to be really offensive, we go into English. The funny thing is that when I was in Ukraine they said that when they wanted to say something really offensive they would use Mongolian words. Do the rest of you use your local ones, or do you also take swear words from other languages? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| psy88 Senior Member United States Joined 5591 days ago 469 posts - 882 votes Studies: Spanish*, Japanese, Latin, French | Message 10 of 25 22 April 2010 at 3:10am | IP Logged | |||||
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[QUOTE=rhapthorne] it is undobtedly one of the first things that attracts our awareness when acquiring a language and living among the native speakers of it. It is mainly because of the fact that vulgarisms are often filled with emotions (positive or negative) which makes them easier to be memorized than 'regular' words. There is also a theory stating that swearwords are stored in completely different parts of brain than non-offensive words, which is proven by the cases of patients suffering from cerebral dysfunctions (aphasia etc.) who despite the lack of ability to form fluent and logical sentences are still capable of swearing.
As for the second claim (about natural means of communication), it is known that vulgarisms are capable of expressing emotions in a way than non-vulgar words cannot achieve, so they convey an emotional meaning which makes the speech more informal, relaxed and casual. Please add me to the list of those who disagree. I do not agree that vulgarisms are filled with more emotion nor are they easier to memorize. As far as being stored in a different part of the brain, I would like to see the data to support that idea. And the beauty of any language is not found in the vulgarities but the expression of thoughts and emotions by the use of an extensive and sophisticated vocabulary. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrhenrik Triglot Moderator Norway Joined 6079 days ago 482 posts - 658 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, French Personal Language Map | Message 11 of 25 22 April 2010 at 3:15am | IP Logged | |||||
Or Finnish! "Perkele" really caught on (at least in my circles) after the Norwegian comedy series "Borettslaget" in which we were introduced to a fairly alcoholic Swedish- speaking Finnish gentleman with a fairly exotic vocabulary. It has somewhat declined since though, I guess. I rarely swear in Norwegian, not because of any personal aversions against swearing (five minutes with me here in Cornwall would prove otherwise), but simply because our swear words are so weak. When I do use swear words in Norwegian it's more a matter of using them as ways of slightly increasing the "strength" of a sentence. "Shit!" caught on in Norwegian a long while ago and has normalised in most generations in my area, and "f**k" is now tagging along. Norwegian has a really unimpressive library of curses - although there are some exotic ones up north, but they're more combinations of fairly offensive words etc. "Hæstkuk", for instance. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5453 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 12 of 25 22 April 2010 at 6:23am | IP Logged | |||||
It is a well known fact that nobody south of Trøndelag knows how to swear. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| rhapthorne Newbie Poland Joined 5331 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English | Message 13 of 25 22 April 2010 at 10:38am | IP Logged | |||||
There are numerous examples supporting both points of view (mine and yours), but I think that the controversy brought by this matter is absolutely positive and the diversity of opinions is necessary in order to obtain objective results of the study. But let me provide several sources supporting the ideas I presented. As for the different parts of brain incorporated into the production of cursing, please read a chapter from the book by dr Timothy Jay entitled 'Why We Curse: A Neuro-Psycho-Social Theory of Speech' "The literature on automatic cursing following Broca and Jackson is sparse; interest in the phenomenon waned until the mid-1950s. Alajouanine (1956) discussed oral expression in aphasia based on his study of 317 cases. He regarded cursing as a form of “verbal stereotypy” that was uttered unconsciously (generally in anger) and involuntarily, with or without linguistic meaning. Smith (1966), in his oft-cited paper, reported the case of “E.C.” who after a left hemispherectomy would utter expletives or short, well-articulated, understandable emotional phrases such as “Goddamit,” providing clear evidence of a RH(right hemisphere) cursing module. Over the course of recovery, E.C. produced more propositional speech and he could repeat sentences on command. Another important report correlating emotional behavior and hemispherically restricted lesions is Gainotti’s (1972) analysis of 160 aphasics; half had LH lesions and half had RH lesions. Curses, swearing, and religious invocations were common emotional expressions produced by the LBD patients, with catastrophic reaction. Cursing is frequent among Wernicke-type aphasics (those who have difficulty comprehending speech), found in 57%, compared to the 47% of Broca-type aphasics (those who have difficulty producing fluent speech). Patients with RH lesions are referred to as having “indifference reactions” (IR), a lack of interest in one’s mental/emotional status. The majority of the IR patients (70 of 80) do not swear, and they lose the use of metaphorical speech. These three studies provide solid evidence that LBD (left brain damage) produces patients with a range of speech disabilities; however, cursing abilities are retained. The case for RH cursing has become even stronger in recent years." The very same book also accounts for memorization of swearwords: "One might predict, in verbal-encoding studies, a von Restorff effect for curse words. The von Restorff effect describes how unique items in a list are remembered more accurately than other words that are similar to each other. Unique words, such as curse words, will “pop out” of the list. Curse words will also stand out in a narrative story. Consequently, curse words will be better remembered than nonemotional, nonsexual information (nontaboo words)." As for the emiotional value: "Thus, curse words are used primarily for emotional or connotative purposes (Jay & Danks, 1977) because they offer linguistic information about emotions in order to affect comprehension processes. The connotative function of curse words is essential for speech because it provides information about feelings and emotional states that other words do not." If anyone's interested in the topic, there are numerous books to be found on the Internet, also in the PDF format. Thanks for your response! Edited by rhapthorne on 22 April 2010 at 10:51am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| StueyM Newbie United Kingdom franticfrenchmissi&# Joined 5546 days ago 9 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Portuguese | Message 14 of 25 22 April 2010 at 12:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
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What's an "Arschgeweih"?
edit: a trip to Google images has answered my own question. Edited by StueyM on 22 April 2010 at 12:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 15 of 25 22 April 2010 at 2:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
I do occasionally curse in Norwegian, but I have to line up at least 5 of them together to even begin to express the rage I want to convey. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| dramireck Newbie Colombia Joined 5364 days ago 9 posts - 15 votes Speaks: English | Message 16 of 25 22 April 2010 at 2:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't think that Dominique will find "non-biased" responses in this forum. People interested in foreign languages
are probably more open minded than the average. That will affect their perception of the offensiveness of different swear words. For example, in Latin America, insults associated to sexual orientation can be very serious... However, I would not feel very offended by that kind of insult. I think that posting your survey in this forum is bad methodology... If you really want useful responses for your study, you will need representative randomized samples. I also think that the part of the survey about ordering the english swear words according to their offensiveness is bound to produce misleading results. Most multilingual people are "cultural amphibians". They do not evaluate the offensiveness of foreign words by translating them into their mother tongues. They learn those foreign swear words and their shades of meaning in context. That means that when I hear the English word "motherf**ker" I know that it is not always an insult... However, the Spanish translation of that word sounds simply appalling. Edited by dramireck on 22 April 2010 at 4:10pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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