Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Multilingual swearing
They say one of the first things people learn when picking up a new language are swear words. When I was a kid and a friend was explaining how pig latin worked one of the first phrases I uttered was aa very gleeful “uck-fay ou-yay”. It didn’t occur to me right away why she looked offended. It just sounded exotic to me, and not like a swear word at all.
Growing up in a household with a Chinese mom and a Chinese grandmother, naturally I learned to speak the language. (Technically it was Taiwanese, not quite as useful as Mandarin.) But I never learned any swear words. It was kind of embarrassing when other kids would find out I could speak another language and they would often ask, “How do you say shit?” When I said I don’t know, they would be incredulous. They would respond with, “What? Okay, how about fuck?” I didn’t know any of those because my mom and my grandma never swore, at least not in front of me. The closest they came to swearing was saying something similar to “idiot”, from what I could gather from the context. Very tame.
What is it about swear words that fascinates kids (and some adults)? I guess it’s the forbidden nature. We’re always being being told how bad they are. So when we are presented with an opportunity to swear in a non-offensive environment, of course we’re going to do it. It’s exotic yet bad at the same time. It’s just fun I guess.
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