I'm an English speaker who learned Thai later in life and I sometimes feel myself blushing when I end an English sentence with 'yet' when speaking with thais.
Interestingly, it was just as hard for me to say the colors of the neutral words as the taboo words. Maybe having grown up with the internet I'm just very used to written taboo words as natural speech (even if I don't say them), or I just have a propensity to stop and understand *all* words before I'm mentally allowed to proceed.
Makes me think of when I was travelling from Budapest, Hungary to Vienna, Austria. The Hungarian name of the city of Vienna is Bécs. Which is almost phonetically identical to "bitch". A few of my english-speaking fellow travellers weren't quite comfortable when the name of the city was announced in the train in Hungarian hehe
Swear words are so fascinating! In Norwegian the most common swear words are all religious, often referring to the devil. So we have 'faen' which comes from 'fanden', an old word for the devil/'the evil one'. And then there's 'jævel/jævla', which sounds a lot like 'djevel'. And of course 'søren' which is a different way to write 'satan'. Most of them have lost their original meaning though, so people don't tend to know that they're talking about the devil in almost every single swear word.
A common syllable in Chinese "hui" found in people's names among other words is a very vulgar word in Russian. They typically change the pronunciation to "hu-ei" to avoid saying the word.
In Dutch perhaps the strongest word I know is "kanker" (you can probably guess what it means). It's a word most people just never use, kinda like the n-word. Every time I mention cancer just as a disease I feel bad for saying it. And "tyfus/tering" is another (way more acceptable) one. I find it interesting that our language features illnesses (but I guess it relates to death, so..). And because of the dawn of English nobody can say "ik fok katten" (I breed cats (for a living)) without everyone thinking... youknow Also, when I was a christian I was thought that saying that real name of god (jahweh) should not be used, but maybe that just applies to the hardcore christians. Oh and I'm totally gonna say: "damn she got a hot pair of gluteus maximi tho" from now on ;p
Yeah, those are good points! Diseases are fairly common swear words cross-linguistically, too. Polish has "cholera", for example. And yeah, things sounding bad in other languages you know definitely does influence the way people talk - the awareness that someone might take it wrong is enough to influence behaviour. But yeah, if you want to use the gluteus maximus term for your own purposes, go for it. ^_^
Words don't bully people, bullies do. -By M.Bruce Thomas One word that should wake everyone up is Etymology 'The study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed throughout history'... Those who don't understand the word ignorant, which means lacking knowledge or awareness in general will be offended to hear that this all boils down to our personal ignorance of Etymology. Entire libraries have been burned to the ground, erasing all traces of documented history. You ever wonder why that happens? Me too. Now, just because a verb has a toxic-feel, a societal stigma, and is socially unfashionable due to a transition from an impartial term to one that is negatively loaded, does not mean that we can simply allow the word itself or it's impartial usage to spark outrage in us without simultaneously riding the euphemism treadmill. It's a dumbing-down process. My auto-suggest dictionary suggests EMINEM when I try to type Hominem or Homonyms. Dumbing me down. In Etymology, with a language that has 15 meanings for one word. (Homonyms) You cannot safely turn any words into acronyms without severely dumbing-down future generations of society. We would not be able to have this discussion at all due to the complexities. Saying the (R)-Word without spelling it all the way out or saying the actual word fully, is EXTREMELY restrictive and here is why: Below we have the (i)-word the (m)-word and the (fm)-words “idiot,” “moron,” “imbecile,” and “feeble-minded” Do we see the slippery slope? Imagine not being able to find out why the word queer went from a slur to a compliment and not being able to know what the R in ****** even stood for. I implore you to do deep research on the history of the word queer and the word we fear. A joke is being played on us here. The word in question is epitomizing it's own definition. Making us “idiots,” “morons,” “imbeciles,” and “feeble-minded slaves” This is no accident. We live in a sick world and we speak a very twisted tongue. The English language is being used to manipulate us and we allow it. The word in question was borrowed out of sensitivity to replace others that words that had become slurs such as “idiot,” “moron,” “imbecile,” and “feeble-minded”. All of these words that were replaced were actually very useful, as each signified varying types and degrees of those conditions.
Is there also a dysphemism threadmill? If we use the word racism to mean prejudice or genocide to mean American TV programs on TV, will we bleed these words of their emotional resonance as well?
Okay, so for there to be a dysphemism treadmill, what we'd need is to find examples of words that were used to make things sound worse or more offensive, which then did get more acceptable, and then needed to be replaced by new terms to achieve the same emotional impact. I went ahead and Googled for some cases where dysphemism treadmills were supposed to be found, and I didn't find them convincing, because the replacement and repetition part of the cycle that we saw the bathroom example isn't repeated. Instead, they just seem to be cases where the taboo is lost or there's amelioration of the word, so it isn't as bad anymore, but then isn't really replace in the same way with a new term for which the cycle repeats. Certainly, terms can become more acceptable if they're used in ways that are less charged than their original usage (we talked about that in our semantic shift episode), but I don't really see examples of it. It's not to say it's impossible for it to occur, I'm just not finding them. Hope this helps!
What's funny is that since I'm a teenager among teenagers, and the Internet merges cultures like Scottish and Australian, common yet what would be highly insulting curse words are pretty much just words that are "honorically" removed when around strangers, small children, adults, or teens from more polite backgrounds.
+Aaron Myers Yeah, we didn't really get into this discussion in the video, but profanity is definitely used for other purposes, too. Signifying one's attitude towards other people, or to show belonging in a particular group, are also goals for this. And if you're a teen and talking with peers who also use it, then you're making a statement about yourself and your relations to other people in whether you use profanity or not. It makes sense, then, that if you're talking with people outside a group, you change your usage, too. Thanks for bringing this up. ^_^
The moment you showed the word pink, I immediately said red. Even though pink is a tint of red, that's still pretty bad ( though it's probably because I assumed it would be red).
What about replacing swears / taboo concepts with completely unrelated words? Like "hey babe, wanna go lathe some wood?" Most people catch the drift, and it seems like a pretty common thing with the people I know.
Yeah! Well, in this case, since "wood" in English is already a euphemism, I think you may already be tipping someone in that direction, but generally, this is a solid point. But think about how you normally say this if you want to be giving the more taboo reading. From my experience, this is usually done with a particular intonation to the sentence, too, right? I think it's the prosody to the sentence that signals you're being euphemistic, rather than asking about whether they're up for some carpentry. ^_^
@@thelingspacethe maple thing has become like a Canadian ailment. You guys are practically drunk on the syrup half the year. Your friends are getting concerned and we might have to take your car keys from you.
+Tiwinee Yeah, it's not where I would start, either, but it is pretty common. People just find them interesting, I guess! Maybe new learners want to know how to insult people, or to know whether they're getting insulted? But it is one of the most common questions I get asked about languages I know, for sure.
+Tiwinee I always assumed it had to do with the age at which people most frequently start to learn new languages. Children and teenagers are generally more amused by profanity than the population at large (At least, in my experience) so when presented with a new language they'd be more likely to want to find the profanity within it. If you're still at a point where you find shouting "fuck!" hilarious in and of itself, finding new and different ways to say "fuck" becomes an extension of that humor. That doesn't explain adults seeking out swear words, of course, although I don't think that adults are inherently above finding humor in subverting taboos, so maybe it does.
Do we know whether taboo words are concept/context specific or word specific? Like you mentioned in Hebrew that the word for God is not commonly stated, but how about those who also learn to speak other languages? say English, do they avoid saying God or are they okay with it?
+Kun Lin I have Jewish friends who will sometimes say "G dash D" or even write "G-d" to avoid saying or writing "God" in English, although it generally seems they are being tongue-in-cheek.
Yep, I agree with +James Jackson on this. I went to a fairly religious Jewish school, and in conversation, people won't say or write "God", even in English. They'll do the writing workaround, and they'll sub in the Hebrew word [haʃɛm] in English, as well, which just means "the name", and is pretty clearly euphemistic. So we definitely see this carrying across. ^_^
+Conway79 Yeah, I can definitely see that! But if it's a common words, there's not much to be done but try to get over it. You don't have to talk about keys too often in English, or seals (phoque) in French, but "to be" is a big one.
The one here is maybe not so useful, but it works just as well with white / grey / black as the colours! Steven Pinker has a monochrome one in his book the Stuff of Thought, if you want to try that. ^_^
I try to avoid using the word "Shabby" in the presence of my Chinese friends. Shabby sounds like Sha bi in Mandarin, which means "Stupid C****" Oddly enough the translation is bad for English speakers, but to some Chinese people it is a causal swear word to throw around. The opposite of that is in Mandarin Chinese the word for "um" is na ge. But if said quickly, or half heartily it come out like not so appropriate term to call black people.
Taboo is a big topic in anthropology and religious studies too. My favorite examples are cultyres with taboos so strong that they DON'T name the taboo object at all. The most ridiculous version (to me) is making soeaking the name of a particular deity taboo. It just gets so c ridiculous so quickly. Any jews reading this know what i mean.
This still didn't technically answer the question in the title....It was more of a history lesson on bad words. As far as I tell, bad words are only bad because we as a society accept they are bad... and that's a terrible reason. It's not even technically a reason at all. It's just a thing that happened for seemingly no good reason at all. Black People were treated as sub-human for so long.... simply because we as a society believed they were. We've overcome that but are still hung up on swear words? Really? It seems so silly to me. This idea that using certain words makes you sound less intelligent is so incredibly void of any reason or logic. I occasionally use words that other people might think are bad and therefore they don't use them. Somehow, that means I'm the one with a lacking vocabulary. Well, all I have to say is.... Fuck that shit!
