This is certainly true of English, where body-part invoking profanity ranges from relatively harmless to the highest levels of offense. Many cultures consider invoking religious terminology or imagery blasphemous.
Similarly, some of the rudest words in Finland include Satan, devil, and Hell, which are of comparable offense levels in Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish. It follows that excrement is quite often banished to the realm of the taboo, such that equivalents are popular around the world. Interestingly, the fixation on cleanliness occasionally carries over to a special horror of disease. In Dutch, cancer, cholera, and typhus get invoked quite frequently. Janet Barrow writes about the places where language meets history, culture, and politics.
After two years in Lima, Peru, she recently moved to Chicago. Skip to content International Cursing: A look at swear words in different languages. Dirt on your head! Son of an owl! Hit your head on a corner of tofu and die! How Expletives Are Made Around the world, swear words have a tendency to invoke cultural taboos, which is part of the reason there is a lot of overlap in subject matter across languages think body parts and defecation.
Even Shakespeare used mother-disparaging language, as shown by this exchange that takes place in Titus Andronicus: Demetrius: Villain, what hast thou done? Blasphemy: Many cultures consider invoking religious terminology or imagery blasphemous.
Print page. Recent Posts. Russians are known to be pretty colorful and creative in their verbal expressions. Sometimes the humor derives from the fact that the Spanish-speaking world is vast and diverse, which means that the same word can often have different cultural meanings depending on where you are.
Sometimes the humor also derives from the fact that you can get very creative with Spanish obscenities. A tocapelotas. Here are some more funny Spanish insults and curses:. Your call. Everything that moves? The world is your toilet. Is this really a question you even need to ask? To be clear, Germans swear a lot — about as much as anyone else — but the swears, at least according to one of our native German experts, are more straightforward and less creative than they are in some languages.
Truthfully, German insults are pretty hilarious and creative, but maybe in a more ironic, deadpan way. There are many similarities between Korean and Japanese, some also with Chinese. Things like language for men and women, the lack of articles, and much more. Japanese in particular relies heavily on context, which is why it can be barely comprehensible to non-natives. I always thought it was a nation of mind readers!
I wonder why you say Japanese swear words are not really equivalent to English swear words because there is such a very limited sphere in which one would hear them. I would say I am surprised by the combination of the red-light district and anime comprising the spaces where such words can be heard. Are they the same words that could be heard in either sphere but nowhere else? Join Now. We don't have words for them. Does Japanese really have no swear words? By masaharu. More posts by masaharu.
Comments 6 Gert Van Assche. Daniel Kalonji. Speaking of similarities, look at these few examples Please note that I only have a few basics of Japanese : — Imoto Jap : Young sister; vs. David Parry. Leave a comment Cancel reply.
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