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Bonus 1: Real swear words vs pseudo swears (Patreon)

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2017-03-24 18:55:41
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In the interests of keeping our regular episodes safe for workplaces and/or children, we've condensed ALL our swearing into this bonus episode instead. (Okay, to be honest, there is so much swearing out there that we couldn't possibly cover it all in 30 minutes, but we made a good start! Maybe we'll do another bonus sweary episode to get to more of it some time.)

This episode both real swears and words that may look or sound like swear words in one language but are completely innocuous in another! 

What's your favourite swear word or pseudo swear?

Read the transcript here.

Here are the links mentioned in this episode:

You can listen to this episode on this page, via the Patreon RSS or download the mp3. A transcript is available for this episode as a Google Doc. Lingthusiasm is also on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.  Email us at lingthusiasm [at] gmail [dot] com or chat to us on the Patreon page.

Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic. Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our producer is Claire Gawne and our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles. Recorded on January 23rd 2017.

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Anonymous

While learning french and learning that “bite” (pronounced like “beet”) meant dick in English. And thought how funny some things in english might sound. How great is the lyrics “We got the beat”? And I snicker sometimes when people say “beet juice”.

lingthusiasm
>>14833954

Hahaha oh no, I'm never going to be able to think of "pickled beets" the same way again!

Anonymous

One of the things that most surprised me (American) when I studied abroad in Japan is that the middle finger is not an obscene gesture at all -- people use it to push buttons on elevators, microwaves, etc. without a second thought. This came back to bite me in class one day, when we were listing out body parts and, wanting to be clever, I said "nakayubi" (middle finger) instead of the boring/expected head, knees, etc. Cue my teacher being pleased, flipping off the class (to make sure everyone who didn't already know the word understood), the American half falling off their chairs laughing, and myself wanting to sink through the ground with second-hand embarrassment. :P

Maggie+Al

I'm curious if the slur data includes any of the disability-related slurs, especially the ones on the sort of milder end of the spectrum. Like by analogy it makes sense they'd affect attitudes towards disability, but what I wonder is about the difference between something like "crazy", which often refers to actual mental illness, compared to something like "lame", which is now very unlikely to be used to refer to a physical disability. I'd love to see a study that tested this. -Maggie

lingthusiasm

I totally sympathize! I still don't really swear in French (which is my L2, this is Gretchen), even though I know what the words are now, because it's so hard to gauge the offensiveness level and the situation!

Anonymous

When I was learning Norwegian, I was amused to be taught that the word for dirt was "skit," pronounced like and related to the English "shit," but could be used in an entirely non-cursing context, or as something like the milder "crap" or "darn," so I would hear little Norwegian kids who would use it, starting to use the word way younger than I would expect for an English speaking child. Also, having watched all your free episodes, I finally had to become a patron just because I needed to hear more Lingthusiasm, because the two of y'all are hilarious and entertaining and educational. Also, I totally participated ion the cursing-vs-non-cursing experiement with the ice bath in college, so it was cool to hear the two of y'all discuss it.

lingthusiasm
>>38302373

Aw yay, thanks for joining us! That's really neat that you were in that experiment, it's one of our favourites!

Anonymous

I can't remember which bonus episodes I've listened to, so I'm starting over. In college, my friend down the hall had a roommate who tried very hard to mask her British accent because she didn't want questions about it. My friend figured it out when she either let a "schedule" or "literature" slip. The girl later told us that she started covering her accent when she asked for a "rubber" in middle school and all the kids made fun of her. 😔

Anonymous

Also, I don't know if anyone else has seen this, but I once watched a video where Trevor Noah talked about being shocked by a particular product in US dairy aisles. It seems that the name of a particular fermented dairy product (which I won't actually name here) is also a horribly derogatory term in South Africa. 😳

lingthusiasm
>>41018742

Hah, never a bad time for a re-listen! And yeah, words that are sweary in one language/culture and not another can be tricky!

Anonymous

The Estonian for "twelve months" is "kaksteist kuud" which is pronounced like "cocks taste good." This is a fairly common anecdote for anyone who knows any Estonian to tell people. I was once telling some friends at a work party when a guy I was not talking with suddenly shouts "kaksteist kuud" across the room, having been overhearing. Having the late-40's husband of a coworker shout that at a work party was pretty good, as of course all the conversations stopped when he said that. There are a lot of words and phrases that sound similar to taboo words in English - lots of words end in 'seks' and Tiit is a man's name, etc. Took me ages to learn any swear words in Estonian though, longer than any other language I've studied.

Raul Suhett de Morais

I'm almost 4 years late to the conversation, but the thing about "curva" made me laugh a lot. It made me remember the time that I did a semester abroad in Portugal and all the Polish students loved to take pictures with a traffic sign there that read "curva perigosa" (Portuguese for "dangerous turn")! :D

Anonymous

I am definitely late, but in my Norwegian dialect we have the words "pota" which means "potato", pronounced the same way as the Portuguese word "puta".

Anonymous

Also late to the party, but the Irish word 'focal' is a commonly punn-ed word in Ireland. 'Focal' means 'word' in Irish, but it sounds (spelled with English orthography) 'Fuckl'. This leads to things like the youtube channel 'What the focal?!'

Anonymous

Also late to the party, but the Hungarian word "puszi" meaning "kiss" is pronounced exactly like the English, well you guessed it: "pussy". Hungarian uses the word "kurva" as a swearword like Polish, meaning "whore", I did not know of the Italian "turn" being pronounced the same way.