Exactly! You immediately came up with several categories that I completely forgot about, when I was listing categories of swear words. And yeah, the different levels of swearing are fascinating. And then, of course, the whole levels-of-familiarity-and-politeness-and-formality thing that other languages have? English still has that shit, it’s just not built into the formal structure of the language, the way it is in, say, Japanese.
Those politeness and familiarity levels are just based on the context of every individual, and their particular social group. Some people swear a lot in their own family setting, some people NEVER swear within their nuclear family group. Some workplace environments are RIGIDLY anti-swearing, while others are totally informal, and everyone has a potty-mouth, all the time. And any of these contexts can have their own specific house rules, in terms of which categories of swearing are more taboo.
Like: “hey, fuckface! Don’t say the fucking R-word around here, or I’ll break my foot off in your ass.” Totally a thing that I can imagine someone saying.
Yep. Like in my immediate family (parents and siblings) you absolutely do not swear unless you’re one of the parents (and you’re either very angry or joking) or you’re making an extremely well-timed joke, with my dad’s side of the family you can swear unless there’s kids then you have to swear less, and with my mum’s side of the family you don’t swear at all. Something else is that neither side of my family considers r****d to be a swear word. I also normally work at schools so there’s no swearing allowed there (not that I swear much anyways lol).
Exactly! You immediately came up with several categories that I completely forgot about, when I was listing categories of swear words. And yeah, the different levels of swearing are fascinating. And then, of course, the whole levels-of-familiarity-and-politeness-and-formality thing that other languages have? English still has that shit, it’s just not built into the formal structure of the language, the way it is in, say, Japanese.
Those politeness and familiarity levels are just based on the context of every individual, and their particular social group. Some people swear a lot in their own family setting, some people NEVER swear within their nuclear family group. Some workplace environments are RIGIDLY anti-swearing, while others are totally informal, and everyone has a potty-mouth, all the time. And any of these contexts can have their own specific house rules, in terms of which categories of swearing are more taboo.
Like: “hey, fuckface! Don’t say the fucking R-word around here, or I’ll break my foot off in your ass.” Totally a thing that I can imagine someone saying.
You neglect the versatility of our tabboo language, too!
Take English’s favorite swear: Fuck.
Fuck is:
It can be used to express:
And that’s just scratching the surface!
My English teacher was right. Fuck is lazy. Lol
much useful
so versatile
Fucking hell, this fucking fucker has fucking fucked it.
Yep. Like in my immediate family (parents and siblings) you absolutely do not swear unless you’re one of the parents (and you’re either very angry or joking) or you’re making an extremely well-timed joke, with my dad’s side of the family you can swear unless there’s kids then you have to swear less, and with my mum’s side of the family you don’t swear at all. Something else is that neither side of my family considers r****d to be a swear word. I also normally work at schools so there’s no swearing allowed there (not that I swear much anyways lol).