The Art of Profanity -Part One: English, French

Part One: English, French

Swearing is pretty common these days, even among younger children. Although I am no expert in linguistics, but having lived for quite some times in three different cultures, speaking three different languages, I'm going to share a few patterns I've discovered on the topic of profanity across cultures.

The use of profane is quite interesting. Some curse when in anger, some curse when in shock, others...well, are so accustomed to cursing they "unnecessarily" insert a word here and there as they wish to bring emotions into their speech. If you think about the words of profane you've encountered, most of which could be placed under a certain group or combinations of grouos; I categrorize them into:

1. Dirtiness - such as "shit"
2. Insult to intelligence - such as "retard"
3 Sexual - such as "fuck"

Or combinations..."skank" which belongs to category 1 and 3.
Check http://www.noswearing.com/dictionary for a list of English swear words, scroll around and the pattern will be evident.

The versatility of English profanities makes them easy to be abused, the most common example being the "F" word. "Fuck" can be a noun and a verb, and with added prefixes and suffixes, it trails long list of nouns, verbs, and adjectives...examples? Not necessary. Too bad this isn't the case in French...

Now I'm not suggesting that there are no translations of such English profanity into French, but it is fact that the "F" word needs to be translated differently based on the context, elsewise it doesn't make sense or becomes unoffensive.

The French profanity, like the English, can be grouped into the categories described above. However, French profanity differs in the way that it has a higher concentration in the third category - sexual. No surprises there, one could always take a hint from the image of "French" associated with romanticism and idioms such as "French kiss", "French lesson", and "French letter", all with a degree of "sexualness".

The literal translation of French profanity could throw you off. Take the case of "Fuck-off" for example, whose correspondent in French is "va t’faire enculer chez les Grecs!" which literally translates to "go fuck with the Greeks!".

So as you can see, translations of French swears....are cute.

Part II, to be continued... I'll incorporate a third player into the game "Mandarin".