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Kiri · Joined: 13 Jun 2009 Posts: 471 Location: Latvia/Italy

Hello everyone!
I'm writing this story about a guy who is supposed to swear quite a lot, and, since Latvian isn't really a good language for swearing, I'm considering my options.

So, my question is, which are the best languages to swear in?
Also, do you swear in your conlangs on everyday basis?
And finally, if the admins permit, show some of your favourite swears!

Personally, growing up in Latvia, I hear a lot of Russian, and an owerwhelming deal of curses and swears. Russian is juicy enough to swear, but usually the inventory is quite narrow, sometimes even down to three or four words that you hear over and over again - it's getting quite old.
Another language, I think is good for swearing - German. No offence, but all the damn lang sounds like a series of curses! Very Happy

I think French is an interesting choice. You know what they say - sh** sounds better in French! Very Happy

What do you think?

Tolkien_Freak · Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 4:52 pm Post subject:

One of my friends who speaks Hungarian says you can curse in Hungarian for a minute straight without ever reusing a word.

My conlangs don't have swear words... yet. (They probably won't for a while, I've got far more important words that still don't exist.)

And I don't really care for swearing, that much. I try to avoid much worse than 'crap' (or ｢くそ｣ for Japanese) as much as I can.

3po · Joined: 22 Oct 2008 Posts: 34

Tolkien_Freak · Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 6:51 pm Post subject:

In my experience most people don't even think twice.

3po · Joined: 22 Oct 2008 Posts: 34

eldin raigmore · Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 9:15 pm Post subject:

IME frickatives, dreckatives, and theo-imprecatives are never interpreted as having actual semantic meaning related to the actual words they contain, except by the people who object to their use. Their users, and their less-offended listeners, just assume they are emotional interjections or ejaculations, of the same semantic class as "Ouch!" or "Yuck!" or "Yay!".
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Tolkien_Freak · Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2010 12:14 am Post subject:

3po · Joined: 22 Oct 2008 Posts: 34

eldin raigmore · Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2010 4:07 pm Post subject:

3po · Joined: 22 Oct 2008 Posts: 34

riiiight...
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eldin raigmore · Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2010 4:21 pm Post subject:

3po · Joined: 22 Oct 2008 Posts: 34

yssida · Joined: 16 Sep 2007 Posts: 253 Location: sa jaan lang

I would opine that the best languages in which to cuss are those which emphasize caste and social relationships, which are found in Javanese and Japanese, and to some extent probably Chinese. This is so you could play around with different registers quite a bit and will give you different shades of meaning; and you can even make it as explicit or as implicit as you want.
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Kiri · Joined: 13 Jun 2009 Posts: 471 Location: Latvia/Italy

Tolkien_Freak · Posted: Thu Jun 24, 2010 9:51 pm Post subject:

Mostly curse-words are derived either from topics that are left unmentioned in polite society, or from swearing by something the culture in question considers sacred. It's less the sound of the word that gives a curse its force, but the meaning behind it (even if the actual meaning has been lost for quite some time).

Kiri · Joined: 13 Jun 2009 Posts: 471 Location: Latvia/Italy

But isn't there anything to do with sound? AFAICR all the Latvian people to whom I've talked about this agree that our language is not really suitable for swearing, because it doesn't have "juicy" curse words. The thing is we have Russian at our side to compare with - and Russian is juicy by all means. Very Happy

Tolkien_Freak · Posted: Fri Jun 25, 2010 4:21 pm Post subject:

I'm sure sound does really help. I know that 'damn' often sounds weaker than it ought to to me, especially when really Californian speakers pronounce it as /djEm/. It just doesn't sound like a curse word.

Ultimately, though, meaning is the driving factor (at least in creating curse words).

eldin raigmore · Posted: Tue Jun 29, 2010 5:29 pm Post subject: