The use of swear words........

[scottswede]

Maybe it's just here (Sweden) but I am so tired of hearing the words sh!t and the F word used.
Not just teenagers but adults too. Adults don't chastise their children for swearing because it's not a swear word to them.

EG: Swimming pool: 5yr old girl jumps in and says to her mum "Sh!t it's cold"
Macdonalds: Mum says the F word when her son drops his drink.
Swedes don't have swear words so they have adopted english words unfortunately.
My sons friend called him a Motherf¤cker the other day. I told him not to use that expression as it's very offensive. His mum laughed and told him it was ok.
Do other countries have their own swear words or does everyone use the lovely english ones????

I think if it's not their language it's not a swear word to them.

I'm fed up of radio stations playing the full blown versions of songs throughout the day. You can guarantee I'll end up twiddling the radio like mad in the car because of the language. They make alternative versions for the UK listeners so why can't they play those when children are listening?

Last year they played that Pink song (you've had a shit day, i've had a shit day, we've had a shit day) so much on heavy rotation it drove me mad.

I wonder if Pink would find it amusing if I stood in the park and shouted "shit" repeatedly at her kids for 3 minutes.....

Good point wally.

I know what you mean Wally When that song comes on my daughter says "Mum, its that song, we don't listen to it ,remember...."
I have bought "Kidz" cd's here, there are so many inappropriate songs it's unbelievable.

I didn't even know a lot of the songs were inappropriate until we moved.

Like that Cee-Lo Green/Gnarls Barclay (Berkley??) one. I had no idea!

Same here in the Netherlands ... To be really offensive they use a completely different phrase and swearing is just .. Words !
The radio play any old thing so we listen to spotify !

And here in Germany - the swearing thing doesn't mean the same here - I hear the word scheisse (sp - means shit) all over the place - tv, radio, teachers even - doesn't have the same gravitas that we give to swearing in the UK

The F word is bandied about lots too - doesn't bother me particularly anymore but was a bit of an eye opener in the beginning

It's true that foreigners don't understand - a chap told me that his son (maybe about 4 or 5 at time) had learned to say shit, and he didn't realise that it was quite offensive (I was stuttering an 'I'm sure my dd doesn't know that word so he's not learned it from her' ), but you have either been away from the UK for a long while or never went outside the posh areas! There is a certain segment of the UK population, of various ages and both genders, who say f*ing literally every other word. They can't talk without it. I used to cringe quite regularly.

Same here in Belgium. My sisters and I used to warn our friends not to say certain words when they came round to our house.
Then I once used the only swear word in Dutch I could think of, thinking it wouldn't be a problem as everyone was swearing all the time anyway, and everyone fell silent. Funny really as it translates to god damn, not something particularly strong to my mind.

I think the same swear words just have different 'strengths' in different countries. So my understanding from German speaking friends was that 'scheisse' was probably something equivalent to 'bloody' in English, very mild, not something that would really offend anyone?

In the same way I always found it a bit disconcerting that 'coño' (cunt) gets used so liberally in Spain . . .

I wouldn't use bloody with kids. Or shit.

And I've got teens.

Agreed - and I certainly also wouldn't shout 'Hey, you cunt, did you mean to miss your entry!' at a teenage trumpet player who wasn't paying attention, but it appeared to be quite unremarkable to everyone but me

Takver yes, the coño thing is quite an eye opener when first in Spain. Even little old ladies say it, How have you been, Dolores? Cunt, it's been ages". Or all the amazing ways to say fuck off, involving shitting on virgins and people's mothers and dead ancestors and the like (me cago en todo tus muertos, etc).

I'm not British & I can't take bloody seriously as a swear word. It makes no sense as a swear word.

It is one.

What makes a swear word though?

There's very few people I wouldn't use bloody in front of, but very few that I would use fucking in front of.

I find the whole hierarchy of swear words really odd. Like fuck is worse than shag, or god forbid bonk cringe.

Similarly awful in the Netherlands.

At my dd's primary school they had a play with some truly inappropriate songs.

Mind you Dutch people (kids and adults) don't just use many English s wear words, their Dutch is equally artrocious. I suppose it may be a big city thing ...

2.5yo came out if nursery the other week, tutted at DH as he spilled some spaghetti and said "Daddy, que coño haces?"

I'm still laughing at the Dolores cunt ^^ conversation upthread. Too true!

Spanish have great swearwords, they don't need ours.

I believe - could be very wrong - bloody comes from 'god's blood' which was widely used in the past, supposed to be one of Elizabeth I's favourites. I think I read that somewhere... probably made more sense to strict christians.

I use bloody all the time .

Yes I always thought it had a connotation to the blood of Christ.

Don't know where I got the idea tho..

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody This says it might have come about as a corruption of by your lady, i.e taking the name of the Virgin Mary in vain...bit like cor blimey being from "Lord Blind me".

I think some of it is the influence of English language films, which means they hear shit and fuck a lot, but don't necessarily have all the years of British socialisation where you learn when and where you can use them, because they're not acceptable words everywhere.

I do hear use the words in the workplace, but only in less formal situations, which basically means in the company of close peers when you're blowing off steam. A few years back, we had a German trainer over to run a course, and had to explain that fuck is not acceptable language in that context, but I think he just had no idea it was taboo in any sense, just an innocuous slang teem.

Hardly in the sweary box, but I was when I moved to Australia and heard very respectable colleagues say, usually of a staff meeting or piss-poor presentation: "That was a wank".

A Swedish family babysat my son for an hour. They taught him (age 3) to say "life's a bucket of shit" in English.

I was really cross and told them so and they looked at me like I was mad (I'm English and I do swear bur never in front of children or my parents...it's an absolute no-no in our family and most families I know, to,swear in front of children. It's def. only with close peers and then only in a relaxed social situation, not at work).

Also with Scandi friends (mixed group of Finnish and Swedish) a teen son of a friend called my DH a "f***g bastard" during a jokey conversation at a family BBQ!

I told him off. It'll do him no favours to speak like that if he comes to the UK to study, as he is hoping. He also looked at me like I was mad.

Oh, the number of times I have confronted Swedish teens swearing in class. In England, I would frequently put the radio on in class if we were doing certain tasks, here I don't dare.