I know ‘we’re all adults here’, but I’m going to call it the ‘f’ word in case any young eyes might pry into this forum.
My question is, do any other languages use the English ‘F’ word with any regularity? Like, does a French person ever say, “mon Dieu, f**k vous-même?” I’m not convinced I got that French right, by the way.
I’m not sure this is a factual answer, but Voulez-vous coucher avec moi? might be related.
Norwegians, especially the younger crowd, will use a lot of English slang and expressions in casual talk. The F-word included, as described in the OP. The Norwegian equivalent is rarely used like that - maybe it just doesn’t have the same punch to it.
I suspect this goes for the other Scandinavian languages as well.
German has a cognate, the verb ficken that can be used both transitively and intransitively, but until very recently it used to be just a crass literal reference to sex. Figurative usage in the context of antagonism/hostility seems to have arisen only recently as an influence of US culture. An insult parallel to ‘fck yourself’ is German phrase that translates as 'fck yourself into the knee’.
Yeah, it’s common in Dutch street language and youth slang and what have you - possibly more common than in English in some populations, as it’s not a taboo word here like it is in English speaking locales. It’s generally spelled ‘fok’, but clearly derived from the English ‘to fuck’, not from Dutch ‘fokken’ (to breed) - although fokken and to fuck are of course related, going way back to a point way before young Dutchpeople starting aping American kids by saying fuck all the time.
I don’t recall ever hearing a Spanish speaker use “fuck” while speaking in Spanish, even in Panama which has a very strong American influence. But even in Spanish, the equivalents of “fuck” are not used in cursing nearly as much as they are in English.
I remember in the british television show “Father Ted”, that the old, drunken priest, Father Hackett, said “feck” many a time. Even Father Ted once told young Father Dougal to “Feck off!”.
I always assumed that it was to get past the censor.
That too, but it’s a genuine Irish expression and much less offensive than the alternative.
Quebecois Francophones (that may or may not be redundant, depending on your politics) frequently use the word “fuck” or “fucked” as a mild expletive - along the lines that a native English speaker would used the word “screwed”. It has been Frenched as the verb fucke’ (don’t know how to do an acute accent), meaning messed up. I have a Francophone friend who tells me his pure-wool grandma frequently refers to things as being “fucke’” and it makes him laugh every time.
I can’t find it now, but I was once on the official health website of the French government, and they were cautioning people about the risks of having a “fuck friend” (or “fuck buddy”, I forget which), and even though the rest of the site was French, they used the English for that term.
It’s funny that “neuk”, the actual Dutch word for “fuck” isn’t a swear word though. It has exactly the right sound for it…
How about “joder”?
In Brazilian Portuguese it’s “foder”: you can tell someone to “vai te foder”. It can also be used as a positive, like “fucking cool”. But I didn’t hear them actually say fuck, I don’t think.
My take might not be entirely accurate. The entire time I lived there I spent working in a children’s home. Swearing was Very Bad, so I never learnt to do it. Which is weird, because in Rio (“Carioca”) Portuguese, every other word is a swear word. It made my professor laugh when I first took a university class of Portuguese. He said I sounded like a maid: poor, but no swearing.
Not fuck, but shit.
I was watching a car crash on YouTube the other day from the perspective of inside a bus. The passengers were speaking what I assumed to be Russian, but as soon as the crash happened there were gasps of "Oh my God!’ and repeatedly “Shit!” Rather interesting to hear.
As I said, it’s not used nearly as much, or in the same way (as an expletive) as it is in English, at least in Panama. It may be different elsewhere. What I hear mostly is people referring to something as being jodido (fucked, fucked up). Swearing mainly involves other words.
Nowhere near as much as in English, and I say this from the country where it’s most likely to be used. Among other things, because English cursing is a lot more repetitive than Spanish - I once heard a dude cursing off his wife and daughters for more than fifteen minutes without using but fuck and variations thereof, as verb, noun, adverb, adjective…; for contrast, Spanish cursing tends to be as creative as possible (among other things, the mental exercise is a good way to calm yourself down) and while it has variations/derivations for all those types of words, they don’t carry the same connotations. For example, the noun (jodienda) is vulgar, but not a swearword - you’d find it in expressions such as a ése es que le va mucho la jodienda (dude can’t stop thinking of sex), not in curses.
interesting answers…but I don’t think they are what the OP is looking for.
I interpreted the original question to mean "do other languages have a word which is as totally forbidden as the English term “Fuck”.?
I assume that all languages have rude words (for sex acts, body parts, etc.), which you wouldn’t feel comfortable saying in a polite situation in public , and never say around children.
But I think English is the only language has two sexual words which are so totally rude that you can never,never use them in a polite situation. The words I’m thinking of are: “fuck”, and calling a woman a “cunt.”
These 2 words are off-limits in polite company. They are legitimate for standup comedians, or for rude jokes among friends,— but never,never in the office. (They are as unacceptable as the word “nigger”, for example)
So my version of the OP* is :
Do other languages have a prohibited word which has the same level of rudeness as the English ‘fuck’.?
*(apologies to Cheesedonkey if I’m misunderstanding your intentions. I’m not trying to hijack …and I think my question is relevant enough to this thread that the mods won’t spank me for it.)
Totally forbidden my ass, it may get beeped out (and why does US censorship use those damn beeps anyway?) on TV and the radio, but as you say it’s used a lot in other contexts; waaaay overused (every joke gets tired after a while, but seriously, adressing people by an insult was tired the second time). So to find out something that’s as “totally forbidden” as fuck in the US, first we’d have to start by asking which countries beep/silence bad words on TV/radio.
My example specifically states “in the office”. Many other contexts may be acceptable, especially standup comics. But I’m talking about formal places, or places where children are present, and the word is totally unacceptable.
I live in Israel and speak Hebrew…but Hebrew swear words are all a little less rude…about the level of the English “Shit” . One level of rudeness lower than what I think this thread is asking.
You don’t say such words around children. But if you hear you own kid using it with his friends, while you and some adults friends happen to overhear it, you admonish and correct him— but you don’t cringe in embarrassment and want to fade into the wallpaper.
(I once knew a three-year-old who loved trucks…but couldn’t pronounce “Tr”…it came out of his mouth as a “f”. His parents were not amused)
Just out of curiosity, I googled “fuck” as it would be spelled in Welsh with the imperative and found this (I have underlined the “fuck” part):
Ffycwch bant i ysgol Saesneg neu derbyniwch fod disgwyl i’ch plant cyfathrebu yn iaith y nef.
“Fuck off to an English[-language] school or accept that your children are expected to communicate in the language of heaven.”
(In context, this is more “what I’d like to say” than actually directed at anyone; I just thought it was funny given the “language of heaven” thing, which is a conventional expression for Welsh).
There was also ffyciwch fi’n binc, which is “Fuck me pink”. Note the -i-: there’s actually two verbs in circulation, ffyco and ffycio, with the latter more common. (Pronounced “fuck-o” and “fuck-yo,” both of which are ordinary verbal endings.)
The singular imperative / noun ffwc seems to have some currency, too, pronounced “fook” like “book”, as is “ffyc,” pronounced like English “fuck.”
The native word, cnychu, is also used in parallel to English.
The OP to me seems to be clearly asking if the English word “fuck” is used in other languages. I mean, it’s even in his French example.
Anyhow, in the Chicago flavor of Polish, English swear words like “fuck,” “shit,” “jagoff,” “bullshit,” etc., have found their way into the lexicon (including Polish conjugations and declensions and pronunciations of the words), but that’s specific to the immigrant dialect, I think. I’m not sure I’ve heard those words in Poland (although “bolsiet” aka “bullshit” seems to show up on .pl websites, so maybe it’s more universal. I don’t know for sure.)
And there’s a “Ponglish” slang dictionary where I found the term “fakować się,” which means “to fuck yourself” and derives from “fuck”+“ować” verb ending. That website appears to be reporting Polish slang on the British Isles, so it’s still an immigrant dialect.
Well, the Osdorp Posse did sing about the ‘moederneukende politie’ in the early 1990s.