# Do other languages have obscenities like those of English? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [March 21, 2013, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-obscenities-like-those-of-english/653551 "2013-03-21T17:33:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![kneegrow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3d9bf3/32.png) [@kneegrow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kneegrow)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2013, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-obscenities-like-those-of-english/653551/21 "2013-03-23T03:55:11Z")
there are loads of articles on the net about swear words, but in different languages they focus on different things in Scandinavian languages the worst ones are about the Devil and the hangman In Dutch, it’s about getting diseases and genitals, in English it’s about bastards, not knowing who your father is etc. In some African languages it’s about the shape of your body, in Chinese it’s about your intelligence all languages have all sorts, the above is just an indication of where they put the emphasis. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2013, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-obscenities-like-those-of-english/653551/22 "2013-03-23T07:23:35Z")
> [@John\_W.Kennedy](#): > > I admit that the situation is horribly confused. But, heck, most Americans don’t even know that Catalan exists. A good many Americans, after all, don’t even seem to know that Portuguese exists. Hell, most Americans don’t know there’s a difference between old world Spanish and new world Spanish. ---
**Author:** ![Sleel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/73ab20/32.png) [@Sleel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sleel)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2013, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-obscenities-like-those-of-english/653551/23 "2013-03-23T07:44:07Z")
Japanese is pretty invective-poor. There are some vulgar words for body parts, but not a whole lot between something that can translate to “down there” (あれ) and “cunt” (まんこ). If you’re upset about something, you can say “shit” (くそ) or “oops, darn it” (しまった) but a lot of the time people just give a frustrated wordless yell. For insults, almost your only choices are various flavors of “you” (お前、あんた、手前) that used to be respectful terms of address, or a couple of words for “idiot” (馬鹿、あほ) that also have a flavoring of “asshole” depending on the situation. Mostly, it’s about _how_ you say it, not _what_ you say. The insult comes from using particular language patterns that are “rough” language, or being deliberately rude to people, implying their inferiority. ---
**Author:** ![kneegrow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3d9bf3/32.png) [@kneegrow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kneegrow)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2013, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-obscenities-like-those-of-english/653551/24 "2013-03-23T11:30:47Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > Hell, most Americans don’t know there’s a difference between old world Spanish and new world Spanish. Weeeeeeeeeeeell the difference isn’t that big, slightly bigger than between American and real English. If that. We can all laugh about the stupidity of Americans. Long time ago I had a collegue who just discovered spell check in Word. He got completely excited over how many spellings English apparently has (according to Bill Gates), from Barbadian to Guyanese English. I always saw that as a selling tool, not an official sort of thing. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2013, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-obscenities-like-those-of-english/653551/25 "2013-03-23T12:32:55Z")
> [@kneegrow](#): > > Weeeeeeeeeeeell the difference isn’t that big, slightly bigger than between American and real English. If that. And often there are dialects on both sides of the Atlantic which are much closer than others that happen to be on the same side - Colombian Highlands Spanish and Ebro Valley Spanish are much closer than either of those two and Buenos Aires Spanish. Speaking about “Latin American Spanish” and “Spanish from Spain” as if those were The Only Two Spanish Dialects is both an enormous simplification and a disservice to the other former Spanish colonies (which have their own dialects as well). Castilla y León is not and has never been a province, it’s either (currently) an autonomous region formed by [9 provinces](http://www.guiaespana.net/mapas-castilla-leon), or one of the names through which one of Spain’s kingdoms went. It started out as Asturias, later León (after the capital moved south), later Castilla y León (after incorporation of the Countship/Earldom of Castille by personal union), later Castilla. > [@kneegrow](#): > > i suppose you can still spot the street signs in Barcelona in four languages, cos of the 1992 Olympics, on Google Maps … Not unless the pics were taken a long time ago. They’re not in place any more. A [previous thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=390605) on the same Answer. ---
**Author:** ![kneegrow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3d9bf3/32.png) [@kneegrow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kneegrow)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2013, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-obscenities-like-those-of-english/653551/26 "2013-03-23T15:47:06Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Speaking about “Latin American Spanish” and “Spanish from Spain” as if those were The Only Two Spanish is both an enormous simplification and cALLing them old world and new word spanish is rather quaint. > [@](#): > > Castilla y León is not and has never been a province oops, sorry I was wrong. > [@](#): > > Not unless the pics were taken a long time ago. They’re not in place any more. and how about the tourist signs in Catalan, Castellano and English? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2013, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-obscenities-like-those-of-english/653551/27 "2013-03-23T15:53:57Z")
Those will vary depending on who’s responsible for them and their political sign. We’re not even allowed to call the four Catalan provinces in Spanish any more, legally. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2013, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-obscenities-like-those-of-english/653551/28 "2013-03-24T03:14:05Z")
> [@kneegrow](#): > > whole forests have disappeared to describe what a good many Americans don’t know. Many non-Americans have wondered about this seeming paradox: how could Americans come to dominate the world when they seem to be so ignorant? > > The answer is that for dominance, you don’t need to be smart, you need loads of oil and the destruction of the industrial infra structure of your near competitors, like Germany, England and Japan … Sorry, demonstrably wrong. America was recognizably Top Nation by 1918. Historically speaking, American ignorance is a fairly new phenomenon, apart from a general American tendency to try to shut off European history, and that can be traced back at least to 1689, a product of the notion that America had the promise of truly being a New World, unstained by the European past. But have you never heard of “Yankee ingenuity”? Of Franklin, Henry, Morse, Edison, _et al._? No, the present rotting of the American mind is something new. Perhaps it’s television, perhaps it’s that peculiar form of devil worship that calls itself “fundamentalist Christianity”, perhaps it’s something else. But the paradox you perceive is not there in the actual timeline. ---
**Author:** ![Floater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dc4da7/32.png) [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2013, 8:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-obscenities-like-those-of-english/653551/29 "2013-03-25T08:23:27Z")
> [@kneegrow](#): > > in Scandinavian languages the worst ones are about the Devil and the hangman The devil, yes. The hangman, no. ---
**Author:** ![minkyberry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@minkyberry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minkyberry)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2013, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-obscenities-like-those-of-english/653551/30 "2013-03-25T10:19:26Z")
> [@Sleel](#): > > Japanese is pretty invective-poor. There are some vulgar words for body parts, but not a whole lot between something that can translate to “down there” (あれ) and “cunt” (まんこ). There always seems to be a myth going around that the Japanese are incapable of swearing, or that the language does not have swear words, which seems to further stem from the frankly racist view that the Japanese are “polite” or “submissive” (and I guess for the sake of national/cultural pride, the Japanese are willing to participate in). This is not true, as anyone who has even watched a single episode of that infernal gainax anime oruchuban no ebichu, or even a translated version of any number of Japanese doujins can attest. A few examples, easily gleaned from the internet: chikusho = the piston action ketsunoana = a\*\*hole chinkasu=smegma yariman/yarichin = town bicycle sageman /sagechin = diseased hole/dick everyone will make fun of you for if you ever tap that Which comes to the other point: insults relating to sexual degradation of women is absolutely normal in Japan (or at least normal enough to be allowed to be printed while actual depictions of the act are censored by fingernail-thin tone print strips). Doujins often turn up words that translate to things like “b_tch/sow in heat" "b_tch hole” “wh_remaking" "rape-b_tch” and so on and so forth. ---
**Author:** ![minkyberry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@minkyberry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minkyberry)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2013, 10:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-obscenities-like-those-of-english/653551/31 "2013-03-25T10:34:57Z")
And I don’t know what I did with the last post to eat up the ETA: I really like some of the male-equivalent insults that appear often, like “phimosis-penis”, because I always value tailor-made insults. ---
**Author:** ![dotchan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@dotchan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dotchan)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2013, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-obscenities-like-those-of-english/653551/32 "2013-03-26T01:29:34Z")
I would’ve told you in the past in all earnestness that Chinese totally does not have swear words, but in due time I realized that was because I grew up in a super polite and sequestered household (Mom having _majored_ in Literary Chinese and Grandma being very devoutly Catholic = super polite speech even at home). I don’t really know that many Chinese swear words, alas. Most of the ones I do know involve bodily functions (shit, fart, etc.), aspersions on the sexual proclivities of the person insulted (whore, adulterer, etc.), or their parentage (bastard, son of a turtle, etc.)–i.e. the general universal set of put downs common to pretty much every language. ---
**Author:** ![Sleel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/73ab20/32.png) [@Sleel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sleel)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2013, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-obscenities-like-those-of-english/653551/33 "2013-03-27T13:49:06Z")
> [@minkyberry](#): > > There always seems to be a myth going around that the Japanese are incapable of swearing, or that the language does not have swear words, which seems to further stem from the frankly racist view that the Japanese are “polite” or “submissive” (and I guess for the sake of national/cultural pride, the Japanese are willing to participate in). This is not true, as anyone who has even watched a single episode of that infernal gainax anime oruchuban no ebichu, or even a translated version of any number of Japanese doujins can attest. A few examples, easily gleaned from the internet: > > chikusho = the piston action > ketsunoana = a\*\*hole > chinkasu=smegma > yariman/yarichin = town bicycle > sageman /sagechin = diseased hole/dick everyone will make fun of you for if you ever tap that > > Which comes to the other point: insults relating to sexual degradation of women is absolutely normal in Japan (or at least normal enough to be allowed to be printed while actual depictions of the act are censored by fingernail-thin tone print strips). Doujins often turn up words that translate to things like “b_tch/sow in heat" "b_tch hole” “wh_remaking" "rape-b_tch” and so on and so forth. You might see it on the internet, but I live and work in Japan, and in real life no one uses language like that. Not even the high school kids. Are there examples of creative invective? Yep. But contrary to my experience growing up in the US where we’d sling casual "fuck you"s and, “shut your pie hole, you stupid cunt” to our friends, Japanese people almost never curse in public unless they’re true gutter trash. I didn’t say they didn’t have any bad words, just that there’s not a lot of variety. You’ve got “oh, dear” to “bleeding crotch gash” level slang, with not a whole lot in between. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2013, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-obscenities-like-those-of-english/653551/34 "2013-03-30T02:27:29Z")
My wife had a dog that didn’t like a life insurance salesman who was visiting. When he tried to pet the dog, she turned away and kicked with the same motion dogs use when they are hiding their droppings. She was telling him that she considered him shit. I guess dogs swear, too. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2020, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-obscenities-like-those-of-english/653551/35 "2020-01-31T12:39:50Z")
Just wanted to give a heads up to those who had been following this thread that Reinhold Aman (the editor of the journal whose material was cherry-picked for Cecil’s article) died a few months ago. I’ve started [a memorial thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=22111742) over in Cafe Society. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-obscenities-like-those-of-english/653551.md?page=1)