# Let's talk curse words in foreign languages **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 28, 2011, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-curse-words-in-foreign-languages/601069 "2011-10-28T13:38:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2011, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-curse-words-in-foreign-languages/601069/61 "2011-10-31T23:05:30Z")
I once dated a girl of Italian decent, and she described dropping something in the kitchen and saying “fuck” in French (which she spoke). Her grandmother shakes her finger at her and says, “It’s the same word in Italian!” ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2011, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-curse-words-in-foreign-languages/601069/62 "2011-10-31T23:45:24Z")
> [@grama](#): > > “Puta la weá weón esta weá está como las weas” > > I’m not very good at translating, but it’s roughly something like “damn it man, this [thing] is really bad / sucks” > > And i’m pretty sure i can come up with more elaborate examples. I guess it’s the word formation in Russian. As I said, the root of all those words is the same, but they are all different parts of speech. Not only that, but there are multiple forms of the same part of speech with the same root. All have different meanings. “Okhuet’”, “raskhuyarit’”, “nakhuyarit’”, “khuynut’”, “prikhuet’”, “raskhuyachit’”, etc are all verbs. All with the same root (as I said, male sexual organ). All have different meanings. There are even more of a variety of nouns. ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-curse-words-in-foreign-languages/601069/63 "2011-11-01T02:13:12Z")
See, that’s what I mean, ‘word formation in Russian’. For one thing, what Russian does, is what a ton of other Slavic languages do, so there’s nothing special about it that way, but even beyond that, consider ‘fuck’ in English - it can be (part of) a noun (fucktard, fuckface, but you can call someone ‘a stupid fuck’, or ‘a good fuck’), it can be an adjective (fucking) and it can be any number of verbs (fuck off, fuck up, fuck over. You can fuck with someone, and, oh, you can also fuck them). So I don’t really understand why people fall over backwards in amazement when Russian comes up with a verb like _raskhuyarivat’_, when English can do pretty much exactly the same thing. As for coming up with an example of another language that can produce an equivalent to the Russian sentence you came up with, I think the reason I can’t is exactly why I don’t feel comfortable making sweeping statements about how special a language is: I only speak a bunch of them. Moreover, as far as speaking languages goes, swearing fluency usually comes last. Hell, I took years of Russian and I can do any number of things ranging from watching a movie to reading Dostoyevskiy to talking about a number of different topics without too much trouble, but swearing? Nuh uh. That’s why you always hear speakers of X language saying ‘X language is great for swearing’. It’s great _for them_, because it’s the only language in which they really know how to do it. But it says more about them than it does about the language. And similarly, the fact that I cannot produce a sentence that might be equivalent to the Russian one you came up with (although I think my little expose on ‘fuck’ shows that in English you might come quite a long way) says more about the fact that I just don’t know enough languages than it does about how special Russian is. ---
**Author:** ![Arrendajo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Arrendajo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arrendajo)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-curse-words-in-foreign-languages/601069/64 "2011-11-01T02:34:00Z")
In Mandarin Chinese “ci” with a falling tone means fuck (pronounced kind of like “tse”). The old man who ran the little shop in our dining hall was named Ci, with a rising tone. We students didn’t know the difference when we were new to China, though, and for months we called him Lao Ci with the wrong tone, or “Old Fuck.” We were told the absolute worst thing you could call someone in Chinese was “turtle’s egg.” We puzzled over that for months, and no Chinese person was able to give us a clear explanation of why it is an insult. It just is. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-curse-words-in-foreign-languages/601069/65 "2011-11-01T02:49:09Z")
Do Russians still think it’s very insulting to call someone uncultured? ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-curse-words-in-foreign-languages/601069/66 "2011-11-01T03:12:08Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Do Russians still think it’s very insulting to call someone uncultured? “Nekulturny” is not swearing. It basically means “rude” or “bad-mannered”, not in a one-time faux pas sense, but in a systemic manner. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-curse-words-in-foreign-languages/601069/67 "2011-11-01T03:20:06Z")
> [@Svejk\_1](#): > > See, that’s what I mean, ‘word formation in Russian’. For one thing, what Russian does, is what a ton of other Slavic languages do, so there’s nothing special about it that way, but even beyond that, consider ‘fuck’ in English - it can be (part of) a noun (fucktard, fuckface, but you can call someone ‘a stupid fuck’, or ‘a good fuck’), it can be an adjective (fucking) and it can be any number of verbs (fuck off, fuck up, fuck over. You can fuck with someone, and, oh, you can also fuck them). So I don’t really understand why people fall over backwards in amazement when Russian comes up with a verb like _raskhuyarivat’_, when English can do pretty much exactly the same thing. It’s the same reason why German “Bezirksschornsteinfegermeister” is better that English “head district chimney sweep”. Or German “Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften” while in English it is “legal protection insurance companies”. It is the difference between sublime and mundane. ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-curse-words-in-foreign-languages/601069/68 "2011-11-01T03:44:41Z")
:rolleyes: It’s like a monkey thinking he’s special because he has a tail. They’re both just words and one is not somehow better, more refined, or more adequate than the other; you just happen to like one better than the other. But just because German connects words in that way (as do several other languages, again there’s nothing special here) and English does not does not make it a ‘form of art’. As far as your earlier claim that in Russian, swearing is a form of art because, > [@](#): > > You have to know all the different declinations of the words, and their shades of meaning, and string them together in an aesthetically pleasing manner. I have to disagree here too. Do you honestly think other languages don’t differentiate between shades of meaning? Or that in other languages you don’t have to know declinations and conjugations? If you think these are unique to Russian then surely it must be an art form, but you certainly cannot believe that this is the case. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-curse-words-in-foreign-languages/601069/69 "2011-11-01T04:22:13Z")
> [@Svejk\_1](#): > > :rolleyes: > > It’s like a monkey thinking he’s special because he has a tail. They’re both just words and one is not somehow better, more refined, or more adequate than the other; you just happen to like one better than the other. But just because German connects words in that way (as do several other languages, again there’s nothing special here) and English does not does not make it a ‘form of art’. As far as your earlier claim that in Russian, swearing is a form of art because, > > I have to disagree here too. Do you honestly think other languages don’t differentiate between shades of meaning? Or that in other languages you don’t have to know declinations and conjugations? If you think these are unique to Russian then surely it must be an art form, but you certainly cannot believe that this is the case. :rolleyes: I really don’t know what bee flew up your butt, but no, not all languages are exactly the same, and yes, some things are better in some languages than others. That’s my opinion. YMMV. ---
**Author:** ![AaronX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7bcc69/32.png) [@AaronX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AaronX)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-curse-words-in-foreign-languages/601069/70 "2011-11-01T06:33:51Z")
> [@Arrendajo](#): > > We were told the absolute worst thing you could call someone in Chinese was “turtle’s egg.” We puzzled over that for months, and no Chinese person was able to give us a clear explanation of why it is an insult. It just is. I think you are referring to “王八蛋”, “王八” being a type of turtle - [Trionychidae - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trionychidae) if you go to the Chinese version (中文 under languages), you’ll see 王八 under alternative names. 蛋 in Chinese just means egg. Not sure why this is an insult though. It doesn’t seem that bad, I’ve seen it on TV, where it’s translated as “bastard”. ---
**Author:** ![willthekittensurvive](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/91b2a8/32.png) [@willthekittensurvive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/willthekittensurvive)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-curse-words-in-foreign-languages/601069/71 "2011-11-01T15:53:41Z")
the dutch swear a lot with diseases, Kankerhoer!..:cancer hooker Krijg toch de tering!..:go get Tuberculosis ---
**Author:** ![Shniru](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4da419/32.png) [@Shniru](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shniru)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-curse-words-in-foreign-languages/601069/72 "2011-11-01T16:45:02Z")
> [@DMark](#): > > German is surprisingly tame when it comes to cursing: > > Arschloch - asshole > Scheisse - shit > Verdammte Scheisse - damned shit (which is actually just a stronger way of saying “shit” when you are very angry). > > All of those words are spoke on German television, so it is not like they are some horribly forbidden words, but to be honest, that is about the extent of the average German’s cuss words. > > You can get in a fight for calling someone an asshole, and you can express your great displeasure by screaming “shit”, but they really don’t have our colorful motherfucking, cocksucking, sonofabitch, goddamned lingo in everyday language. Sure, all of those terms can be expressed in German, but they just really aren’t used. Until this thread, it never dawned on me how boring German cuss words are. Es ist mir scheisse egal - I don’t give a shit Schweinekopf - pig head Yeah, can’t think of any others, either. As for Russian, you guys forgot suka - bitch A word I learned from one of my Russian rap CDs. And here are two that I actually learned from my textbook - how to insult people. dura (f) / durak (m) - fool huligana (f)(?) / huligan (m) - hooligan ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-curse-words-in-foreign-languages/601069/73 "2011-11-01T17:52:50Z")
> [@willthekittensurvive](#): > > the dutch swear a lot with diseases, > > Kankerhoer!..:cancer hooker > Krijg toch de tering!..:go get Tuberculosis I’m thinking maybe that “kanker” isn’t a reference to cancer but to chancres/cankers, the sores which are often associated with syphilis. It makes sense, calling someone a siphilitic whore. Does anybody know whether this could be the case? ---
**Author:** ![Duke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@Duke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-curse-words-in-foreign-languages/601069/74 "2011-11-01T18:38:56Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > The absolute worst thing you can call someone in Thailand is a _hia_ or monitor lizard. You’d damn well better be holding a gun visibly in your hand if you do that. Along those same lines, in medieval Iceland if you called a man a “sjorðin” you better be ready to defend yourself. “Sjorðin” meant “one who takes it in the ass” and was considered such a vile word the recipient of the insult was legally allowed to kill the insulter, with impunity (i.e., the family could not sue for compensation). ---
**Author:** ![Aghris](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecccb3/32.png) [@Aghris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aghris)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-curse-words-in-foreign-languages/601069/75 "2011-11-01T20:42:35Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > I’m thinking maybe that “kanker” isn’t a reference to cancer but to chancres/cankers, the sores which are often associated with syphilis. It makes sense, calling someone a siphilitic whore. Does anybody know whether this could be the case? Nope. It’s definitely the diseases. We also have: Kankerlijer - sufferer of cancer Typhuslijer - sufferer of typhus AIDS-lijer has had some popularity in the 80s Then we have the less contageous swearwords: Klootzak - ballsack Flikker - faggot Kutwijf - cunt/bitch ---
**Author:** ![polar\_bear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ec9cab/32.png) [@polar\_bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/polar_bear)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-curse-words-in-foreign-languages/601069/76 "2011-11-01T20:47:20Z")
> [@Aghris](#): > > Nope. It’s definitely the diseases. We also have: > > Kankerlijer - sufferer of cancer > Typhuslijer - sufferer of typhus > AIDS-lijer has had some popularity in the 80s > > Then we have the less contageous swearwords: > > Klootzak - ballsack > Flikker - faggot > Kutwijf - cunt/bitch I put off posting in this thread because of our weird tendency to use diseases. It has to be said that the word ‘kanker’ has some very hard sounds that make it a very usefull curse word. It’s all about the K’s. ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-curse-words-in-foreign-languages/601069/77 "2011-11-01T21:12:49Z")
I fucked up that fucking fuckface for fucking around and fucking up. = I physically injured that really undesirable person for not doing what he was supposed to be doing and for inadequately performing what he did try to do. English is creative too with swearing 😃 And look, no mention of sex or human excretions of any kind. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-curse-words-in-foreign-languages/601069/78 "2011-11-01T21:25:32Z")
> [@drewtwo99](#): > > I fucked up that fucking fuckface for fucking around and fucking up. > > = > > I physically injured that really undesirable person for not doing what he was supposed to be doing and for inadequately performing what he did try to do. > > English is creative too with swearing 😃 And look, no mention of sex or human excretions of any kind. True but look at that sentence. It’s just repetition of the same word. As I said, the difference between mundane and sublime. But hey - that’s my personal opinion. YMMV. ---
**Author:** ![auRa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c4cdca/32.png) [@auRa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/auRa)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2011, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-curse-words-in-foreign-languages/601069/79 "2011-11-02T08:10:42Z")
> [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](#): > > Good thing you said what it meant, because otherwise I’d have thought it meant Switzerland. Maybe Hell is in Switzerland? Well, according to a friend of mine who spent half a year there on work commission, “Switzerland is a shitty country where they speak the world’s ugliest language” so yeah, maybe. (He didn’t have such a great time there, can you tell?) ---
**Author:** ![Orionizer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/orionizer/32/4442_2.png) [@Orionizer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orionizer)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2011, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-curse-words-in-foreign-languages/601069/80 "2011-11-02T15:25:39Z")
My French professor in college was fluent in Persian. She told us the worst thing you can tell someone is (not sure of the spelling, but I’ll try by sounding it out): Khafa-shi or Khafa-sho They translate to “choke yourself”. She said not to ever tell anyone this unless you wanted to fight and/or die… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-curse-words-in-foreign-languages/601069.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-curse-words-in-foreign-languages/601069.md?page=5)