I understand it’s not uncommon to call people “eggplants” in Japanese. WTF?
I like to call people a fucking asshole. I’m from Lowell.
I know, it’s not a debate any more … but it seems to me that English insults are mostly as you say, where other cultures’ are more about honour and respect and stuff.
Also, in English there don’t seem to be any (that I’ve heard, anyway) that are as grievous as some of the ones in other languages. How often does someone tell you “You’d get shot for saying this in Mexico”? There’s nothing you can say in English that would be guaranteed to really piss someone off.
It seems as though English insults involve verbally transplanting a person’s neither reigons on to their face or head, since there are many ____face insults it seems.
You are the son of a motherless goat!
Is it true that “Tu has huevos verdes!” (not sure of spelling–it means “You have green balls”) is a common insult in Mexico?
That’s a direct translation of “Me cago en la leche de tu madre.” Which is used, mostly in Spain, as the English equivalent of “Damn you”. Sometimes you’ll hear it shortened to “Me cago en la leche!”, or “I crap on the milk”, and even just as “Leche!”, or “Milk!”
I’m of Finnish ancestry, and live in an area with a huge amount of Finnish heritage and such. Most kids around here knew “paska” is “shit” and “vittu” is “vagina”, but I wanted to know more.
Thanks to Google, I found this site:
http://www.insultmonger.com/swearing/finnish.htm
It has tons of great supposedly authentic Finnish insult phrases, including such gems as “Your mother copulates with reindeers”, “Roll like cowberry in a pussy”, “corpse fucker”, “whore goat”, “herpes ass”, and the simply marvelous “In your head, shit builds dams and piss runs in rivers”.
But the one I found funniest is suksi vittum, which is defined as “ski into a cunt”. I assumed that “ski” was used as a verb, but asked a real Finn about this and they said that ski is actually a noun in this context, ie. “put a ski into your vagina”.
I hear in Russia “To the cunt” is used for both good things and bad things.
Felling really good: “How are you?” “To the cunt!”
Felling really bad: “How are you?” “To the cunt.”
From my understanding, cursing in Russian is far more poetic than English.
In English, too, if you’re a racist jerk.
My favourite West Indian patois insult is “Bumclot’!” (Bumcloth – toilet paper.) Usually delivered as “Bum-ba-clot’”, so it took me a while to suss it out. “Bloodclot’!” is similar, having nothing at all to do with coagulation, but it doesn’t have the pleasing dissonance that an angry adult using a “bum” construction does.
Bloodclot was described to me by a Jamaican. It’s a euphemism for tampon. Calling someone a bloodclot is like calling them a bitch, i.e. “on the rag.”
Haj
Ah, that makes sense. I hadn’t considered that angle. Then it’s basically like calling a black person an “oreo”, if I’m understanding the context properly?
I’ve spent many hours (eternities, it seemed, sometimes,) in the company of a number of reggae and soca bands and their crews/followers, and my understanding of the usage is that it has little to do with the "bitchy - must be ‘that time of the month’ "dig-- it’s more like “You filthy motherfucker!” Those fellas (I mean rastas, specifically) have a phobic attitude about menstruation – to the point that women are pretty much pariahs for a certain period each month, which I guess must be something of a relief to them. “Oh, I’m not allowed to serve you for a few days? Okay.” (Of course, there are some Rastas that hold more enlightened views, but that’s pretty much the normalized attitude.)
"Bloodclot’ " is also used as a general expletive, too. Dropped your roti in the sawdust? “Bloodclot’!”
slortar, I dunno about the subtleties of the ‘eggplant’ slur – that’s something I’ve only heard on the T.V. As far as I know, though, the “white inside” part doesn’t enter into it. It’s presented as something that only Italian Americans say, if you want to add an extra layer of ironic stereotyping. 
In a crime novel or two, black people are called eggplants by Italian-American toughguys.
In True Romance, Dennis Hopper distracts Chris Walken by telling him Italians (he played a mobster) were descended from eggplants or something and the whole time I was thinking “What the hell is an eggplant?. I need to brush up on my ethnic slurs.”
Full of colorful insults from other countries.
Mexican: Pinchi mecco - You are semen which spilled on the ground.
I don’t know about Arabic, but this is true in Urdu. The word sala is used for both.
According to a friend, there seems to be some sentiment that one’s brother-in-law is stupid, probably simply by association with the word used as insult.
But what does “rasclot” mean that seems to be the worst of the blood, bumba, ras trilogy.
Not sure how to type Cyrillic lettering on the message board.
so I shall just type the translations that I remember.
Walk crabwise along the fence!
(go to hell)
The burp of a drunken indian
(description of bad tasting food of poor quality)