American here. I’ve heard the Cockney origin of berk, although I’ve never heard it used.
As for its use in general company, I’d ask you to consider by analogy the American slang word jerk. If, as seems likely, it derives from jerk off, meaning a person who masturbates excessively (and therefore someone of low intelligence and no social grace, as the doctors and medical ads in the 19th century used to aver), then you’d never use “jerk” in public, and certainly never in front of kids. But most people are probably unaware of this connection, or don’t care. They know the word from its use, not its possible origin.
I said it a lot as a kid and I’m 31. Not sure how old your dad is, but I’m guessing much older than that. I had to stop saying it when I was about 10 because my stepmother’s surname was Bourke and she didn’t like it.
Another term from rhyming slang whose offensive origin is often not recognized is “raspberry” (for making a rude noise with the lips) or “razzing” (for heckling), which derives from raspberry tart = fart.
I did too. I still do. I also occasionally say blinking hell, not as a euphemism exactly, just because that’s what I’m used to. I mean, using hell is not exactly more polite than using bloody. You can also say “blinking stupid fucker.”
Pretty sure this is far from likely, although it could have some influence. The term ‘soda jerk’ dates to the early 1900s, and wasn’t all that derogatory, and the term ‘jerkwater town’ goes back to the days of steam powered trains. The latter was first meant as a descriptive for water service for the trains, but eventually became synonymous with a small town of little value, and its inhabitants as ‘jerks’.
I concur that very few people are aware of the rhyming slang origin of “berk”, but in any case you rarely hear the word around here these days.
The last time I heard Cockney rhyming slang being used in earnest, instead of as some sort of joke, was in the mid-Seventies, working with a 60-year old man. Len, you were a good bloke.
I’d more usually recognize “raspberry” as being “raspberry ripple” in rhyming slang meaning raspberry ripple = cripple. (though extended to many disabilities, Ian Drury uses it in a song…)
Burk can also be used (now uncommonly) to mean to strangle as in Burk and Hare.
Did you grow up here? You’ve never heard, for example, someone tell you to “have a butcher’s at that”? Never heard anyone say they’re going up the apple and pears? That’s really, really weird if so. Especially since you must be at least twenty years older than me. Half my dad’s vocabulary was rhyming slang and he wouldn’t have been much younger than you.
Locals round here - old school locals, not posh people who’ve moved here or people who don’t speak English as a first language so have a different linguistic history - do still use some cockney rhyming slang. They do in Essex and some parts of Kent too. Hell, I use it.
There is an exception to the vulgarity of the C word. In Glasgow vernacular it is used repetitively without any particular offensive meaning. A recent film (I think it was “The Angel’s Share”) was initially told that the use of the word was so frequent it risked an 18 certificate. Ken Loach dispatched a Scots language expert to educate the Film Board about its usage in Glasgow, and they accepted that without it the film would lose its reality. It is quite a surprise to be at a Middle Class ‘Office Do’ in a pub and have one of my wife’s co-workers shout “Come on you cunts, time to move on.” I doubt I could carry it off with an English accent, but a West of Scotland accent neuters it.
“I’m and Irish cripple, a Scottish jew
I’m the blackmail man
A raspberry ripple, a buckle-my-shoe
I’m the blackmail man
I’m a dead fish coon,…” Ian Drury Blackmail man.
He also announces in a spoken piece that he will “have a raspbery ripple …laughs”
Here’s an example. It’s a Rangers fan speaking on an English news programme, prior to a football match. I suspect the interviewer didn’t actually realise what was being said.
In the US it is used for one way, as an insult to a woman. In that context in the UK/Ireland/Australia etc. it is still up there as the top insult.
We have many other ways to use the word however. As mentioned it is most often used in the UK/Ire … in other ways.
e.g.
My cunt of a car is not working.
Cunting computer is fucked.
Any of you cunts want to go to the pub.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to go to my mother or boss and start using cunt all the time but Americans don’t have the flexibilty with the word that we over here have and that can and has lead to some problems.
Another Brit here, rhyming slang isn’t current where I live but a London friend of mine did say something like “can’t park there, that’s a raspberry space”, as in, reserved for the disabled.
Never except as a joke about cockney slang. Nor have I ever heard anyone say they are going for a ball of chalk to the battle-cruiser in their whistle and flute. It’s just not used anymore.
Mind you, English isn’t used much round here any more, either.
