Talk:Profanity

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[edit] Profanity in different languages:German

I changed "Schweinehunde" into "Schweinehund", because "Schweinehunde" would be the plural. --DidT

[edit] Whether "cunt" as an insult is gender-neutral in the UK

""cunt" in the UK has attained the status of a gender-neutral insult, akin to arsehole/asshole etc"

That's pretty obviously not true. Using the word to insult a man carries the intention of calling him a woman. Duh. Why try to fit in nonsense "gender" agenda? Would that be agender? Pretty fitting, I think. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.163.0.42 (talk) 20:05, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I think otherwise unsupported pronouncements about the details of non-US culture would be more belivable from people not coming from a US IP address . The Wednesday Island (talk) 14:26, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
Being from the UK, I'd agree it is pretty much gender-neutral as an insult. One example that comes to mind is "Trainspotting" by Irvine Welsh, where the word is used frequently & indiscriminately of people. Obviously it's a work of fiction but he is depicting how certain groups of people talk. Not sure if that qualifies as a "reference" for Wikipedia standards?

I dont think anyone is ever going to fix this article.. I would if i could, but it looks just fine to me

Does some pedant want to bother explaining to me how one is expected to cite SPOKEN English? Or shall I simply put under the citation, "Visit the UK, pick a fight, and see what they call you." 129.128.148.75 (talk) 17:01, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Ha :) I think the point is that we're a tertiary source; we'd quote secondary sources who had done this to see what happened. The Wednesday Island (talk) 19:18, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Worldwide View

This article is suffering from a USA bias and an English Language bias. However it lacks sufficient references to the largest influence on American profanity views, the FCC. There might also be a Current Events section dealing with the FCC's recent policy change related to "passing profanity" and its historical campaign against so-called 'shock jocks' such as Howard Stern.

I have tagged the article as {{globalize/USA}} as the article tends to come over with a generally American perspective. These paragraphs for example:

The more vague and inclusive interpretation blurs the distinction between categories of offensive words (see Cursing in America by Timothy Jay ).

and

US obscenity laws were originally meant to prohibit symbolic attacks on religion and religious figures or to protect children from profane speech. Since the time of the Civil War in the late 1800s, restrictions have focused more on sexual speech. There has always been great difficulty in defining profanity. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission, in response to complaints about a 1973 broadcast comedy routine by George Carlin, called: Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television, ruled that such language could not be broadcast at times of day when there is a reasonable risk that children may be in the audience. The Supreme Court of the United States upheld this act of censorship in F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978).

and

In the U.S. today, terminology considered to be racist is often seen as more offensive than sexual or scatological terminology; this is most clearly shown in the attention given to use of the word nigger, now effectively banned in American public discourse, although many black people use the word "nigga" as a casual reference, more than most whites do in their normal conversations (though in certain racist or racially-biased social groups, "nigger" as a casual reference to black people is still in frequent use). Some mistakenly associate the word niggardly (meaning "stingy") with the word nigger.[1] As with other types of profanity, context is very important; thus, Americans of African descent might use the word nigger, or the related nigga, in informal situations among themselves, without being considered offensive.

The now deleted (which I agree with) list of profanities section, was also heavily biased towards US terminology. Where distinctions are made, it is predominately with UK variations.

There is a further assumption in this article that we are making an account "profanities in the English Language" rather than simply covering the universal concept of a profanity. The "interlanguage" section cements this idea by making this distinction, as does the sister article Foreign profanity - (foreign to what?).

I therefore propose the following:

  • This article be completely re-written from a language-neutral and nation-neutral perspective.
  • That Foreign profanity be blanked, redirected here and with the worthwhile prose transferred here.
  • That the recently deleted List of English profanities from this article, and the lists in Foreign profanity be combined into a new List of profanities article in an amended form.
  • That this article concentrate on the concept of a profanity rather than heavily on examples of profanities.

NB - I do not object in any way shape or form to the use of profane words in this article. I fully agree with WP:NOT#CENSORED, but at the same time feel that the purpose of this article is not to catalogue profane words, rather describe the concept of a profanity, and only use profane words where appropriate to these ends. A list article should exist as a support for this. To help with the balance, multiple language profane words ought to used as examples, with translations where applicable.

Comments please. -- Fursday 18:06, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

This all sounds great to me. I'm happy to help in any way I can. The idea of the supportive list of words is good; there are vast regional and national variations of some universal themes that should be addressed and everyone likes learning new words. My only trepidation with a list is the fear that it would devolve into a childish, vandal-magnet, but that could probably be managed. If you can find a copy, you might want to check out the book Coincidance by Robert Anton Wilson. It contains an essay called the The Motherfucker Mystique wherin we are treated to a history of the word "motherfucker", the Signifying Monkey, and Stagger Lee. Cheers. Homefill 18:47, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

    • Comment: I've edited the introduction of the article. However to edit the other parts, it requires knowing where the references came from. The author of the article should provide ref/sources to the information, and from that can the rest be helped/edited for grammar and clarity. Breathe200 18:33, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Started

I've moved the listy stuff from Foreign profanity to the newly created List of profanities and proposed a merge of the prose to Profanity. Homefill 19:05, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Historically taboo???

The line that says that "profane words were historically taboo" is pretty dodgy. What does it mean? That profane words were taboo from the beginning? Doesn't seem likely. When do we designate the beginning of linguistics? Or does it mean that profanity itself was a taboo (and today isn't)? Hmmm... It needs clarification and corroboration from someone that knows the history of language (I'm prone to believe that it's the same for all languages so doesn't have to be English language history). Zoran M 05:49, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The redirect fucking is being discussed.

Click here to join the discussion. TheBlazikenMaster 13:36, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

P.s. This message has been added to five pages related to this term so there will be real discussion. TheBlazikenMaster 13:36, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Christ's Cunt

It needs citations. Here is an example of it in modern writing:

 http://www.fanlib.com/fanfic/TheTrouble_With_Rum/2m580f

Here is an example of the same expression in Finnish:

 http://www.youswear.com/index.asp?language=Finnish
 "Kristuksen vittu" "Cunt of Jesus Christ"

The expression obviously exists in many languages. I used it myself just the other day, so I would like to add "Christ's Cunt" in English as another example. Rodent99 19:56, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Australia

Australia has a system of common usage. When a word becomes common it is no longer legally offensive and can be used in newspapers and on television. Fuck and cunt were added at the last update (in the early 1980's I believe) and as a result, only profanities with a racial connotation are now considered offensive here (ie: no one would bat an eyelid if a child uses those words today). I can't find a reference to it but recall reading about it in the newspaper at the time. If some one can find a reference it would be worth a mention in the paragraph about profanities changing over time.
Another interesting fact that may be worth including somewhere is how "fanny", which is an innocuous word for ass in America, came to mean something else here. over time the term "Fuck all" became "sweet FA" which in turn became "sweet Fanny Adams" (all three terms are still in use today to mean the same thing). As a result of this usage "fanny" came to mean a womans private parts. It always gets a good laugh here when the word fanny is used in American movies. Wayne 23:02, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, Sweet Fanny Adams was the original phrase, and it was shortened to Sweet FA. It's got fuck all to do with "fuck all" ;) It's a British phrase about a real 8 year old girl in the 1800s called Fanny Adams who was murdered and dismembered. The British Navy in their typically uncouth way described some of their food as being sweet Fanny Adams to convey how distasteful they found it, hence the origin of that term.

--80.2.209.44 (talk) 23:52, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

No surprise that we actually have an article on Fanny Adams. It's beyond doubt that she was a real person, but that doesn't mean that it's a coincidence that "sweet fuck-all" and "sweet Fanny Adams" share the same initials: people then as now make macabre jokes. It's also less than clear what that has to do with the difference in meaning of the word "fanny" among English-speaking countries. The Wednesday Island (talk) 14:30, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] What the fuck is being discussed

And I highly encourage EVERYONE to post their opinions here. Thanks. TheBlazikenMaster 21:39, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Books containing famous uses of profanity

Would Huckleberry Finn merit an inclusion on this list for its use of the n-word? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.165.177.128 (talk) 22:05, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it merits the inclusion, seeing as how the word used to be a commonplace word at the time the book was written. History has to be taken into account here as well. To put it into more understandable terms - when HF was written, the times were different and the word 'nigger' didn't have the social stigma it has today, so therefore the perception of the word was not the same as it is today. It's one thing when some mindless contemporary KKK propaganda leaflet uses the word, and another when Mark Twain does. TomorrowTime (talk) 21:18, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Aren't entirely profane?

I take strong exception to the notion that insulting people for being Chinese ("chink") or Hispanic ("wetback") is only offensive "in the company of certain people". More generally, I'm unsure what "aren't entirely profane to a society" is meant to convey. If the idea is that these words are only mildly or moderately derogatory, I think it's best to just say so. If the editor meant to say that these slurs are profane to some segments of society but not others, I don't think that's accurate. Granted, there are people who use these terms and accept them, but there are also people who assault and murder members of the same targeted groups. Valerius (talk) 17:47, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

- Offensive words are only offensive around people being offended by them. Its not to say its NICE or MORAL to say them at any time. Shooting a gun at an empty space is ok, shooting it when someone is there is a problem, its really the same thing. You can only possibly offended by someone being said that offends you if you are aware of it, a tree falling in the forrest and all that.

I think it stands in contrast to some things, like joking about child rape, maybe the word cunt, which appart from a minority would likely offen most people.

[edit] The whole "interlanguage" section

Does the "interlanguage" section really need such a laundry list of instances? I gather from the above discussion taht this used to be even worse, but you read through this section and think, alRIGHT, we get it already! I hesitate to just excise large swaths of material, but I think that's what's needed here.... /blahedo (t) 20:30, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

The whole section is unneeded and slightly ridiculous, IMO. One word in one language sounds like an insulting one in another. So what? A word for a dish in one language may meen something completely else in another language as well, but does that mean that an "interlanguage" section is needed in the Food article? There's thousands of languages out there, it'd be more encyclopedia-worthy if not a single profanity in any language sounded like something unprofane in any other language... TomorrowTime (talk) 14:58, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] List of profane words

I want to make a section called "list of profane words"

  • Fuck
  • shit
  • bitch
  • nigger
  • Cum
  • slut
  • chink
  • ass
  • buttfucked
  • kike
  • faggot

Anyone got any other ones I could include? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.188.240.123 (talk) 21:35, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Somehow I don't think a list of profane words is appropriate for an encyclopedia article. If you want to learn more creative ways to swear, try the site in the extermal links section. But I'd recommend learning creative ways to not swear instead. --Angelastic (talk) 01:16, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Certainly it isn't appropriate for this article, though wikipedia does seem to have many examples of of separate "List of..." articles. -- Fursday 03:41, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
Why isnt it appropriate if the article is about profanity.

I've also found

  • tard
  • whore
  • heshe
  • nip
  • gook
  • kraut
  • sand nigger
  • spick.

[edit] Censorship?

For christ's sake: changing "fuck" to "f*ck" or "cunt" to "c***". Of all the places to impose your irrational and fascist obsession with forcing the world to speak and behave in ways that make you comfortable (all the while of course perpetuating the words' state of profanity rather than eliminating it), it is NOT in a fucking encyclopedia--y'know, where one supposedly goes in the hope of accessing unbiased and comprehensive information and education on virtually any conceivable subject? The place that is NOT about toting one's own viewpoint, that is NOT about hushing up the things that make one uncomfortable and pretending they don't exist, that is NOT about censorship to avoid offending people? You familiar with that, the encyclopedia? Information--sober fact--can never offend; and to think that it can, to be offended by fact, is grossly irrational. To try and cover up concepts or words is the pinnacle of intellectual subversion, and to do so because you, for whatever rationalization you may offer, don't like them is the pinnacle of dogmatic, fascist oppression.

Hopefully this will suffice in demonstrating, if anything the offensiveness of censorship, and how severely inappropriate it is in an encyclopedia of all places. However, if some of you dogmatic little fucks continue on with your narrow-minded, intellectually oppressive bullshit, then sadly I will have to play the "it's in the rulebook" card: Wikipedia:Profanity, Wikipedia:NOT#Wikipedia_is_not_censored, Wikipedia:Content_disclaimer. --Iamthedeus (talk) 01:16, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

The discussion about the appropriateness of this comment and whether it qualified as a personal attack was not relevant per se to the Profanity article or to the content of what I was saying; as such I've moved it to my talk page. —Iamthedeus (talk) 21:05, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia is not censored.

Follow this Wikipedia link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_censored —Preceding unsigned comment added by WadeSimMiser (talk • contribs) 23:31, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] I deleted the interlanguage section

The purpose of the interlanguage section has been questioned before, and no defenses were uttered, so I deleted it. It was steadily becoming a cesspool of "I heard this here and that there". It was meaningless to start with - c'mon, a non-profane word in one language sounds like a profane one in another is hardly encyclopedic; and has grown over all possible proportions, in fact to the extent where it was almost half of the article itself. Not to mention, it was patently false in many parts - the word Mittwoch in German is never pronounced Mitfuck, and the word kurba(whore) in Slavic languages ethimologically stems from the same Romanic languages' curva(curve) the interlanguage section was claiming it had an unerringly similar yet unrelated ring to. TomorrowTime (talk) 21:59, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Deleted section:

[edit] Interlanguage

The situation is rendered even more complex when other languages enter the picture. Merde in French, and Mist or Scheiße in German (both usually translated as shit) are also quite common, as are the Italian and Portuguese Merda and the Spanish Mierda. While German and some other languages' profanity seems to focus on elimination, profanities in many Romance and northern European languages tend to make reference to religion, and English profanity tends to be sexual in nature. Italian represents an exception with its extensive use of Cazzo and Fica (translated as dick and cunt, with the latter being less insulting than the English equivalent) in common speech; each is very common in the Italian language and each has, for the most part, lost its vulgar meaning. Likewise, in European Spanish, coño (usually translated as cunt in English) is in some places very common in informal spoken discourse, and means no more than "Hey!" Its frequent use by Spaniards led to the labelling of the class of Filipinos with Spanish ancestry as konyos. In other locales, however, the word has a much stronger negative connotation.

Some scholars have noted that while the French and Spanish are comfortable hearing native speakers use these words, they tend to hear the "stronger" meaning when the same words are spoken by non-native speakers. This may be similar to the differences in the acceptability of queer or nigger depending on who is saying the words. Or it may be an example of how it is easier to learn swear words in a new language or dialect than to learn the fine shades of intensity which accompany their use.

A profane word in one language often sounds like an ordinary word in another; such words are called false friends. Fuck sounds like the French words for "seal" (phoque) and jib (foc), the Spanish words for "seal" (foca) and lightbulb (foco) or the Irish word for "words" (focail), as well as the Latin and Romanian words for "do" ("I do" can be facio as well as the imperative fac in Latin or fac eu in Romanian, which sounds a lot like the English "fuck you"). Arabic for "think" sounds just like "you fucker". Also, the Croatian word fakat sounds similar to the English "fuck at" when it actually means "factually". "Fuck" also sounds like the Latin imperative singular form of "do" or "make" (fac) and the Swedish word for "union" (fack); shit sounds somewhat like the Russian for "shield" (щит). The Cantonese words for "flower" and "bridge", when said together ("fa kyu"), sound vaguely similar to "fuck you". Also, the Latin singular imperative of "say" (dic) and the Dutch word for "fat" (dik) are pronounced like the English "dick". The German word for "fat" is both spelled and pronounced as the word dick in English. Sometimes in the German word for Wednesday, "Mittwoch", the "-woch" in it would sound like fuck. And the Dutch word for "cook" or "chef" (kok) sounds exactly like cock. Several European translations of the English word "bassoon" sound very similar to the American English slur faggot; an example is the Albanian "fagot". Even names in one language may appear as vulgar words in another linguistic community, which causes many immigrants to change their names (common Vietnamese personal names include Phuc and Bich; a fairly common Thai name is Porn; in Bengali, Fukeer is a personal name). In Latin, cum means "with", but it can be a profane word for "ejaculation" in English. Both cum and precum are prepositions in Romanian but can have profane, explicitly sexual meanings in English. However in Romanian cum and precum sound like coom and priecoom when pronounced.

A particular coincidence is the Hungarian and Spanish and Italian words for curve: Spanish curva sounds like the Slavic, Romanian, Hungarian and Polish kurva meaning "prostitute" (or, more offensively, "whore"), and Hungarian kanyar sounds like coño, mentioned above. The word con is a profanity in French, but simply means "with" in Spanish and Italian. Apparently, L.L. Zamenhof chose kurba as the Esperanto word for "curved" to avoid the Slavic profanity evoked by the more etymological *kurva. This phenomenon occurs even between Slavic languages. The word kokot is a offensive Slovak (and, to a smaller extent, Czech) word for penis, while in Croatian it means "rooster" with no offensive meaning at all. (The French word cocotte meaning "Dutch oven", is pronounced exactly the same, giving Slovak students of French language good laughs.) Also, the Croatian word piće, meaning "a drink", means "cunts" in Czech and Slovak. Additionally, puta is the genitive and accusative case of two often-used words in south Slavic languages, but in Portuguese and Spanish, it means "whore"; and filho da puta (Spanish: "hijo de puta") is an offensive phrase, similar to "son of a bitch" but actually worse: "son of a prostitute". In Finnish, katso merta means "look at the sea", but to speakers of Italian it sounds very similar to cazzo merda—cazzo is the English equivalent of cock or dick, and merda is equivalent to shit. While "cazzo merda" does not make much sense grammatically (the words are just two nouns put one after the other), hearing such a thing would be funny for Italians, to say the least. This is even more true for Spaniards, since the same sentence, katso merta, sounds just like the offensive expression cacho mierda ("piece of shit") in Spanish. The Spanish word puse (the first-person past-tense of "to put") sounds similar to the English pussy. This is often a source of discomfort for Spanish teachers and humor for Spanish students when the conjugation is being taught. Also Finnish word for bag, pussi resembles pussy. Similarly, the Latin word amabit ("He will love") is pronounced exactly like Ah, ma bite! ("Oh, my dick!") in French, and is a frequent pun in Latin classes. The chemistry term gel, which means the same thing in Spanish as in English, sounds like the English hell when said by a Spanish speaker. The French word vite ("quickly") sounds like the Estonian word for pussy.

In at least one case in Spanish, one word with one connotation in the native language of one of its colonies (in this case, the Philippines) was adopted with another profane connotation in Spanish. The Tagalog word pinga (which means a pole, particularly the one used as a whip to strike or otherwise drive a stray horse into walking on a straight line) is regarded as an equivalent of dick in some Spanish countries, particularly Cuba and Puerto Rico. Yet the word pinga in Portuguese is the slang name for Cachaça, a Brazilian alcoholic beverage.

The American pronunciation of the English word follow is almost identical to the Spanish word falo ("penis"), a non-profanity cognate with phallus. Similarly, the British pronunciation of the word after is identical to the German word After (anus).

Canadian French sometimes string a few basic terms from Roman Catholic liturgy into strings of invective of up to a minute or more. This is known as sacre. Some of these terms have euphemistic alternatives which are also religious terms, but not Catholic ones, for example, Tabarnak(Church tabernacle), Calisse (Holy Chalice), Ostie (Host (Holy Communion)), Christ, Batême (Baptism).

The German and Finnish interjection for surprise or admiration—Hui!—sounds identical to the Russian and Polish swear word literally meaning "dick" (Polish and Slovak chuj, Russian and Bulgarian xyй). The Maori word hui, meaning a meeting or gathering, is also very similar in pronunciation.Pula in Portugese means jump or verb to jump,but in Romaian,pula,pronouced exactly the same way way,means dick.

The word odbyt means "sales (department)" in Czech and Slovak, but it is a non-profane, anatomical term for "rectum" in Polish.

Fáklya, Hungarian for "torch", sounds similar to the English "fuck ya". The British pronunciation of fast sounds like the Hungarian faszt, which is the accusative form of dick or cock. The English pronunciation of the word bus is identical to Hungarian basz, which means "fuck". Czech and Slovak word "horný", meaning "upper", sounds like English "horny".

A more exotic example of interlanguage profanity is the English word carry which sounds exactly the same as a Sinhala (spoken in Sri Lanka) expletive, literally meaning "semen". It is originally a Semitic loanword. (See keri.)

The Afrikaans word kak, which is pronounced kuck literally means "shit". It is mildly profane compared with another Afrikaans word kaffir, considered extremely offensive, and having an equivalent meaning to nigger. In Dutch, the source of Afrikaans, kak means excrement (especially animal excrement), but is not particularly offensive. The English word wife is very offensive to the Dutch and Flemish, as the word wijf is a highly derogary term for a vulgar, offensive woman, to the point that it is almost exclusively used by natives cursing someone with disease: teringwijf implies tuberculosis, klerewijf cholera.