http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_profanity

Read the "Profanity as blasphemy, scoff, curse and insult at deity". I was just wondering: we have so many words just to offend religion, god, the virgin mary and such. We even have competitions for the most creative blasphemy. Are there similar things in english (and other languages for non-anglophone users)? Or is italian a unique case? Just curiosity.

Yes, we do. As Stephen Colbert said a few weeks ago in response to a study that showed cursing could help relieve pain, "Evidently, the pain you feel is inversely proportional to the number of middle names you give Jesus."

"Jesus H. Christ on a stick" is pretty common, although the stick can be a popsicle stick, a pogo stick, a chicken basket, or a bicycle.

Wow, that page is surprisingly well detailed

It even has a link to the by now legendary Mosconi video! And it's the first time I see "Dio fa'/faus" mentioned outside of my region, usually not even Italian friends from other areas understand what that means. Amazing.

ep 10 of season 2 of Bullshit! pretty much sums up my thoughts on the subject

Care to elaborate? Sorry, we don't have that where I live, and I can't find decent sources online (keep in mind my pc is in rather terrible shape lately, since I had to store all the sound samples needed for my band's recording on it...).

There is a big Wikipedia entry on French Canadian profanity. Surprisingly enough, there is a English page though it misses a couple of points and has some versions that I never heard. So we have degrees of "sacres", nouns, verbs and adverbs versions of them. There is also amplifier effects like combinations. A well written and developped entry. And there is also euphemisms.

Profanity and BLasphemy?
The Greek language is full of it... for REAL! I mean "μαλάκας" is a national epithet. There's even a page only for this word in wikipaidia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_profanity

I don't wanna sound arrogant or anything, but I consider my language the one with the most cursing. i think this is due to the fact that we are open to other people and we don't hide our feelings. For God's shake, the word Blasphemy is greek, what else would you expect from our language

PS: Italy and Greece = Una Faccia Una Razza as we both say. That's why we both curse so much

I love that word. Surprised to see there's a page in so much detail on just that single word though.

Norwegian curse words are often religious as well, especially about the devil. On the other hand, the Norwegian word for "shit" is not considered offensive at all, people say that all the time, "I read the whole shit", "just sell the whole shit", "This movie was shit cool" etc.

basically that it is ridiculous to have certain taboo words ("certain [arbitrary] sequences of sounds"), and those words change over time - and replacing them with any "baby words" is basically creating perfectly acceptable curse words, which is the same difference
if you do get a chance to see it, its available here

Hey, thanks for the link! Can't check it out now, but I have to say, that's an interesting stance.

And yes, Greece rules

All I know are "pousti" and "malaka" - could this become an educational thread?

English cursing is really fixated on 4 letter words.

4 letter words? What about asshole, bitch, motherfucker, bloody ... , bullshit and such?

Man, I need to start saying that

Don't forget "bugger"

Hehe, I always thought Serbian and most of the Balkan languages I understand were quite profane but we don't even have a wiki page! I found a huuuuge list on alternative dictionaries website four years ago because a friend of mine demanded to become proficient at swearing in Serbian, but I can't find it anymore... but here's a really pathetically short list that'll hopefully convey the more colorful sides of the Serbian language.

For the longest time, the only words I knew in German were Fotze, Scheiße, Schlampe, fich dich, and a few more select words because that's all the friend mentioned above would teach me haha.

Jesus H. Tittyfucking Christ!

Reading that Italian page, I was interested by phrases like "porco zio" as they're designed to be blasphemous as first thought but actually aren't. This happens in english as well, as I can't count how many times I've heard "In the name of fuck!" shouted out.

Japanese has very few curse words, and more phrases which are extremely rude or offensive. It's interesting how different this is from English, which has somewhere around 75,833,156 "no-no" words.

Hey guys, this had to be done; read and laugh:

http://www.cracked.com/article_16275_9- ... world.html

(Sorry i dont know hot to make it clickable but ill figure it out in a bit)


Oh and from the cursing i know, russian seems to be the most purely ofensive, or harsh, but spanish swearing (Not particularly well represented in the article i posted) has got a serious fuckin poetic ring to it.

"Jesus fucking Christ" is something I often curse when I'm really angry. One time my father heard me say it and was really disappointed in me, I felt bad since he's the somewhat religious one in the family but he just told me to be more careful (at least in front of him).

I curse a lot, I don't care.. I find it to be a more colorful way of adding to my speech, I usually go off random tangents of curse words creating new ones all the time, love it.

"Let a hungry Carpathian long-haired she-wolf blow your dick, fuck"



That pretty much wins the entire race IMO.

"Suck devilcock in hell you faggotdwarf"

Ah, the Danish.

The icelanders are amazing. Grandfatherfucker? Unclefucker? hahaaha

EDIT: I just saw the rest. "Brush your teeth, my dick will be inspecting soon!" I laughed my ass out

Looks like Canada got ripped off (sorry, couldn't resist)

That's the greatest show ever made.

And that episode was good, but the PETA episode is still one of my favorites. That and the recycling (also Season 2) and the Global Warming episode from season 6.

"Gobshite" (shithead)
Best. Insult. Ever. This is why I love the Irish.

I curse everyday. Just part of who I am. I have only gotten reprimanded once because of it.

I was working on a jet and didn't realize that there was a female lieutenant standing on the other side of the jet. I got my hand stuck between two hydraulic lines and an air duct. When I finally pulled it free, I caught it on some safety wire, tearing a big gash in my palm. So I naturally started cursing, and I said "fucking cunt" really loud.

The lieutenant didn't appreciate that word much, cause she came around the side of the jet and lit my ass up. Slightly embarrassing and it pissed me off cause I'm standing there bleeding on the floor. Anyways, I try to at least make sure certain people aren't around when I curse.

I curse a lot, although the curse that's earned my spot as favorite would easily be Ass since its used in so many ways. Asshole, asshat, assmonkey, monkeyass, jackass, fatass, uglyass, dumbass. It just works with so many words.

As someone else pointed out, almost all french curse words(except merde/shit) are religious in origin.

European frenchies seem to prefer the sexual curses (putain, salope, enculé (prostitute, whore, assfucked))

The Russian equivalent of "fuck you" is "ride a big cock". That's pretty neat.

My favourite profane word is 'cunt'. It's the only one that still feels wrong to say, you sort of have to savour it for more relevant moments. All others have lost their charm but that one word still sounds so crude.

Fuck I love Penn & Teller

I think the Finnish language sounds like they're cursing all the time. I only know two words, satana and perkele, and to quote Jarpi from The Dudesons: "Satana means satan, and perkele is the grandfather of satan".

You can live a life in Finland by knowing only the "Big Three": Vittu, perkele and saatana. (Vittu refers to the female genital). They are also often used to describe the proprietary element of lesser cursewords when swearing:

"Voi vitun kyrpäperse!" - "Oh vagina's dick-ass!"
"Saatanan paskamulkku!!" - "Satan's shitpenis!"
"Perkeleen vittupää!" - "Devil's vaginahead!"

Endless possibilities of combination provide a fertile base for creative swearing.

Not to mention that even if you talk exclusively in foul language, everybody and his dog still perfectly understands the meaning.

I can agree with that, not because I'm spanish, but I haven't heard any swearword that sounds as great, almost musical as "hijoputa"