One word Danes (and other N.Es) often get in trouble for is 'fuck'. In Denmark it is no problem to use this in many business meetings but will often spell trouble when we participate in a meeting with people from USA. We simply do not see using it as something to avoid.
(and pupils in Denmark will absolutely not be sent to headmaster or parents contacted if they use it. At most it will be a glance from the teacher if they use it too much).
There is a rule, never swear in a foreign language, or meow at a cat, you just don't know exactly what you are saying.
Saying fuck is very context dependent. It can make you seem familiar, in a formal context that would be unwelcome (ie, we are not friends so don't talk to me as if we were pals (eg: tu, vs vous in french))
It could be a sign of directness and frankness. It can be somewhat comedy, or it can be crass, or it can be ignorant and uneducated (ie, no other way to Express yourself without cursing, a limited vocabulary)
It also depends on how often one curses and hears them. High schoolers curse every other sentence, but when their (teacher, parent etc) curses once and for the first time in years, it means seriousness and is powerful. So something like "you little fuck" can be all the way from endearing, to the most serious of threats
I understand the sentiment, but can’t follow the rule. I meow at cats whenever I meet them. It just always seemed the right thing to do. Granted, I don’t know exactly what I’m saying when I meow (or otherwise, really) - but then I don’t know what they’re saying, either, so I figure we’re even.
In any case, none of the cats I’ve meowed at over the years have ever seemed too offended - perhaps I’ve just been lucky. Barking at dogs has been a totally different story, though…
When you work as a foreigner in Japan, you can be afforded a lot of leeway in business custom and etiquette - as you as you are polite. You are assumed to be a well-meaning Gaijin who doesn't know better/proper form.
I've always assumed it is the same with meowing at cats: "we appreciate your effort. At least you didn't shit in our litter box like Jerry"
Meow at your cat and you might just learn something. I’ve successfully learned my cat’s “language.” Thankfully it’s a small vocabulary. Unfortunately, they know that I know what they want when the subject of cat treats comes up.
Funny enough, our second cat learned the local dialect after joining the family. I guess the moral here is to just gauge the room and hope for something fishy to come out of the cabinet.
Cats only meow to communicate with humans, they don't make the sound around other adult cats. It's a holdover from kittenhood that turned out to be advantageous at getting human attention, so when they self-domesticated, so they kept it. So basically if you meow at a cat you're just saying "I'm baby".
"There is a rule, never swear in a foreign language"
I'm an anglophone - en_GB.
The word fuck has been adopted by pretty much the world as a naughty expletive that generally doesn't cause complete outrage but is expressive enough to be generally outside normal and polite conversation. I think it is a triumph of people getting something right: As a complex species with disparate concepts and languages, we have managed to pick a single word to cover quite a few concepts and situations. Fuck's time has come (ooerr).
To be honest, I'd like to be able to swear in a foreign language (I can manage German and French so far but without much enthusiasm). Please feel free to reply with your finest swearing and put downs.
If you replace 'fuck' with 'procreate' or 'fornicate', it should be more polite: Oh procreation, what have you done now?
However, as Hollywood managed to promote 'fuck' as a generic expletive with no meaning, these are actually less polite, as they emphasis the meaning that was gone.
I also wonder why people write f*ck. If you want to swear, do it. If you want to be polite, don't do it. If a censoring system won't let you use fuck, be more creative. F*ck with a star just seems to say you're a pushover.
> Please feel free to reply with your finest swearing and put downs.
How about strange?
I binge-watched all of Farscape in under a month during college over a decade ago, and "frell" (usually in the form "frelling ____") seems to have become a permanent part of my vocabulary. The word is a 1:1 translation of every meaning of "fuck", used very liberally in the series.
There's a bunch more swears and work-inappropriate sayings they also leave "untranslated", but "frell" was probably the most used.
The Irish deploy the work "feck" in nearlly the same way as the English word "fuck" but it isn't considered rude. I should probably know the full etymology of both words but can only comment on the Eng.Ang/Sax version which is basically: fuck. WP etc seem to waffle about wind fuckers/fokkers etc but fundamentally, I think the word means exactly what it means - that is how words work!
Feck is a bit more intriguing. I think feck really means the same as fuck but it is the Irish sticking it to the English and turning a rude word into a simple expletive that Mummy can use. If so - good job. I would love to hear some thoughts about this from someone from the Isle.
Same in some parts of the UK—north east of England in my case. It's fine among friends, but I'd never say it in a business meeting or to my grandmother. It's all about the context and delivery—calling someone a cunt will be taken very badly indeed if you do it in the wrong situation.
It's unclear whether you're talking about the English word "fuck" or some Danish "equivalent". Either way, the word doesn't necessarily mean the same thing to people who speak different languages, or even just different dialects, do it's unclear to what extent the difference you're referring to is cultural or linguistic.
(Is there even a clear distinction between "cultural" and "linguistic"?)
The English word, used in the way we picked up from American cultural expression like TV, movies and music. The meaning is the same but the sensitivity to it is different. To us Samuel L Jackson characters are colourful and funny, not rude or abrasive, perhaps that was lost in translation.
Lenny Bruce's 1962 "Dirty Words" album is on Spotify and Apple Music; worth a listen if you've never heard it.)
Jackson's use of fuck is typically to add emphasis to a statement, and actually, I think he uses "motherfucker" a lot more than bare fuck[1], but in any case, fuck has different meanings depending upon context. Consider: Oh fuck. Fuck off. Fuck you. I'm fucked. Hey lady, you wanna fuck?[2] This fucking bug. Let's get the fuck outta here.
It's an adaptable word but still bleeped on the air in 2022. At the same time, it's okay to allude to it on primetime TV as in: "Holy mother forking shirt balls!"
Malcolm Tucker in “The Thick of It” made extensive use of the word “fuck”, my favourite being responding to a door knock with “Come the fuck in or fuck the fuck off.” - an impressive 33% fuck content.
I feel “on the air” is a bit misleading and antiquated, and I think that’s quite relevant, because you seem to be using “the air” as some barometer of social acceptance.
Even the “cool” elderly people I know stopped listening to the radio and broadcast TV years ago. Nowadays, everything is Podcasts, Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, etc. and none of them censor “fuck”. Our culture is generally becoming a lot more open and accepting when it comes to the use of words like “fuck” and “shit”, however words like “cunt” are still fairly taboo.
From my perspective, broadcast TV and radio are simply a measure of how many Americans are hanging onto an antiquated culture, and I’m sure there’s significant overlap between “people who listen to broadcast” and “people who still find ‘fuck’ offensive”, and it’s likely no longer just a function of age.
Thanks for sharing the Lenny Bruce but, I had no idea that inspired Carlin!
Literally the only reason i do not use Television or terrestrial radio broadcast is the advertisements. I got sick of the advertisements back in 2001, and i have never had a CATV subscription. I have an aerial now because PBS has a channel aimed specifically at children and as it's publicly funded the advertisements (including product placement) are benign or at least unobtrusive, not loud, and not about medicines. Doctors aren't watching children's programming (generally) so that's the last refuge from the billions pharma spends on marketing every year.
90% of the freemium streaming services are the same, and i'll include SiriusXM as well.
That all being said, I personally consider sectioning off parts of the language (colorful or whatever) a net positive. In my opinion, disallowing words that have "universal meaning" forces children (and people who want to run for office, be an instructor, whatever) to find better and more descriptive ways to express themselves. The alternative, as an extreme, would be two utterances: "Fuck yes!" for good things, and "aw, fuck!" for bad things.
I may just be a simple big city technologist, but there's something really vim-like about broadcast that I thoroughly appreciate. I sure hope I'm not the only one who sees value in such things!
God should be added to that list of dirty words because not every one is religious and being constantly reminded of the presence of what is old school law and order but in the extreme psychological warfare is just as nasty if not worse.
The other problem is who are these people imposing those rules on us? Is this the thought police who hide behind the anonymity of public outrage and public morals but typically work for media outlets as editors, or legislators or law enforcement and judiciary? Are they an anagram of Non Technical Computer Users?
The "these people" are us, and I don't believe there's actually a formal list of banned words. Rather, Federal law prohibits obscene, indecent and profane content from being broadcast[1].
It's then up to us, the public, to work out whether content falls into one of these categories. NBC could, for example, choose not to bleep fuck during a daytime podcast. That would probably lead to a bunch of complaints to the FCC. The FCC would then fine NBC, and I gather, ultimately could revoke NBC's broadcasting license.
What's offensive changes over time[1]. Maybe fuck won't be seen as offensive some day, and then networks will be free to broadcast it over the air because no one complains to the FCC about it.
> Not using it in vain is one of the ten commandments:
Religion has only been around for about 2000-3000 years, and if it was banned so we couldnt utter the word god anymore, I wonder how long it would take for the epigenetics to work out of the gene pool.
In todays world, I have a hunch most kids have learnt to swear by the time they start primary school, so why the mental bondage to use a euphemism and to have an excuse to beat a kind mentally and/or physically for saying it?
Would it really bring that much chaos to the world, considering the psychological idea that something banned or illicit is more highly treasured?
Consider what happens when I say "the 'n' word" - do you think of a racial slur in your head? If so, because I do in fact mean the slur but I am not allowed to say it regardless of context, should I have just said the word to begin with anyway? Am I free from obscenity because I used a euphemism and you are a racist for thinking of the non-euphemism? The mental burden concept is iffy here.
If I was younger under the legal guardianship of my parents the N word would be No. However the news & social media has been very informative and educational at hilighting other peoples vulnerabilities giving would be agent provocateurs new angles of attack, so now I tend to associate the N word with a subsection of society getting angry at the non subsection of society using it. What I see is a subsection of society trying to own a word which can only be used by themselves. I think this happens when a subsection dont have many material possessions to keep them occupied with like toys for kids so like with religion, if you dont have much you start inventing things and laying claim to things that where there is no proof.
As to the cognitive dissonance angle, for having racist thoughts regarding a non euphemism, there is nothing quite like cognitive dissonance to mess people up, but what I find interesting about it is how it affects us as our chemistry changes, ie we age, we get more intelligent, we get wise, so then we start employing innuendo to avoid the legal and societal constraints, and there is another subsection of society which does innuendo brilliantly.
Kale should be added to that list of dirty words because not every one is a health nut, and being constantly reminded of the presence of what is new school law and order but in the extreme psychological warfare is just as nasty if not worse.
Yes it was traditionally a pro health fad food - and this is precisely one the reasons Wendy’s is marketing it. That and it still has a little panache as being more “upscale” than iceberg.
In the 00sKFC tried to market their chicken as a pro health Atkins type food with none other than Jason Alexander. That one was so bad that even the fucking ad industry criticized it. Marketing the unhealthiest of fast food as somewhat healthy is not a new thing.
KFC was considered healthy by the uneducated long before that. Growing up in the late 80s, early 90s, I remember my family and my friends' families treating KFC as the healthy fast food option.
It really wasn't until the Double Down era that the absurdity of KFC was apparent to everyone.
Kale is also high in Oxalate. If you have had kidney stones, you care about this.
It's not as high as Spinach or Almonds, but it's still in the top ten.
So, maybe they need to be sued by someone who has had kidney stones, before they reconsider that idea, or at least required to put a huge warning on that item?
if you have a bunch of lettuce (like iceberg or whatever) and do an extraction - i'm not sure what type other than distillate - the resulting compound is narcotic.
You can go online or to a drug store and buy wild lettuce and/or lettuce extract and take it for pain or inflammation.
Most plants that we class as food have been domesticated to avoid some of the wild experiences that might get documented on Erowid.org but in the past were explained away as religious experiences and documented as such.
I take wild lettuce, and tumeric with black pepper fairly often. in 1998 or so there were "tobacco-less" cigarettes that my partner at the time bought me to try, i think they're probably used as props on movie sets and for people who want to look "smoker cool" without the whole cancer and emphysema aspects - these were 100% wild lettuce, and smelled like what, at the time, i assumed was marijuana. I've since discovered that more people around that area were smoking catnip/wild lettuce than weed, since they're different, and it's not really that subtle.
Plants, and how our gut bacteria interact with them - or not - are one of the most interesting things i can think of.
> how our gut bacteria interact with them - or not - are one of the most interesting things i can think of
Well if you want a laugh then, try some L-Tryptophan, a few grams a day but you can do more spread out over the day.
You gut bacteria will turn it into serotonin and you'll know why serotonin is found in the outer shell of seeds. Lets just say it can give you a toilet experience much like having a hot spicy curry, you see serotonin irritates the gut in animals so the seeds get pooped out pretty much in tact so the plants can spread around, but serotonin can cause some tissues to sting enormously which is why curry can also sting.
About 20 years ago I was also bothered by people bringing in their religion in my face too much. Then I realized that they have the right to speak their mind, same as I have the right to speak my mind, and their view of the world is as good to them as it is mine to me. I had no problem with any religion per se (I grew in places with antagonistic religions and I learned to be neutral), just with their "in your face" attitude, but I realized there is a huge differences between being polite and banning.
I dont think you realise how dangerous some of these people really are, which is why banning is essential. Cognitive dissonance is extremely dangerous and religions have caused a lot of unnecessary deaths.
This really depends on the company, at least in tech. In the US, I've never felt awkward using the work "fuck" in meetings but I've also only worked in less uptight cultures. We also would prefer the direct phrases instead of the passive "polite" ones in the posted site.
Ahh this brought me back! I wrote a paper in college about swearwords, taboo words, and euphemisms in first and second languages and interviewed one of my Danish friends, who shared similar sentiments about the word fuck. As an American, I feel trepidation to even type that word out here in a public forum lol. At least what I remember him saying is that he learned it from the film Raw by Eddie Murphy.
And you've brought me back to a childhood memory of my older brother, age 13 with a big smile on his face, brought me into the closet where he had a portable cassette player and a newly acquired copy of Raw, and we listened to it and had our vocabulary suddenly expanded to a new level.
Lol, the level of secrecy we had back in those days, no two-way headphones, no phones, just had to scurry into corners to do the things our parents would say are bad, even though they did them just in their own scurried away corners. Thank you for sharing this story :-D
One thing that is more inappropriate and offensive than using the word "fuck" is suggesting that someone is mentally ill because they're not comfortable doing so.
Such a comment annoys me, even if in jest. I feel glad that I pause to think about how my words may impact people based on their expectations. I'm not sure what you were trying to imply by "go and visit a therapist"—that I should not care at all about how others feel? Maybe you think I care too much about how they feel and too little about how I feel but I still said the word, more to share how I believe HN has an expectation of not using that word too often.
EDIT: I also have my name attached to my words here and in most places on the internet, so I'm more mindful of how things said here can be read in other contexts where certain words are more taboo.
Also just realized part of it is the worry that I'll get downvoted with little to no knowledge of why, which is one thing that bothers me on HN. This "am I playing by the rules" uncertainty, which I even feel as I type this. Is this a meta-comment that breaks some HN rule? Doesn't have enough curiosity?
All that to say there are often platform-specific norms about these things and I rarely see curse words on here.
I would say this is generally true, except in SV start up culture. "Fuck" is used so ubiquitously there that it's almost seen as weird if you don't use it frequently.
Fuck is generally very acceptable in meetings at my (large tech) company (in US at least), depending of course on context. I hear it a lot less from our APAC and EU offices though.
There is going to be a word (or several) in your native language that your grandparents would never expect to hear you say, and you would get at the very least severe talking-to from your parents if you said it in public as a young child. For those who grew up in english-speaking countries, fuck is one such word. It falls below other words, such as cunt and whore, (which I struggle to type out without asterisks or somesuch self-censoring) but it is not tolerated in children.
There are plenty of less severe words in english that can be used, such as "bloody" or "damn" which roughly equate to how those who speak english as a second language use "fuck"
> One word Danes (and other N.Es) often get in trouble for is 'fuck'. In Denmark it is no problem to use this in many business meetings but will often spell trouble when we participate in a meeting with people from USA. We simply do not see using it as something to avoid.
Reminds me of a slide[1] DHH did at a Rails conference presentation.
One word Danes (and other N.Es) often get in trouble for is 'fuck'. In Denmark it is no problem to use this in many business meetings but will often spell trouble when we participate in a meeting with people from USA. We simply do not see using it as something to avoid.
(and pupils in Denmark will absolutely not be sent to headmaster or parents contacted if they use it. At most it will be a glance from the teacher if they use it too much).