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Cursing. One thing I don’t like in Croatia, one of those personal things, is that I swear (more), i.e. that I use curses and/or profane language (more). And those words are not related only to the occasions when I was stung by a wasp or when I stepped on a sea urchin.

Is this an environmental issue or my genes (they are nowadays blamed for almost everything)? Or a part of national identity? Terje B. Englund was amused by Czechs cursing, and Czechs are also humanoids with a Slavic soul.

Generally speaking, most languages divide curse words into three groups: religious curses, expressions that relate to very private parts of the human body or its waste products, and those that describe all the peculiar things you can do with a close relative, most often your mother. ... Thus, a given language's register of curses and the focus of its obscenities reveal quite a lot about the mental hierarchy of its speakers.

As in English, religious curses are regarded as the mildest ones also in Czech. ... But thanks to the declining role of religion, a phenomenon that has taken place all over Europe ... these curse words have lost their force more or less completely.

Terje B. Englund: The Czechs in a nutshell, Nakladatelstvi Baset, Praha, 2004.

 2008-11-02 

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