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. |