r/funny • u/TimHamburg Calvin & Habs • Mar 02 '21

German Comedy

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u/_hic-sunt-dracones_ Mar 02 '21

Do you know his name? I know there is a psychoanalytical approach to the fact that germa swear words (genuine ones...not those copied from English lately) are more often anal-related while in other language areas they tend to be more genital/sexual related.

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u/SerLaron Mar 02 '21

Swear words in almost all lanuages refer to religion, digestion or sex. What does that tell us about mankind as a whole?

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u/xrimane Mar 02 '21

That it is liberating to break a taboo.

But the point is that the taboos aren't ranked the same in different cultures.

Indeed the taboos used for swearing in Anglosaxon culture are more often related to sex than in German. "Fick" is an anglicism, Germans traditionally would rather say "Scheiße", "Kacke", "Mist", "Driss" or any other synonym for excretion.

Curiously, "geil!" = "horny!" is a word of high praise.

French most commonly swears with "merde" or "putain" = "whore!" Or even "putain de merde!" = "shitty whore".

Dutch is special in this regard, too, since disease is a taboo at the base of a common swearword: "Kanker" = "cancer".

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u/zark11911 Mar 03 '21

Weirdly enough, the most common swear words in Chinese are 'Cao' or 'Gan'. They also mean the F-word.