How often do you swear?

How often do you swear in real life?


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Blue Protoman

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This is only in real life. Not swearing in IRC, I mean swearing face to face or on phones.


Me? I manage my colorful words well. I do not pepper every other sentence with the word "fuck". Most of my swearing is under my breath. I'm more likely to call someone a moron than a fucktard.
 
I very seldom swear out of anger or frustration. I also have lots of other words to emphasize points. This is mostly out of courtesy to others, but also because I consider swear words kinda useless. I sometimes swear ironically and on rare occasion to emphasize points to people who mostly use swear words themselves to "speak their language", so to speak.
 
I reserve curse words for very important times, like today when I met up with friends for assorted card games with the bet that the loser has to go jump naked in the snow bank.


10 points if you can guess who lost <_<
 
I swear quite a lot. But mostly to accentuate. Swedish is quite a sweary language. Though, compared to most language our swearwords are quite mild, and often just different names of the devil.


"Djävlar, jag slog i tån!" - "Devils, I stupped my toe!"


"Det var då själva fan så ont det gör!" - "By the devil it hurts!"


"Helvete! Nageln låssnade!" - "Hell! The nail broke off!"


"Förbannade djävla skit!" - "Cursed devil shit!"


Of course, Swedes also use genitals as swear words, accentuated with our "devil" ("Devil's dick! I fell over!"). We don't discriminate, any genital will do when making a good swear session ("Hell's pussy! I lost my lunch money!"). Lately (the last 30 years or so) we've also started using sexual orientations as swearwords ("I keep rolling natural 1s! Devil's gay dice!"). Also, when cursing AT someone, we can be most creative and tell people just what kind of relationships they have to their mothers and things like that ("Your mother is a devil cow!"). I think we're quite influenced in HOW we curse by American culture since culture is America's greatest export.


That said, we're not terribly Christian in Sweden, at least not during the last 100 years or so. So invoking the name of The Big Bad must be an old remnant.


Swearing is also quite un-dramatic in Sweden. We never bleep it out in television or radio. Also, it is not highly unusual to hear children swear every now and again in children's shows on the telly.
 
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^ Just make sure to keep that sentence order. "I fell over. Devil's dick!" is easily misinterpretable :p
 
I notice that when I talk to non-Americans they think we have at least a few f-bombs per sentence and when they speak English they throw a few swear words in for good measure. I only speak Portuguese so I don't know if this is the case outside of Portuguese but Brazilians don't swear casually except when speaking English. They tend to not care about swearing as long as it is in English. It really bothered me and I would always ask why they think it is ok to swear casually when they're speaking English but not in their native tongue and it usually boils down to they think we swear all the time because of our awful TV shows and movies.


In the US it is still considered rude to swear casually but a lot of people think differently because of our media. The reality that in public Americans don't swear unless they're teenagers or are the very uneducated.


I only say this because what Zelest said: 'I think we're quite influenced in HOW we curse by American culture since culture is America's greatest export.' That statement makes me sad because it seems that this is what America at large pushes, or at least Hollywood. It is slowly changing America's habits of swearing but it is changing other cultures also, it really is 'our greatest export'.
 
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Occasionally around everybody except family and never at professional things like jobs or interviews or career fairs.


It's good for expressing surprise to a friend, like, "Oh shit! A Tank is in the saferoom!"


Or astonishment: "What the fuck?"
 
A lot of people in the US do swear casually. It's a subcultural sort of thing.


Probably Brazilians have an easier time swearing in English because it isn't their first language, so it doesn't have the same impact.
 
In an average casual conversation (not in a professional situation, of course!), I will pepper my language with a few strong oaths here and there.


It largely depends upon the conversation, though. When I am arguing with my girlfriend or my roommate or something, if it is a topic I am passionate about, I'll bring out the whole arsenal. Exempli gratia, piss me off by mentioning the legality of the selfish, shameless murder of unborn children, and you should probably pass the soap.


It also depends upon the character I've stepped into for the evening. My personality and ethics vary from one day to another-- this is partially due to a probable mental condition which I refuse to have diagnosed (lest I be forced onto medication), but mostly it is probably just me being a young university student who knows quite a lot more about life than he'd like.
 
Swearing is also quite un-dramatic in Sweden. We never bleep it out in television or radio. Also, it is not highly unusual to hear children swear every now and again in children's shows on the telly.

This is quite possibly the coolest thing I've ever heard. I can just imagine the Count from Sesame Street: "Ten. Ten f*%$(*# bats. Ah. Ah. Ah."


I'm American, and so yes, I do swear occasionally dammnit. I'm mindful of who I'm around when I let one fly, however. Our media does tend to portray Americans as foul-mouthed miscreants, but that's generally not the case.


I almost never swear in anything I type. It would have to be to a close friend for me to do so in writing.


Oddly, as I hit my twenties, I noticed that my parents no longer cared if I swore around them occasionally. I remember the surprise at them being unphased when I accidentally dropped the f-bomb one time. Not that I do this a lot.
 
Ha ha! I've seen that before. That must have been what made me think of that. Still, uncensored. Crazy!
 
One time I heard a character say the word "crotch" in a trailer for some crappy new show on Cartoon Network.


Cartoon Network, and not Adult Swim.
 
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One time I heard a character say the word "crotch" in a trailer for some crappy new show on Cartoon Network.


Cartoon Network, and not Adult Swim.
I heard on TVtropes about some masturbation joke on Cartoon Network and was similarly surprised.


http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BreakingInOldHabits


At the bottom, I guess it was Ben Ten.


It's not like I care deeply about the dignity of these shows, I'm just surprised that Standards allowed it. Would they not allow it if he had said, "penis"?
 
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