Steve Rapaport <steve at romlin.com> wrote: >To: dragaera at dragaera.info >Subject: Religious swearing >Date: Sat, 7 Jan 2006 23:02:12 +0100 > > >> We have seen religious cursing in Dragaera. I'm told French > > >> cursing > > >> is religious. U.S. tends to be sexual and scatological. I > > >> wonder how > > >> this varies around our world - and around Vlad's world. > > > > > > Well Holy Mary, mother-of-God, we don't have any religious swearing > > > in the U.S. Christ, I mean, we're more godfearing folk than that. > > > Hell, I'll wager we have fewer religious swears than any other > > > language on earth, goddamit! > > > > > > Majikjon > > > > Jesus H Christ, can't you stick to the point? Holy Moses! Jeez! > > > > >Just reading the above made me reflect -- I assumed, reading the "Holy >Mary" >stuff, that it came from a more-religious part of the US. Automatically. >And when I noticed myself assuming it, I wondered if maybe >more-religiously-inclined cultures (or in the US, subcultures) will tend to >swear more religiously. Or perhaps more recognizably religiously. >("Zounds", "Bloody" etc being no longer recognizably religious despite >their >origin, and "Jeez" starting to lose it). > >I lived in Italy for a few years and noticed that their swearing was >usually >either religious, or sacred/profane mixes, (e.g. porcodio -- "pig-god"). >They occasionally threw in "puttana" as somewhere in between (porca puttana >-- pig-whore) and it was considered really offensive. They had slang for >sexual/scatological bits and used them cheerfully as profanities, but they >had less power than the religious ones. And yes, they were all devout >catholics. > > > >-- >\Steve the Younger Swedish swearing is almost exclusively concerned with the netherworld, it's hells devils all the way. And while Sweden is one of the most irreligious countries in the world today, religion used to be very important (see the thirty years war). We also swear by the number seventeen, btw. :) "Sjutton också" means "Seventeen also"... /mrtn