WORDS OF PRAISE

Earlier today I chastised a fellow commenter on Dovbear’s blog for using the ‘F’ word. My contention was that if you had something worthwhile to say, you diminished it by employing unprintable language.
I may not have explained that concept very well – I used the example of Arab social norms as the benchmark.

Arabs speaking Arabic on the whole shy away from foul language. There are exceptions, of course, but the average Arab will not curse or swear, especially not in polite company. And certainly not if his mother is present.

[This does not hold true if they are Egyptians, or the modernized offspring of immigrants, or speaking English in San Francisco. Then all bets are off.]


That tendency towards clean speech makes Arabic cussing that much more ‘impactful’ and shocking when it does happen.
Arabic has a well-developed vocabulary, and someone speaking Arabic is not crippled by a lack of off-colour words. But Arabs prefer to appall by content, not coarseness.


Other languages are more ‘colourful’ in common use.
Speakers of Hindustani, shorn of their curse-vocabulary, are nearly tongue-tied. The average Desi flings words like ch*rail and madrch*t around with such gay abandon that one would think he’s a harlot using ghee. Hindustani cussing metaphorizes acts of filth and incest of staggering nastiness – plus implied parentage that is quite impossible.
Modern American English, especially the teenage variant, is generously larded with verbs of congress – apposite, as these function like glue for the clauses that the juvenile delinquent wishes linked.
Dutch, like German, uses words mainly drawn from the copralecticon. Plus some that are sexual.
Other languages employ heretical and sacrilegious terms, rather than intercoursal or excretory conceptions.

In most cases cussing and swearing does not add meaningful content to one’s discourse and should be avoided.


Despite my own clean and virginal use of English, I have been exposed to the full gamut of gutter speech.


Whatever ‘innocence’ I had on that score was body-slammed out of me by the women of my ken.


My mother. My grandmother. My auntie. And my significant other.



SPEAK LIKE A LADY!

My mother, who insisted that she NEVER used foul-language 'and how on earth(!) did you(!!) pick that up(!?!)', was the daughter of a colonel in the army, and during WWII and the Korean War she herself served in the navy.
She probably swallowed the vocabulary from the air she breathed, as well as by studying Old-English at Berkeley. Given that she never cursed, I must have absorbed the words by osmosis. There is no other possible explanation.
Mother’s milk.

My grandmother was widowed young, and raised two boys to adulthood during the depression. She did a good job – both were well-brought up, educated, civilized.
Then WWII broke out, and all three of them served in uniform. She herself ended up in Germany for several years with the US forces during the occupation. Again, there must have been a quantity of air-borne verbal poo from the military environment.
I heard her several times blister paint.
In the most ladylike way, of course.

My auntie had been kicked out of Indonesia when the Nationalists gained control of the place. Women of her class and background DID NOT swear. Ever. Gracious, how could you even think that!
On the other hand, plants grow better if you encourage them.
Especially hot-house chilies, which will abundantly repay the attention which they are given.
If you heard her give them verbal love, your ears might fall off.
Her chilies were very hot.
Very very very hot.


My significant other, in complete contrast to all three of the above, is Cantonese-American.
Anyone who thinks that Cantonese people can express themselves without scorching the walls and raising the dead is mistaken. The first words I ever learned in Cantonese, nearly forty years ago, were the heartfelt wish that someone should commit violent incest. Followed by a biological promise of utter impossibility, as well as a curse involving bones, and a sincere commitment to provide someone’s entire family with caskets.
My fluency increased over the years, but I have never forgotten those first lessons.

[The Cantonese are descended from gamblers, thieves, smugglers, tax-evaders, escaped convicts, and rebellious elements, getting away from the government by crossing the passes into the malarial wilderness of Yueh. That ancient adventurous colonization of the Sui-T'ang frontier explains their language, their enterprise, their culture, and their subsequent world-wide migration.]

Savage Kitten, like all Cantonese, is eloquent. Vibrantly so.
Unlike the vast majority of Sinitic speechforms and dialects, the Cantonese language has a toxic vocabulary of stupendous richness, and a piquancy of expression that leaves other Chinese people slackjawed and quivering, utterly aghast at the lyrical flood of sewage that just hit their ears.
Imagine ten horrid things expressed in a mere five syllables.
Judicious combinations of repulsive ideas, and the extreme brevity that is a characteristic of all Chinese languages, lead to phrasing that requires almost Talmudic explication for the non-Cantonese public.


So, to everyone who uses the ‘F’ word, stop it. You are amateurs. You cannot possibly vehementize like the masters, and you are merely making fools of yourselves. What I hear on a regular basis, from the small Cantonese person with whom I share my living quarters, is the epic poetry of cursing.
What the rest of you produce is mere doggerel.
Just stop.