I was just wondering how do the japanese swear? What are the most common expressions
(except those which are known from anime and dramas)? Do males swear differently from females? Do they use their hands as well, while swearing? Do the old swear differently than the young? Do you swear differently at work, than at home? I'm just curious

Oh man, I had to explain the word 'shoot' to my language partner the other day. Since she's almost twice my age and really nice and civil, I had a hard time with it. lol I kept saying 'shoot' when I'd forget, or something went wrong. Heh. Good times.

I think that swearing is one of those language constructs that isn't really shared. They have some phrases (that I mostly know from anime/manga, but I also heard one of them in Harry Potter 1) but they aren't really the same.

There isn't many swear words in Japanese. クソ shit、カス scumbag、死ね go to hell、バカ idiot、キモイ freak. that's about all I can think of off the top of my head.

畜生

masaman Wrote:There isn't many swear words in Japanese. クソ shit、カス scumbag、死ね go to hell、バカ idiot、キモイ freak. that's about all I can think of off the top of my head.

No swear words? The japanese never feel pissed off? Or they just can't express themselves when they are pissed off Either way, it must be frustrating to have sooo much repressed anger
Seriously. I just can't believe that there are no swear words, or expressions....I'm not a linguist but language evolves along with the people using that language. Now, anger, frustration is a natural, acient feeling, and expressing it somehow was / is and will be neccessary...so there must be words for this exact purpose. We just have to find them.....

As I understand it, the Japanese don't really have any words that are all that offensive in and of themselves, but the tone in which they are used can be very offensive.

Raschaverak Wrote:

masaman Wrote:There isn't many swear words in Japanese. クソ shit、カス scumbag、死ね go to hell、バカ idiot、キモイ freak. that's about all I can think of off the top of my head.

No swear words? The japanese never feel pissed off? Or they just can't express themselves when they are pissed off Either way, it must be frustrating to have sooo much repressed anger
Seriously. I just can't believe that there are no swear words, or expressions....

There really isn't many direct cuss words. If you want to cuss somebody though, you can downgrade the politeness of the phrase. If you want to say "What the F are you doing?" you say "お前何やってんだよ？" instead of more normal "何やってるの？" or "何をしているんですか？". You can add some expressions like こら and あ？ too. "お前何やってんだ、あ？" definitely sounds offensive.

masaman Wrote:There really isn't many direct cuss words. If you want to cuss somebody though, you can downgrade the politeness of the phrase. If you want to say "What the F are you doing?" you say "お前何やってんだよ？" instead of more normal "何やってるの？" or "何をしているんですか？". You can add some expressions like こら and あ？ too. "お前何やってんだ、あ？" definitely sounds offensive.

You can also use ～やがる if you want to show you are really pissed off. It's a very strong gobi, and is almost never used, unless you plan to end the conversation violently.

In Christian countries, sexuality has become demonised so that most of the swear words in English are related to sex. In Japan, there are no such notions of placing negative words conected to sexual organs or acts. That is why there are no similar swear words in japanese. To call someone a fool has a lot more weight than it does in other countries.

Yeah it doesn't seem that such strong words exist in Japanese. My Japanese friend loves the F word because it sounds cool. In fact he just loves learning English swears, maybe because they have more of a direct impact.

Don't forget my two favorite at the moment: 卑劣漢 and 阿婆擦れ！

The concept of cursing in Japanese in completely different than in western societies.

*****, shit, cunt, bitch, and so on. There are no equivalent words like these in Japanese. If you want to "curse" in Japanese you just buck up, roll your r's, and stop speaking with polite grammar.

Womacks23 Wrote:If you want to "curse" in Japanese you just buck up, roll your r's, and stop speaking with polite grammar.

Wonder how that would work in French. When talking to a superior, use "tu" and its conjugations instead of using "vous?"

smartazjb0y Wrote:

Womacks23 Wrote:If you want to "curse" in Japanese you just buck up, roll your r's, and stop speaking with polite grammar.

Wonder how that would work in French. When talking to a superior, use "tu" and its conjugations instead of using "vous?"

I'm not sure since the French have a large vocabulary of individual curse words they can throw around.

@unauthorized
yeah, you're right, Gobi changes when people get angry.

How you call a person plays a big part too I guess. In English second person
pronoun is always "You", but in Japanese you can call somebody like あなた、
君、僕、貴様、お前、お宅、おぬし、あんた、てめえ、 おのれ、 etc. and they all have different feelings to it.

Womacks23 Wrote:

smartazjb0y Wrote:

Womacks23 Wrote:If you want to "curse" in Japanese you just buck up, roll your r's, and stop speaking with polite grammar.

Wonder how that would work in French. When talking to a superior, use "tu" and its conjugations instead of using "vous?"

I'm not sure since the French have a large vocabulary of individual curse words they can throw around.

Merde! But it was an interesting notion. I chose French because, as far as I can tell, there's no real "polite" grammar in English, to an extent.

Actually makes me wonder why people haven't gone and invented them yet. Although we haven't gotten too creative with our swearing over here: besides the seven dirty words, and combinations including them ("asshat" never fails to make me laugh), we haven't branched out too much. Lots of words with originally tame meanings that are now considered offensive, though!

In any case, it's entirely possible to put the verbal smackdown on someone without a single curse. I don't swear in real life, and I can assure you that tone and word choice is often all you need to bitch someone out. Or, you know, express your distaste about one thing or another.

Womacks23 Wrote:Wonder how that would work in French. When talking to a superior, use "tu" and its conjugations instead of using "vous?"

No, it would just make you sound uncouth and vulgar rather than insulting. The simple rule is that if you're on a first name basis with the person you're talking to, then you automatically use 'tu' and not 'vous.' On the other end, if you use 'vous' when talking to your friends (especially in Quebec), then it would sound as if you consider them strangers since you're placing a barrier of formality, so don't think 'vous' is a catch-all for all situations.