In Sesotho, a language of Southern Africa, there are no swear words, however there are insults that (I was told) may cause someone to want to fight or even kill you.

Those insults:

• I’m not your mother
• You are like a cat that jumps across a ravine and scribbles up the other side

In French putain is a swear, an insult and a punctuation for daily regulation conversations.

Forget the swear words, actual slurs get used lol. I hear my parents casually use the term “低B” (its equivalent of the r-word) or “傻仔” when refering to autistic people or people with Down Syndrome. There is zero Political Correctness, its so fucked. You have a slight depression issue and its suddenly shameful. These things are hidden from statistics so they seem rare, but yet every village seem to have a few of those people. They get treated so badly. Socially ostricized. Everyone talks about it like “Did you hear about their family, their kid is a 低B” on phone call gossips. And with One Child Policy, if their first child is a son, they couldn’t have another child*, so their bloodline is dead, they can maybe apply to get permission from the government to have another child, but it could be too late, fertility issues with old parents, you know… so the parents are shunned. The kid will never be allowed in a “normal” school. Universities kick students out after they got accepted, because they found out about their autism diagnosis. No “ADA” equivalent. So cooked.

(*For context, in rural areas, if the first child is female, they can apply for permission to have another child, two is the absolute max limit, even if their second child is female, that’s it. If first child is male, that’s it, no more. Its patriarchy basically, male-preference in society)

My favourite is the difference between French french and Canadian French.

Many of the uniquely Canadian French swears are oddly religious compared to French french

It varies within english too.

Cunt is an offensive term in British English while it is a term of endearment in Australian English

This is one of the reasons I think education in languages are really important. It makes you realise that language is just an encoding of a thought. The sounds are irrelevant. The choice to try to insult is key. Just because somebody used a word you do or don’t take offence to doesn’t matter. The important part is whether they meant to cause you harm.

Mak kau hijau (your mom’s green) is a swear word in malay and i have no idea why it is.

Many languages have using the wrong level of honorifics as a personal insult, while e.g. in English this only really exists in the form of royal honorifics, which are very rare for obvious reasons (which is sometimes used mockingly).

My favourite example of this is Hab SoSlI’ Quch in Klingon, which means your mother has a smooth forehead. Of course, Klingon is a made-up language from Star Trek, but, they had to figure it out as they went along. I don’t think there was a formal Klingon language in the 1960s when the race was introduced. The language became official and learnable in the 1990s or 2000s. And “your mother has a smooth forehead” most likely comes from Worf’s son Alexander, whose mother is human. So Klingons are like 3-5x stronger than humans, and this definitely includes the females. Star Trek VII established that backhanding a Klingon woman was part of a mating ritual (this was sort of played for laughs, but also, a man hitting a woman is never really funny), so the idea was, a Klingon man is not a real man if he has a human woman for a mate, because it means he can’t handle a Klingon woman. Now, a lot of races have weird rules about dating outside your race, and it’s disgusting. Star Trek was playing to that. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with a Klingon man finding love with a human woman (and IIRC we never met her, but Worf would go on to get married to a Trill named Jadzia Dax on Deep Space Nine, and while Trills are interesting, they’re no stronger than humans, so similar point). But Klingons are all about honour, so when someone told Alexander “your mother has a smooth forehead,” they were saying his father lacked the honour to mate with a true Klingon woman, and that dishonour was hereditary.

I like Japanese cursing. The ones I know aren’t about what you are, it’s about what you lack. Baka is everyone’s first Japanese word, it seems like, and it means idiot, but it’s more like… “one who lacks sense.” They’re shaming you for doing dumb shit. Or “hentai,” which means pervert (it also means porn, but, like, the kinky shit, but it really means someone who would watch that), but it’s more like “one who lacks tact.” The less common one, “aho” is exactly what you think if you know English curses. Often translating to “jerk,” it’s literally just “asshole” with fewer letters, and means the exact same thing. Except it’s more like “you lack kindness.” It’s the difference between flipping someone off when they cut you off in traffic (cursing in English) vs giving them a thumbs-down (cursing in Japanese). One makes them hostile toward you while the other gives them more of a chance to reflect on what they did. And maybe that’s the point.

I wanna know if you can curse in Loxian, but only two people know it, and they’re two of the most gentle souls on the planet, and one of them made the language, so I highly doubt you can curse in Loxian. Loxian was made by Roma Ryan, and the only other speaker of the language is the Irish singer, Enya — who Ryan writes songs for and has done for 40 years. This is what it sounds like. Yes, it sounds like Gaelic — it’s meant to. They actually came up with a whole back story for the language. The Loxians are just Irish people in the future who traveled to the stars, first by way of Mars, then through the Loxian gate (which I guess is like a Stargate in space, like Stargate Universe had?) to travel to a faraway galaxy. So it’s like future Gaelic/Irish. And she has four other songs in Loxian. Yeah, probably no swearing in Loxian… I mean, can you even imagine Enya so much as saying anything unkind about anyone?

Personally, I prefer English swears. Wanker, tosser, bugger(er), they’re quick, they’re dirty, they’ll usually get you in a fight… but maybe you make a friend by the end of the night.

Also, things change over time.

“Strumpet” used to be a pretty bad insult.

I don’t ever swear in spanish because their swears never feel strong enough. Carachimba (pussy face) just doesn’t have the same ring as motherfucker. I do love listening to natives swear in spanish, though. It really rolls off the tongue when you’re fluent.