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Comment by hiccuphippo | Hacker News Reader

ESL here. At school one teacher told us using swear words only show your lack of knowledge for better words. I took that to heart and the very few times I've used them, I really had no other option. However I've noticed swear words come more easily to me in English and don't feel as harsh as when I hear them in Spanish. I wonder if it's my lack of vocabulary.

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There's actually been interesting research done about that idea, that people who swear have a smaller vocabulary or are less fluent. It seems that the opposite is actually true¹, people who swear are actually demonstrating a broader fluency. Worth a read!

¹ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03880...

I've never given credence to the "cursing == less articulate" either. It's knowing the impact dropping a curse can have to get people's attention. Plus, sometimes, people are just too dense to get how bothered you are, but drop a colorful phrase, and they tend to get the point. Like the George Carlin bit, take a word like "incredible" and it's a nice word. Stick fuck in the middle of it to make "infuckingcredible" and it's an even better word. Fanfuckingtastic > fantastic and is much more impactful than "most fantastic". Having said all of that, I have never told someone FU. That's my line.

> Fanfuckingtastic > fantastic and is much more impactful than "most fantastic"

I’ve always heard and used that “word” in the sarcastic sense, rather than as meaning more/most fantastic. Using in context to illustrate:

Friend: I broke the part we need to finish the project.

Me: Fanfuckingtastic, guess I’ll get busy making another one.

well, people have misused grammar for ages <ducks>

Again though, that's the great thing about "swear" word. Shit can be good, shit can be bad, and shit can just be shit. Not being a grammarian, how many words other than curse words be a noun, verb and adjective all at the same time. buffalo comes to mind, but is just non-nonsensical when used.

> Not being a grammarian, how many words other than curse words be a noun, verb and adjective all at the same time.

Here’s just a few, there’s a bunch more:

- back

- best

- better

- bitter

- broadside

- clean

- clear

- close

- cod

- collect

- counter

- crisscross

- damn

- double

- down

- even

- express

- fair

- fast

- fine

- firm

- flush

- forward

- free

- full

- home

- jolly

- last

- light

- low

- o.k.

- okay

- out

- pat

- plain

- plumb

- plump

- pop

- prompt

- quiet

- right

- rough

- round

- second

- short

- solo

- square

- steady

- still

- tiptoe

- true

- upstage

- well

- wholesale

- worst

- wrong

- zigzag

As an added bonus, the words above aren’t just valid as nouns, verbs, and adjectives, they are also adverbs too.

Source: https://onweb3.wordpress.com/2013/08/14/663/

I love that there are grammatical rules in how you can and can't infix expletives.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dt22yWYX64w

It doesn't surprise me that people with larger overall vocabularies also have larger swear vocabularies. But the study you cite deals only with taboo word fluency, not with actual usage.

I would be curious whether high-vocab swearers diverge from low-vocab swearers in how they actually use bad language. In my experience, even my high-vocab friends drop f-bombs in substantially the same way that lower-vocab friends do. I don't buy the "lack of vocab" hypothesis, because no one smurfs swear words as a smurfy substitutes for inadequate vocab, but as for the "lazy language" hypothesis, I think it's possible to use curse words as a crutch even if you have the capacity to do otherwise.

And fluency doesn't necessarily indicate usage. I could rattle off many taboo words with which I am acquainted, but that doesn't mean I choose to use them.

I hypothesize that the "swearing => stunted vocabulary" argument is just a post hoc rationalization to give some justification for not liking bad words.

I think you're wrong.

There are two distinct populations (in UK), those of poor vocabulary who use swearing all the time and don't seem capable of speaking in a nuanced way. And those who have the vocabulary to not swear, can still express themselves without expletives but choose to use them depending on the company/context they're in.

I found as a teenager that I'd swear to try and appear cool, and when I lacked sufficient nuance to my vocabulary to clearly express my feelings, and decided I wanted to do better.

I don't really care if you swear - except in front of children (because they have to learn not to swear in the wrong context when they can get in trouble from others who are more conservative) - but unless you demonstrate otherwise I'll assume it's lack of decent vocabulary.

Almost all people I've worked with who've sworn a lot (amongst general company) have had very low levels of education.

I don't really understand the whole "these words are shocking" attitude, eg cunt, people give simple utterances too much power.

Some of my favorites come from the Jargon Lexicon.[0]

0) http://hackersdictionary.com/html/The-Jargon-Lexicon-framed....

I'd love to see something like the entropy of words actually used by people who use common crutch words (e.g. fucking, literally, whatever) more often (somehow correcting for the fact that people who use any set of words unusually often will have lower entropy).

I think it's a part of a broader challenge. In writing circles, there's always advice not to use some specific list of words. The list varies. An example list from a quick googling:

- really, very

- just

- totally, completely, absolutely

- thing

- some

- rather, quite, somewhat, somehow

- ...

Like all style advice, it's not really a "rule" to follow, but it's surprisingly difficult to avoid some of these words. I struggle with "really" and "just." It makes you work, but your language is better for it.

I think many swear words fall into this category of words that are really easy to use. These lists always heavily feature strengthening modifiers, and swear words are often strengthening modifiers. Especially "fucking" which is just a really fucking versatile thing to use.

I wouldn't say relying on these crutch words is a lack of knowledge or fluency, but maybe it's a lack of versatility and easy varied expressiveness. Relying on these crutch words makes it harder to be specific.

At work, we have a trillion custom slack emojis, and one is a big X with the caption “no-just”, encouraging people to refrain using just in sentences like “you just need to set up the Kafka consumer”.

Now that I’m writing this out, it sounds kinda dystopian , but I actually appreciate the doublethink. I believe that pruning “just” (and cousins like “really” “very”, “it” the direct object/noun, “something”) has increased the clarity of my writing.

I think that these words actually do have a use, but only in long recurring interactions where it’s clear that you don’t use these words in everyday communication. Humans are language detectives, and will detect these changes in speech as a signal of emotion. When you’re sincerely emotional about something, these normally vacuous words can be super meaningful. You can even use them in documentation (sparingly), to make a point.

There’s a Tao Te Ching verse about how the wise practice “not-talking”. The implication is that normalizing silence makes words more meaningful: words only carry meaning because they contrast with silence, so if you’re talking all the time nobody will listen to you. It’s a good idea with many implications and applications, and I think it applies to these words. :)

But "you need to set up the Kafka consumer" and "you just need to set up the Kafka consumer" have different meanings.

You're not just pruning, but changing the meaning. The latter implies there is only one thing you need to do, while the former is open ended, and could imply the beginning of a set of needs.

"Just" can also add emphasis. "That's stupid" and "that's just stupid" have different nuance.

Yeah you’re right. Most sentences don’t survive subtracting the word “just” exactly as they were written. It’s more food for thought. I agree it changes the meaning, and I wouldn’t advocate a universal ban (your example is evidence for the second half of my original post, I think).

Perhaps the intent is to not be belittling, or, relatedly, not imply that something should be trivial for everyone.

If someone replied to me that I "just need to set up the Kafka consumer" I'd have no idea how to do that, and would potentially feel embarrassed about needing to ask for further information.

Spanish-speaking at home but grew up in the US speaking english everywhere else.

I've wondered all my life why swearing feels less intense in Spanish than in English. Spanish broadcasts are rarely censored on TV or Radio. Maybe it is a cultural thing?

I am also bilingual. My pet theory is that it has to do with growing up, family authority over you as a child, etc. As a kid if you say a strong curse word you could likely get in trouble and it would be a memorable negative experience. But if you say it in a different language outside your family home there is rarely a negative consequence.

My family was particularly absurd: my mother wouldn’t curse and wouldn’t say the word for shit in Russian but would use the English word “shit” as a curse word. Go figure.

cursing in english, for me at least, doesn't feel... real (compared to my native language).

in english, i swear like a pirate while on my native language, i try not to do it.

Googling for 'swearing in second language' gives lots of articles about how it feels less intense. Eg

https://www.connexionfrance.com/Mag/Language/Swearing-in-a-s...

https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2017/mar/27/bad-lan...

I'm Russian, though I moved to the US at age 5 so English is my 'native' language, even though it's technically not.

I see this on both sides. I find American curse words harsher than Russian ones, but my parents are the opposite. I can drop a "fuck" and no one really minds, drop a "suka" (roughly equates to "bitch" in Russian), my parents will loose their minds.

I’m sure my parents would do the same if I dropped one in English, even though they are not native English speakers.

Same thing here. I think the difference is whether the swear words are ingrained as part of "absorbing" the language as a child, as opposed to learning it "properly" as an adult. Basically, whether you only understand their meaning rationally, or it's a deeply ingrained taboo.

I think it's a pretty common thing for speakers of multiple languages to feel that their secondary language(s) carry less emotional weight. Random article on the subject: https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2017/mar/27/bad-lan...

I've always wholeheartedly agreed with Stephen Fry's view on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_osQvkeNRM

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