Swearing as a Measure of Fluency

Hi, folks at home. For anyone who skipped the title, this post is about swearing, so it may have a few colorful phrases sprinkled in here and there. Steel yourselves. Or hey, if you’re not someone I would usually swear in front of, you could go on to the next post. It’s about Beijing!

If you’re still here, though…  I still haven’t finished writing a post about a trip I took a MONTH ago. Doesn’t that make you mad? Let’s swear about it!

This is a link to an NPR post that includes a video called “How to Swear in Cuban”: http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/08/08/210112163/how-i-learned-to-swear-in-cuban. It’s a recording of a now-deceased comedian, Guillermo Álvarez Guedes, who was popular with the large Cuban refugee population in Miami because of his ability to represent the uniqueness and “otherness” of Cuban culture set in an American city. He did this, at least in part, by using swear words specific to Cuban culture – slurs that just about anyone who wasn’t Cuban had difficulty understanding. I don’t really know how to “swear in Cuban”, but I love this video, because it highlights the vitality of vulgarity to true fluency.

I guess what I’m saying is, you know you’re fluent in a language when you’re able to properly use the phrases that are almost impossible to teach. For several of the phrases in this video, Álvarez Guedes prefaces his “lesson” by explaining that the phrase has no formal definition – to use it correctly, you just have to know how it’s used. While that sounds simple, without a lifetime of hearing phrases like this, how can you possibly really understand the emphasis of the phrase, its relative vulgarity, its weird little associations? Which words can you use when you’re joking? Which words actually have some positive connotations? Which words can be “reclaimed”? Which ones never will be? What words used to be acceptable, but probably never will be again? What words would you never say in front of your mom or your grandpa? What word is the first one middle schoolers take up to make their friends think they’re tough? What words do your parents not realize have double meanings? Which words make you think of  sports games? Which ones remind you of bar brawls? Which words do otherwise polite ladies let slip when they really piss one another off? Which word lets you know things are really, really bad when you hear your parents use it? How does tone or context affect a given word? Which words are the “worse” words? (If you want to hear a funny story about “the worse word”, look up John Mulaney, “The Worse Word”. He’s a stand-up comic and I love him. Oh hey, found it for you:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RC2vOLaTBLE)

What words (if any) do you, personally, refuse to use? Think about the difference between “damned” and “fucking”. Think about the difference between calling someone a bitch or a shit, or any variation on fucker. Think about the smorgasbord of words I haven’t used yet – ones milder or more severe than any of those, depending on who you ask, what time it is, who’s in your company, your personal opinion, and what region you’re in. It’s fascinating, right? And don’t you feel dangerous now, spending so much time thinking about swear words?

I fully confess that, in English, I swear like a sailor. In Chinese, though, I lack the vocabulary and the sense of context that would enable me to use these particularly forceful forms of expression. Moreover, asking someone to teach you how to swear is a complicated little request. First of all, as the video demonstrates (you really should listen to it!), it’s tough, especially considering that I have a limited grasp of the language we’re working with. Plus, the Chinese college students I know, especially the girls, are a little shy about swearing around foreigners. They laugh when we tell them that we swear, but they get flustered when we ask them for help adding a little color to our vocabulary. Because of the difficulty involved in teaching and learning swear words well, I’m officially adding learning to swear properly in Chinese (or any other language I study) to my list of language learning-related goals. Wish me some 他妈的luck.

The happiest *&#!% hikers.