01 July 2003

Strange Ideas of Swearing-- International Edition

Had to throw these out there, some curious ways of swearing at / insulting people from different cultures.

In Khalkha (i.e., Mongolian), you can say: "Iruugai avaj nuruugai maijmar, ilgai avaj bogsoo archmar." Apparently this translates as: Take your jaws and scratch your back, and take your liver and wipe your ass.

The Dutch seem to have a strange fetish for swearing, using diseases as curse words much as the Quebecois use religious symbols for theirs. But I wonder about the currency of this phrase, "Mierenneuker," which apparently means ant fucker. RK?

In Finnish, this is supposedly pretty nasty: "Äitisi nai poroja." Translation: Your mother copulates with reindeer.

Now, I've heard of a lot of Quebecois crudities, but this one makes no sense: "Va péter dans les fleurs." Translation: Go fart in the flowers.

"Tha thu cho duaichnidh ri èarr àirde de a' coisich deas damh" supposedly in Scots Gaelic means You are as ugly as the north end of a southward traveling ox.

Hmmmmm..... (And yes, I'm deliberately leaving out the more predictable ones.)

Cunning linguist that I am, I am basing this on the information available here. If anyone knows any better, please correct me. Or, even better, add to the list. ;-)

No comments:

Blog Archive