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Foreign Cuss Word: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|''"As Hazel marched up the hill, she cursed in Latin. Percy didn't understand all of it, but he got'' son of a gorgon, power-hungry snake, ''and [[Narrative Profanity Filter|a few choice suggestions]] about where Octavian could stick his knife."''|'''[[The Heroes of Olympus|The Son of Neptune]]'''}}
The use of foreign curses that, in their country of origin, would be considered much more offensive to use on television or outright censored. Sometimes the pronunciation is deliberately mangled to obscure it even more. On American television, British and Spanish swears (especially ''cojones'') are popular.
Japanese media sometimes uses rather strong English swears in a rough context, and often uses the "giving the finger" gesture as an expression of general displeasure in works for younger audiences where it would be considered unacceptable in the U.S. and other English-speaking countries.
Compare [[Pardon My Klingon]], [[Unusual Euphemism]], [[Did Not Do the Bloody Research]], and [[Foreign Language Tirade]]. Sometimes an adjunct of [[Poirot Speak]]. Often a way of [[Getting Crap Past the Radar]].
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* [[Genshiken]] Had a whole slur in the anime episode where one of the American otaku compliments ogiue on her Yaoi doujinshi, in the manga the words were blurred out, but in the anime, no censorship was given since the American spoke English, leading a lot of viewers to a very sudden 'when Chihiro spooged all over his glasses it was so hot! And then he started to butt fuck him and-" more or less.
* In the Japanese [[Sonic X]] episode 2, Sonic literally says "Shit!" when he is detected by security.
* As does Mic Sounders the 13th in ''[[GaoGaiGar]]'' episode 26 while dodging missiles.
* [[Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt|Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt]] uses this trope quite liberally.
** [[Crowning Moment of Funny|"You fatherfucker!"]]
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== Comicbooks ==
* During the early run of ''[[New Mutants]]'', Sunspot got away with swearing by doing it in Portuguese.
** This continued in the original run of ''[[X-Force]]'', both for Sunspot (in Portuguese) and his teammate Rictor (in Spanish).
* Colossus from the [[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]] would sometimes swear in Russian in his early appearances. The word would even be written in Cyrillic characters to obscure it further.
** Although he usually used "chyort vozmee...!", which just means "the devil take ...!" Similarly Nightcrawler would sometimes shout "zum Teufel!" (to the devil), usually with hilarious misspellings.
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* Characters in ''[[Nikolai Dante]]'' frequently exclaim "Diavolo!" when surprised or annoyed.
* In ''[[Maus]]'', at one point, Art and his father Vladek are speaking in Polish with English subtitles. Art's father swears, and the Polish contains the actual word (cholera) but the English subtitle simply says "@#%$!"
* [[wikipedia:Julie Doucet|Julie Doucet]]'s best-known comic, ''Dirty Plotte'', has [[Country Matters|a strong French swear word]] right in the title.
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== Film ==
* In an old 1950's war film, ''The Thousand Bomber Raid'', an American actor playing a British pilot called a friend "toss-pot". While correct for the period (1940's), it just means wanker, and was more offensive then, so it's probably an 'under the radar' word for the scriptwriter.
* In'' [[The Matrix]]'', The Merovingian likes to swear in French, claiming "It's like wiping your ass with silk."
** His above quote translates to something like {{spoiler|Holy damned bullshity fucking motherfucking shitting son of a bitch}}, or something like that. It is literally {{spoiler|"name of God of the whore of the whorehouse of sh*t of sluttery of an idiot of (someone receiving anal) of your mother"}}. Yeah. French allows you to just tack on curse word after curse word with no real grammar involved. [[French Canadians]] have a sort of swearing dialect called "sacre" where they combine profanities with terms from Catholic liturgy to create whole paragraphs' worth of nothing but cuss words.
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* In [[JFK]], during the scene when Willie O'Keefe recalls the night David Ferrie explained the plan to assassinate Kennedy after a party, one of the exiled Cubans calls Khrushchev ''hijo de la gran puta'' (son of [[The Bible|the Great Whore]]). Arguably, the worst insult one can say in Spanish. Yet, some official hearing impaired subtitles tone it down translating it as "bastard".
* Tuco shouts two similar Spanish curses in ''[[The Good, the Bad and the Ugly]]''. First, when being carried tied-up into town, he shouts out "''¡Hijo de puta te que parió!''" ("Son of the bitch who whelped you!"). Then, when Blondie abandons Tuco in the desert, Tuco yells the big one: "''¡Hijo de una gran puta!''" ("You son of a big whore!").
** The first one is grammatically incorrect though. It has to be either "hijo de puta" or "la puta que te parió".
* Subverted in the 1948 film ''I Remember Mama''. The youngest daughter, Dagmar, is in the hospital after surgery for mastoiditis. When her Uncle Chris comes in to visit her, he teaches her what he says is a Norwegian swear word: "dumme gjet." (His explanation is that the swearing helps ease the pain. Off the back of some recent research, that's [[Truth in Television]].) When a shocked nurse upbraids him for teaching a kid to swear, he informs her that "dumme gjet" actually means "stupid old goat."
* In ''[[Bunraku]]'', Yoshi says the Japanese equivalent of 'shit' when he realizes he's surrounded in the bar. Unlike the rest of the Japanese in the movie, it's not subtitled.
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* Done in-universe by [[The Dark Elf Trilogy|Drizzt Do'Urden]], when he taunts some stone giants by saying "Mangura bok woklok" which is "Stupid blockhead" in stone-giant language.
* Played with in [[The Ship Who Sang]] - one character, angry with another, spends a straight ten minutes yelling angrily at him in Russian. After he's left the room, suitably cowed, she admits that what she's ''really'' been doing was just reciting one of her grandmother's recipes... in Russian.
* In Terry Pratchett's [[Discworld]], a character from Far Überwald (Discworld's "Slavonic" countries) shrieks ''Bodrozvachski zhaltziet!'' at a time of great stress. Terry invented this as a piece of pseudo-Slokian whch means nothing in any known Slavonic language, but which conveys all the sulphurous intensity of real Polish or Russian swearing. In fact, the Czech translator of his books left the cod-Slavonic in place, but went so far as to make the character voicing this oath into an explicit Russian, adding the explanatory footnote that cultured Czech readers would instantly know that only one race on this planet swears like that.
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** The novelization for the film actually translates the swears in footnotes.
* British curses abound in ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'':
** Giles often uses obscure British slang terms, whose true meanings few Americans would know, but which generally sound like insults in context. Some of these have highly vulgar origins; for instance, Giles uses "berk" as an insult, which comes from the Cockney rhyming slang "<s>Berkeley</s> Berkshire Hunt". (What rhymes with Hunt?) One episode lampshades this through misinterpretation:
{{quote|'''Buffy''': "He called you a toth. It's a British expression, it means, like, moron."
'''Giles''': "No. Toth is the name of the demon." }}
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* Captain Picard of ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'' has let slip a "merde" at least twice, in "The Last Outpost" and "Elementary, Dear Data". He also swore up a storm in Klingon in one episode. Even the visiting Klingon passenger was impressed.
** Riker once swore in Romulan in response to a Romulan defector trying to get a rise out of Worf with Klingon insults.
* In the ''[[Leverage]]'' episode "The Two Live Crew Job" the Israeli muscle for the opposing team throws out a quick "Kus shel ha ima shelha" at the team leader. Generally used as a "Fuck you" equivalent in Israel, the literal translation is "Your mothers cunt".
** Also in the pilot where Sophie calls Nate a "wanker" when he's arrested her.
* In the pilot episode of ''[[Lost]]'', Sawyer (a Southern redneck) accuses Sayid (an Iraqi) of having caused the plane to crash. During the ensuing fight and argument, Sayid calls Sawyer "Ibn al-Kalb", which is Arabic for son of a bitch.
* One episode of ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' features a very surprised Russian soldier saying "Bozhe moi," which is (inaccurately) translated by the DVD closed captioning-- not the subtitles-- as "Holy shit." SG-1 is notable for being a show that wasn't afraid to take advantage of its cable heritage and [[Just for Pun|let a "shit" hit the fans]] now and again.
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== Music ==
* Richie Kavanagh's song "Aon Focal Eile" - a hybrid English-Irish song about a teacher teaching Irish. ''She said 'Aon focal, dá focal, trúir focal, eile' - and I not knowin' no focal at all''. Translated to English means, ''She said 'One word, two words, three words, another' - and I not knowin no word at all''. The humour is from the fact that "Focal" (an Irish word meaning "word") is pronounced "Fuckal".
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** Merde, in French, can actually be used to say "good luck". It's a shortening of the phrase "merde a la puissance treize" which translates literally as "shit to the thirteenth power". Loosely it can translate to "go get them", "give them hell" or "break a leg".
** The second one is better rendered as "va fan culo", and means roughly "get bent", only more offensive.
** It's a popular chant at football matches.
*** According to Sterling Johnson's book "Watch Your F* cking Language," the full phrase is "Vai a fare in culo" which translates to "go do it in your ass."
** The aforementioned Italian phrase is also used by Rizzo in ''[[Grease]]'' in the song "Look At Me, I'm Sandra Dee".
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== Videogames ==
* In ''[[God Hand]]'', Elvis is inherently fond of swearing in Spanish in a regular basis. Most notable in the battle quotes ("Time to play, pendejo!" "¡No hablo inglés, cabrón!").
* The Spanish-speaking [[Not Using the Z Word|Ganados]] of ''[[Resident Evil]] 4'' use some words that, if translated, would probably crank the game's rating up. And it's already [[Rated "M" for Money]].
** Hell, the ''first words said by the first Ganado Leon meets'' roughly translate to "What the fuck are you doing here? Get out of here, asshole!"
* Funny variation in the first ''Phoenix Wright: [[Ace Attorney]]'': Parts of Manella's dialogue is internet slang and leetspeak, and he therefore gets away with exclaiming "WTF!".
* ''[[Scarface the World Is Yours]]'' has Tony and some of his enemies liberally dish out the Spanish. They have no problems with using English as well, though.
* In the Wii ''[[Punch-Out!!]]'', various boxers who are walking national stereotypes speak foreign languages. Great Tiger tells Little Mac (in Hindi) to do what translates to suggesting he go back to his mommy's milk, while Bald Bull asks (in Turkish) if Louis (Mac's Trainer) is teaching Mac how to get spanked.
* [[Gratuitous English]]-loving Date Masamune of ''[[Sengoku Basara]]'' shouts words like "shit" and "goddamn" quite often in-game.
* In ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'', the Spy has "Oh, merde!" (shit) as one of his angry one-liners. The Medic will also call his teammates "dummkopfs" (which is wrong ''in German'' - it should be "Dummköpfe", and is laughably mild).
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** It literally means male prostitute. That being said, the word's so offensive you'll probably prefer to use synonyms when discussing male prostitution in Spanish (such as 'prostituto' or 'chapero').
* Used frequently in the ''[[Grand Theft Auto]]'' games which feature communities foreign to America: they (mostly Hispanic) swear in their home language (it's easier to hear whenever you cause a traffic accident), but other languages are not exempt (Portuguese-speaking players are guaranteed to get a laugh in ''IV'' when they hear a driver - very rare though<ref>The Portuguese community in Liberty City is located in Alderney, which is not unlocked until halfway into the game</ref> - yelling "vai tomar no cu, filho da puta!", which means "kiss my ass, son of a bitch!").
* Interesting case in [[Tales of the Abyss]]: Asch often calls Luke "drek" as a placeholder title and insult. The word is indeed uncommon, but not completely unheard of in North American English and it was likely brought over from the German language where it carries the meaning of "trash" or "inferior goods", hence Asch's usage of the phrase. However, the original Yiddish version of the word, predating the German use, is much stronger and harsher.
* In ''[[Assassin's Creed II]]'', Ezio curses off the final boss, Pope Rodrigo Borgia, using an Italian phrase translating to "[[Precision F-Strike|Go fuck yourself.]]"
== Webcomics ==
* ''[[
* [[Scandinavia and The World]]: Finland says [[Cluster F-Bomb|"Perkele"]] a lot. (In fact, it's [[The Quiet One|almost the only thing he ever says.]])
* ''[[The Dreadful]]'': Erin's final words are [[Defiant to the End|"Leck mich."]]<ref>Short for "Leck mich am Arsch.", literally "Lick me on the ass.", German version of "Kiss my ass."</ref>
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* A football game for Euro 1996 or 2000 where a young David Beckham tripped a striker from the opposing side (Greece). The striker's response as he was sitting on the grass? "Ante gamisou, re malaka" (ie. Fuck you, you wanker.) The referee did not catch it, but Greek viewers laughed their asses off. (Eventually, we lost, however)
* This actually happens a lot in the Netherlands, where people '''love''' to over-use English swear words. They aren't considered as bad as they would be in English, to the point where you can (usually) say "fuck you" to someone without it being considered offensive.
** Of course, it helps that we pronounce it 'fak' and that we usually laugh while doing it (showing that the insult or quip thrown at you didn't really jam you that much). If you're a Moroccan immigrant, it'll be "fok", and there'll be nothing joking about it.
*** Foreign exchange students in South Africa can't believe Afrikaans uses words like 'vak' (subject) and 'kant' (side). 'Kies' means 'choose', so the joke goes, Choose your side and subject...
** Fairly frequent in Quebec, too, with fuck and shit being seen as overall quite mild (and perfectly acceptable on prime-time television), compared to Quebec's [[Black Speech|vast array of liturgy-based swearwords]].
*** In [[Canada, Eh?|Canada]] in general - or at least on the CBC - swearing isn't as heavily censored as in certain other places one might name. The 6 o'clock news, for example, won't bleep anything but an F-bomb. Individual networks vary on other matters.
*** In the 1970s, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (a native French speaker) told a group of striking truck drivers to "mangez de la merde".<ref>Translation: Eat shit.</ref>
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*** This ''kibinimat'' sounds more like ''k yebeni materi'', which means "[go] to [your] fucked mother". ''Yob tvoyu mat''' means "fuck your mother", by the way.
* In Ethiopia most people learn about American culture through movies and music videos. This results in small kids trying to impress foreigners by shouting out "fuck you". The "Fuck You" capital lies around Shashamane and Awassa where kids say it the most, and is incredibly funny when they instead shout out "fuck me", and then wonder why the Americans are laughing at them.
* In [[Germany]] most people don't consider the English curse words to be big deal. Especially "shit" has about the same level as "Mist", which translates as crap. But Germans are generally lax about the use of swear words.
* In Norway, some people love to use the word shit liberally, although as it is completely homophonous with the harmless N. word "skitt" (dirt), it's hard to tell which they are using. Dirt, meanwhile, derives from the Norwegian word "drit", which today is considered vulgar. They've also got the dialectal "skit", which ''does'' mean "shit" but still isn't too vulgar for normal informal conversation.
** Norwegian swear words are very context sensitive. Politicians and celebrities can sit on talk shows all day talking about how fucking well they got their shit together without anyone batting an eyelid, but the moment they call someone a fucking idiot, they can expect bunch of nasty headlines in tomorrow's papers. The issue isn't with the words themselves, but their potential as insults.
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