Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Mexican Swearing

I was taught in a personal communications class in college that all curse words could be placed in one of three categories: excremental, religious, and sexual. The point was that this reflects universal values: we hold religion sacred, we're squeamish about sex, and excrement grosses us out. Mexican swearing doesn't abide by those categories: religious cuss words are so tame as to be virtually inoffensive (¡vete al diablo!), and two of the most common vulgarities --cabrón y madre, which literally mean "big goat" and "mother", respectively, but in their colloquial use are more analogous to "fucker" and "shit"-- seem to have no connection whatsoever to root-level sensitivities.

That is all.

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