They say there's a Chinese curse that goes, "May you live in interesting times." I don't know if there really is, but times have been interesting in a Chinese-curse way lately
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Oh, my. A friend of mine says bad things come in threes; so I wish you that with this the streak of "interesting times" will give way to something more boring, quiet times.
Well, don't say it in formal settings, as it is a vulgar slang. Spaniards might say: Vete a la mierda o "Dejate de joder". In Chile, people will understand the former and use the latter. We mostly say: "No jodas" or "Andate a la cresta**". It is a crossover between sod of and f** you. Not nice, but in Chile, we swear like sailors.
*** We have different levels for this one, depending on how annoyed you are.
It's funny; when the Spanish are rude, their insults lean towards "heresies"; in Latin America the vulgar insults are related to sexuality.
That's interesting, thanks! I had a roommate in college who said that "Fuck you" was a ridiculous way to insult someone, because the appropriate response to the literal words would be, "Thanks, I could use a good fuck!" :-)
When I was reading about a computer game called The Witcher, which was made in Poland, the Polish makers of the game complained that it was almost impossible to translate all the swearing in the game into English, because Polish has a huge number of swear words, and English has only four (and permutations of those four). I had no idea until then that English - which is so rich in words otherwise - had a paucity of swear words!
In English, "damn," and "hell," the religious swears, are milder than "shit," the scatological swear, and "fuck," the sexual swear. But then, sexual repression is an old English tradition. :-)
I had never thought about the scarcity of English swear words!.
In Chile, it's funny because if you want to say that something is awful, you say things associated to men genitals, if it's good, the words refer to female ones. We are a country of strong single mothers, our native peoples consider the earth as mother; and the Catholic assimilation placed great importance on Mary's figure. The man, on the other hand, was an absentee father:The soldier who left, the man who wanders around looking for work, the estate owner who has children with the peasant women but never settles down with them.
Ryana could sod off. ;)
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"Sod off" sounds really funny to American ears, and that gave me a good laugh about the Rayna situation, just when I needed one. So thanks for that!
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*** We have different levels for this one, depending on how annoyed you are.
It's funny; when the Spanish are rude, their insults lean towards "heresies"; in Latin America the vulgar insults are related to sexuality.
Reply
When I was reading about a computer game called The Witcher, which was made in Poland, the Polish makers of the game complained that it was almost impossible to translate all the swearing in the game into English, because Polish has a huge number of swear words, and English has only four (and permutations of those four). I had no idea until then that English - which is so rich in words otherwise - had a paucity of swear words!
In English, "damn," and "hell," the religious swears, are milder than "shit," the scatological swear, and "fuck," the sexual swear. But then, sexual repression is an old English tradition. :-)
Reply
In Chile, it's funny because if you want to say that something is awful, you say things associated to men genitals, if it's good, the words refer to female ones. We are a country of strong single mothers, our native peoples consider the earth as mother; and the Catholic assimilation placed great importance on Mary's figure. The man, on the other hand, was an absentee father:The soldier who left, the man who wanders around looking for work, the estate owner who has children with the peasant women but never settles down with them.
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