Thursday, January 14, 2016

Learn How to Swear in Spanish

Understanding and knowing swear words in Spanish is a good idea but just so you can recognize them. Maybe I’m a bit of a puritan but I think swearing in a foreign language is pretty “feo,” especially for females.

I once saw a request in the Spanish-English forum of Word Reference.com from an Irish lass who wanted Spanish speakers to give her swear words and phrases because she didn’t speak Spanish but she noticed that whenever she used vulgar language in Spain, that people would laugh. Hmm. More than likely people were laughing AT her and not with her.

Especially with some of the macho aspects of Spanish, there are certain terms and phrases that really don’t sound good coming out of the mouth of a woman. Proceed with caution.

Even if you don’t swear or use bad words in English, you know what they are. You learned what they were at some point in your life, even if the only reason was to avoid them. The same principle can be used while learning Spanish. I don’t swear a lot in English, right now. There was a time when I swore a lot. I’m not planning on swearing a lot in Spanish, but I wanted to know, partly for curiosity and partly to know when I was being insulted or made fun of.

Also you want to make sure you’re not insulting anyone by accident by saying the wrong word or a word in the wrong way. Knowing profanity doesn’t make you a profane person, it makes you smarter so you know which words to avoid.

What I found was that it depends on what country you’re going to or in my case, where the people you’re talking to came from. Swearing has more to do with the local slang and how certain words have a meaning in one country and may mean something completely different in another country or the biggest point - In what context it’s used. Do I have to use an example? Balls. Perfectly normal everyday, family rated word used all of the time. But used in a certain context, has a completely different meaning.

I don’t endorse swearing or insulting anyone, but for educational purposes, here are a few resources I’ve found if you’re looking to learn what the guy yelling at you was saying!

Since a lot of swear words are also considered slang, there are a few items on the list that include non-vulgar slang too. One of the bonus lessons had to do with non-vulgar insults. Things like - You’re a pig, you’re fat, stupid, shut-up, things like that. Another bonus has the vulgar insults, the really, really vulgar insults. In fact, the narrator starts out - “Learning Spanish Like Fucking Crazy”.

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