p... !

[Benjamin Barrett]

I once got in trouble for saying "deew" (fuck in Cantonese) when my Cantonese friends were saying "fuck" left and right. Sociolinguistic context is important.

Benjamin Barrett
Seattle, WA

On Sep 28, 2012, at 3:04 AM, Paul Frank <paulfrank at POST.HARVARD.EDU> wrote:

> In an article in today's Le Monde about a video by Samuel L. Jackson
> in support of Barack Obama, the English words "Wake the fuck up" and
> "Go the fuck to sleep" are quoted in full in English but the French
> translations are rendered as "Réveillez-vous, p... !" and "Allez au
> lit, p... !", presumably because the word "putain" is too offensive
> for the sensitive eyes of Le Monde readers. The English word "fuck" is
> just a foreign word and therefore, presumably, inoffensive.
>
> I've noticed a similar phenomenon on young people's T-shirts in
> France, Switzerland and Spain, and I presume it's common in other
> countries. An otherwise clean-cut looking girl or young woman walks
> around clad in a T-shirt sporting a witticism (for want of a better
> word) that contains the English word "fuck." The same clean-cut young
> girl would not wear a T-shirt with the word "fuck" in her own
> language.

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