Swearing in English

Swedish swearwords (or profanities or cursing if you prefer) tend to seem quite mild compared to the English. They tend to reference hell and the devil whereas the really bad English swearwords tend to reference sex. When hearing very young Swedish people (I’m talking 8 or 9 years old here) dropping the F-bomb left right and centre I wonder often if they think our swearwords are as mild as theirs. I think in 90% of cases, Swedes do not realise how visceral a profanity, the word fuck is.

I honestly don’t think Swedes know the power of the F word in English. Traditional Swedish profanities are pretty tame (on the level of damn, drat, bloody, hell) and generally reference religion, so I think they think fuckone is too. Over time though, even Swedish has started to use sexual words as profanities, probably adopting the English tradition due to the dominance of English in social media and the internet

I found this graphic quite interesting

Note also that some cultures swear more than others, and that it is also related to upbringing, geography, age. So if you tend to learn by mimicking, avoid doing it with profanities. Also, swearing can become a bad language habit (like ‘um’ and ‘like’) that you don’t even notice you are doing so watch yourself if you are speaking English for work.

I have no problem with swearing per se unless someone does it with every second word. I don’t do it habitually but I curse like a sailor when I am angry. It’s not like me so people tend to know when I am really angry by the bad language that comes out of my mouth…