girlsdontcry's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My chin! At dinner this week, my brother informed me of the acronym TWAT (The War on Terror), then to explain it to his wife, who is German, he said it was like quatsch, and I was amazed, because I hear her mother saying it all the time, and in front of the grand children, so I'd thought it was inoffensive. And it turns out it is. Twat, of course, is not (it's a slang word for "vagina", where "quatsch" is simply "nonsense"). But then I was just thinking that about swearing, and generally bad words, and about which words one would comfortably say infront of one's mother. So, for example, I would say "shit" in front of my mother, but try and very much restrict my usage of "fuck" (my brother claims to have heard my mother say "let's just stay in a fucking hotel" once, an incident that has now become legendary). I would say "pissed off" in front of my mother, but I don't think I'd inform her that I was "pissed" (i.e. drunk). I wouldn't say tits, cock, dick, arse, pussy or fanny. I'd go with bollocks though. I would say twat, but not referring to... *looks down at lap*, and only because I don't think she probably knows it. Motherfucker is out of the question. So is cunt. Bastard is OK. My mother favours "bloody", so I never say that, although occasionally I'll go with "bloody hell". Incidentally, look at all the words in English where German has Quatsch. Although I can't say that I often use the expression "My chin!". Having said that, I might start. It's like everything moved arsewards, isn't it. Like you would now say "my arse" instead of "my chin", and it's "I fell arse over tit" or something, instead of whatever you used to fall. And I bet that people used not to be able to distinguish between their ear and their elbow before it was "couldn't tell his arse from his elbow". 1:48 p.m. - 2003-06-05 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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