h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>>I'm given to understand that when Finns stub their toes, they say 'In the restaurant!!!'<<

That's not true. Finns have a bad habit of making up swearwords and teaching them to foreigners. Of course there are milder variations of swearwords and sometimes people substitute a swearword with a similar or powerful sounding neutral word, but 'in the restaurant' (= ravintolassa) fits neither description.

Most Finnish swearwords have something to do with religion, except for the worst one, which refers to female genitalia (). The milder religious ones refer to God, the stronger ones to Satan. So if someone is just being annoying, you can exclaim 'Luoja!' (= Creator!), if you're ready to explode you can mutter 'Jumalauta!' (from the words Jumala=god and auta=help) or 'Helvetti!' (= Hell), and when you do explode, you might growl 'Perkele!' or 'Saatana!' (both mean Satan). Most people prefer to use the stronger ones in strings.

'Perkele' is a good one. You can't say it without sounding angry.

Polish has of course many religious swearwords. The ones I know are 'Jesus Maria!' and 'O ranie boskie!' (= Oh, God's wounds!').

I have a Puerto Rican friend. Would it be acceptable for me to mention his name here?

I'm not so sure on the best/worst thing. I think that disinhibition of taboos probably *does* come into this. I believe there is some neuropsychological evidence of this, too. Stroke victims are often left only with sweary words, and it is possible that these are accessed by what are popularly (if innacurately) called the lower parts of brain function. My mother-in-law has been left with very few words following a stroke. She would never have sworn when well. These days she often comes out with 'Christ!' - but I expect that this is more due to the severity of her circumstances than with disinhibition.

(My Puerto Rican friend is named Andy, by the way.)

Zounds!

I was going to reply 'Gadzooks!'...but, of course, that's a transformation of 'God's hooks'.

Hmm. We need Ben in on this. She's the expert dirty-talker.

Ben has kindly contributed this: http://www.bethcargill.co.uk/shortwords.shtml

That's the "Short Guide to Short Words". Isn't that part of the Edited Guide?

Allegedly it's somewhere - but no longer in the Edited Guide.

A538689

Sorry Edward, Puerto Rican Andy draws a blank with me . . .

When I brought up the best/worst idea I was thinking of the II Samuel 24 / I Chronicles 21 dichotomy (the same story is told, with different names: in one it is "the anger of the Lord", in the other "Satan").

Thinking about it since, I wonder if there is any mileage in the proposition that whereas vaguely similar things are easily enough distinguished, things that are diametric opposites tend to merge, or converge; in the way that people and countries tend to come to resemble their greatest enemies.

Or you could thing of things flipping with their converses.

A thing is defined precisely by what it is not. Wittgenstein was hot on this in the Tractatus, and his theory has come to be known as bipolarity. Each proposition has two poles, the true and the false. The *meaning* of contradictory sentences ("I have a beard" "I haven't a beard") is the same: both refer to my having a beard. The *sense* is different; one is true and the other is false.

'Jesus' is a common Puerto Rican name.

The bi-polarity idea is interesting. It relates to how some cognitive psychologists believe that we model the world. The orientation of the various bi-polar constructs to one another defines our 'conceptual space'. Try this for starters: http://www.dmu.ac.uk/~jamesa/learning/personal.htm

And all this is not a million miles away from Ferdinand Saussure's concept of 'Opposition' - the meaning of words is defined in opposition to other words. (And sounds have phonological value in opposition to other sounds...etc. etc.)

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I'll remember that...

My grandfather used to say "Maramarua" as his "colourful metaphor" (Star Trek IV, The Search for Spock). What puzzled me about that, is that it's polysyllabic and flowing, not swearword stuff at all!

Finnish . . . 'Helvetti!' (= Hell)

Well I know one Swiss guy who says Switzerland is one big prison, and every citizen is a gaoler . . .

A little trivia from me to you:


There are about 60 million speakers of Tamil. The oldest writings in the language are from the 2nd century BC.

Aramaic (the language Jesus apparently spoke) is still spoken by about 300,000 people in the Mid-East. It was the dominant language in the region two thousand years ago.

Copt, a language that derives from ancient Egyptian, is still used in religious seremonies of the Coptic (Christian) sect.

Swahili came about through creolization when East African Bantu people got into contact with Arab traders.

There are about 5,000 natural languages in the world, 1,000 of which are only spoken on the island of New Guinea.

Rapanui, the language of Easter Island, has about 2,000 speakers.

Of all Australian languages, Warlpiri has probably the most speakers - about 2,800.

There are still about 130,000 speakers of Navaho.

The language of the Aztec Nation, Nahuatl, is still spoken by over a million people in Mexico.

The language of the Maya Empire, Quechua, is still spoken by over eight million people in Peru, Ecuador and Northern Bolivia.

There are ten Sami languages in existance today. Four of them are dying out.

Of the nine Eskimo (won't call them Inuit because that's one of the subcategories) languages still spoken today, five are dying out.



I didn't know whether to post this here or on the useless facts thread, but whatever.

Very useful facts, thank you Aina... I have just read 'Spoken Here' by Mark Abley. It's about endangered languages, and it's fascinating. Do read it if you can get hold of it (which might not be easy for you.) But it is worth it.

Minor correction - Quechua was the Incas, not the Mayans.

And what's that Native American language that's one of the two official languages or Paraguay, and the only Native American languafe with official national status? (Rummages around) Ah! Guarani! http://www.languages-on-the-web.com/links/link-guarani.htm


Speaking of odd languages...As part of my compulsive collection of foreign language textbooks and dictionaries, my latest purchase (from Oxfam) is 'A Beginner's Guide to Pali'. Pali is the liturgical language of Buddhism and is, roughly speaking, a sort of mediaeval sanskrit. This is possibly the most useless book I've ever bought.

>>Quechua was the Incas, not the Mayans<< Eh, true.

or even.

Hello!

Was Guarani the one that was so esteemed that the Incas (*not* the Mayans ) had to make it an official regional language in their empire (which wasn't something they did a lot)? Can't check because I don't have my notes from which to quote incorrectly here.

I'm sitting at a library computer, avoiding my book on lexical categorization. Ahh, get a hold of yourself!

Or, as we say in Finland, 'grab yourself from the back of your neck'.

Oh, hi!