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

I'll not even try. Not that it is too dificult, it is dangerous! I quote from a Russian scientific source:

2004-10-18 18:56:00 Foul language leads to impotence: New study suggests

A resident of the Russian town of Yekaterinburg has come up with a rather unusual discovery.
According to the research manager of the Centre of ecological safety and survival Gennady Cheurin, he has examined the essence of the foul language he managed to prove its pernicious impact on human organism scientifically.

According to the recent statement made by Mr. Cheurin himself, foul language in fact contains sacred words. In the ancient times, these words had been used by Russian men in times of special rituals to "call for their virile essence". "Men were allowed to use these words only 16 days a year. Afterwards, it was strictly prohibited to use them," explained Gennay Cheurin to journalists. So whenever men use these sacred words for no reason in their daily life, this immediately leads to sexual dysfunctions, i.e. impotence. If a woman uses these words in her daily speech, she slowly begins transforming into a man."

According to the author of this rather interesting hypothesis, his words have been recently confirmed by a research study conducted by a group of Russian scientists. The scientific team have been investigating the way swearing affects water, which according to Cheurin, possesses "memory". The scientists had first expressed their anger in a string of oaths (directed at a water jar). It was later used to water wheat seeds. As a result, only 48% of those seeds that have been watered with aggressive obscenities sprouted. Among those seeds that have been watered with "mild foul language" only 53% sprouted. Among those seeds that have been watered with holy water, 93% sprouted. It is hard to imagine what human body must go through each time we swear," noted the scientist.

Gennady Cheurin has also revealed the name of the person who, according to Mr. Cheurin is responsible for such widespread of the sacred words. "The well-known writer Afanasiev has used these words in his 'Sacred Fairytales.' He shouldn't have done it, says Cheurin.
Cheurin also says that foul language works very well at war. Foul language can be helpful in extreme situations. Similar to the last bullet, it has to be kept for extreme circumstances; for military operations for instance. Besides, swearing enables much faster information exchange during warfare," states head of the Centre. He is also inclined to believe that swearing in no other language (aside from Russian) is capable of doing so much harm to one's body.

Fascinating!
It has been stated more than once that Russian language is the best language for swearing. A Real Russian could swear for 10-20 minutes without repeating himself and still making sense.

well.. so a few weeks ago I bought this book on Russian Slang. It's about 350 pages small print Russian slang and the English translation of it..
So I read a page every now and then
And now, about ten minutes ago I noticed that my trousers are almost falling apart. There's holes on places where there shouldn't be holes ( and )
So I decided to put the book away.. I'll read it anymore.. or not more than sixteen days per year

So I googled Gennady Cheurin and five of the 42 hits were English, two were referring to the original article at http://funreports.com
ALL the others were ... Dutch! Could the Dutch be a bit concerned about the use of foul language?

(I accept that there were no Russian hits.. I'd have to do the search in Cyrillic and by now I'm terrified I'd make a typo and use one of my 16 days.. or worse)

Reminds me of an article that was in the Mail on Sunday (UK) 2 or 3 years back. Wish I could remember the background to it, but it must have been s'thing to do with teaching swearing in schools.

It said,

"I thought they already taught swearing in schools. Children these days all seem so good at it. But, of course, when you think about it that cannot be right. If they actually taught bad language then few of their pupils would be able to use it, just as hardly any of them can spell or add up, let alone multiply.
In the same way, after 30 years of sex education, the young seem mystified by the connection between intercourse and babies.
So perhaps we should all rejoice that rude words are now being put on the National Curriculum.
After a few years of this, everyone will be as hopeless at spelling expletives as French Connection, and possibly unable to pronounce them as well."

right.. so change the curriculum and include all that is not supposed to stick, exclude all useful topics.. I'm not sure if this will really work...

Well, a trainer at an INSET course I attended said, 'Once children start school, they stop learning'.

It's because, nowadays, we're so intent on targets (i.e. exam scores) that all we're doing is training people to pass exams rather than teaching them the subject

Amazing!



Is this scientific guy for real?

*Swears (in Danish I may add) into her to see what happens*

*drinks. Holds breath. *












Maybe it is a long term thing

well Tartaronne, the original article was published by Pravda (=truth). Who am I to question this?

note that it seems that this only holds when swearing in Russian.

and I suggest to be careful when shouting at your ... you may be taken off to the funny farm is anyone sees you doing that

i agree it is harmful not leading to any outlet not beneficial at all all time and status is wasted. one becomes friendless and the target of abuses

well, absolutely.. no question about that..