Welcome to the long tradition of Yiddish curses. According to one scholar of insults: Curses in other languages differ from Yiddish in both content and style...Anglo-Saxon cultures prefer insults dealing with excrement and body parts, Catholic countries are partial to blasphemy, and cultures of the Middle and Far East go for ancestor insults, while Yiddish curses have a baroque splendor. A bunch more examples are here..."
(from Metafilter)
"Catholic countries are partial to blasphemy?" Ain't that the truth!! I always liked the discussion in the book Florentine Locutions by Kevin Beary myself... I can't find my well-worn copy at the moment, but he has a line in it somewhere that a typically flamboyant Florentine curse is rather like a math equation... you take 1) God, Jesus, Mary or a saint + 2) a body part + 3) a sexual act + 4) a farm animal = a curse that'd shock even most (*non-Italian*) sailors to the core!
(You'll have to just trust me on that!!)
No comments:
Post a Comment