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At school my German teacher loved to teach us the longest swear word in German (or so he claimed). He would illustrate it by pretending he hit his thumb with a hammer, and then he would let out this wonderful long stream of invective, but which is one word in German. He would then translate it all for us.

No idea if it helps with hitting your thumb with a hammer, but memorable teaching!

> longest swear word in German

Inquiring minds want to know...

I wish I could remember. Words in German can be long as they are composed of other words. It was along the lines of thunder and lightning and terrible storms blight you! But I think there was a bit more to it than that.

EDIT; and the teacher may have made the entire thing up of course! Loved his lessons.

Untergrundbahnhofzeitschriftsplatz: Subway station newspaper stand

The root primitives are so easy to discern and interpret: under,ground, train,yard time,writing place

(Bahn is more like track, not train)

By the way, English also has compound nouns, only they are sometimes written with spaces and sometimes without. Sometimes even with dashes. E.g. compare "coalmine" and "file name". Compound nouns can get arbitrarily long too, e.g. "file name length limit history blog post introduction".

While English has compound nouns, they are different in that they are not (generally) single words.

For example, the lovely and memorable

Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft

would be translated into something like

"Association for Subordinate Officials of the Main Maintenance Building of the Danube Steamboat Shipping Company"

Squashing "danube steamboat shipping company electric services main maintenance building subordinate officials association" into a single word vs leaving it spaced out is kind of irrelevant. It's like getting excited over PascalCase vs snake_case.

It just takes longer to standardize them but English absolutely has compound single words. Examples include “folklore”, “pancake”, “manslaughter”, “oatmeal”, “pocketknife”, and “gunman”.

Right, they're just typically limited to two subwords.

And you can't typically just make them up as you go along and have them accepted as "words."

And they work as swears too.

Goddamnmotherfuckingsonofabitch

etc.

Though I believe that's technically not a compound noun. (Fun fact: "compound noun" is a compound noun.)

Many years ago, my daughter (maybe six at the time), lost something semi-important to her, I don't recall what. I think it might have been her username / pictorial password card for her school network account. Anyway, we were looking for it, and she said "Dad, dad, I don't know where it is, I feel like I'm going to say a bad word".

I, having just read an article like this, said "That's ok, sometimes saying a bad word can help you process your emotions and feel less stressed. Do you want to go down to the basement where nobody can hear you, and say the bad word?"

"Yes". She goes down the stairs, I close the door, and she yells at the top of her lungs: "I can't fucking find it!". I managed not to laugh, she comes back up, "Do you feel better?" "Yes." Great moments in parenting. :-) (We did eventually find whatever it was.)

To think, you could've taken that opportunity to point out to her that saying the bad word didn't actually help her find it. Or you could've told her immediately that you heard her through the door because she yelled. Instead, you raised a casual swearer who's unaware of her surroundings. I hope nobody ever has to live in an apartment next to her.

It's comments like this that really make participating on this forum not fun.

It's a cute story. Fuck is just a word. They aren't going to grow up to be a bad person because they said it as a kid, and it's wild to say stuff like this to someone when you have literally no other context about their life or upbringing.

Your weird negativity to a stranger and implying they aren't doing a good job parenting based on them sharing a couple sentence long story is, in my opinion, a worse character trait than saying fuck every now and again. You have 0 idea what kind of kid they are raising.

Oh the horror of a "casual swearer"!

Praise be to this comment!

There are T-shirts that say "Fuck You You Fucking Fuck!".

See: https://www.etsy.com/market/fuck_you_you_fucking

> saying the bad word didn't actually help her find it

Any proof of this?

So this is like a more rigorously version of Mythbusters' No Pain, No Gain test then.

I spent two years of high school learning Russian. I can't remember much of it, except the section of the alphabet that sounds like swearing: р, с, т, у, ф, х (pronounced, approximately, and with feeling: "er ess teh, oo eff HAH").

When my kids were younger I tried to to replace my swearing by saying "sugarplum fairies". It was fairly successful in becoming a natural replacement. However, the other day I kicked my toe really badly and instinctively yelled "sugarplum FUCKING fairies" and my kids (now early teen) found it extremely funny.

Can I swear in pain enough to Clockwork Orange myself? Could prove cheaper than the fucking swear jarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I read once that there is a common structure to swear words. If you think about it, fuck, cunt, shit, crap - they all have kiiind of a similar vocal feeling.

I wonder if different fake swear words may have had a different outcome.

See also this wonderful video with Stephen Fry and Brian Blessed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2eWDmUl4_Y

There is also an impact of swear words on pleasure. Also on strength and performance - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S14690...

Anecdotally, I find swearing in German and Italian satisfying and people around usually don't understand, so no issues there.

I had been working at CERN for a bit less than a year, when my Russo-Israelian coworker, who had never visited Italy, erupted in a perfect "Porca puttana!" that made me question my manners in the office.

I swear in Italian and Russian. Great minds think alike!

Anecdotally I find swearing makes it worse. Now I just saw "ow!" or "that hurt!" Which honestly feels like it synchronizes my brain past the insult and I can move on much faster past it.

This matches research on pain catastrophizing vs. neutralizing - your approach of acknowledging pain directly without emotional amplification may be activating different neural pathways than those enhanced by taboo-word usage.

Similar: I say something amusing/funny, e.g. I hit my head on a piece of metal and yelled "ah ya mother was a tin can you metal bastard" which breaks your thought from the pain. Screaming fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu... only keeps you focused.

hahaha, I'm going to try this

I use a mix of both, but when I’m in really serious pain, I also find it’s more effective when I’m just like “Wew. WOW. Yeah that’s pretty good there. Phew. Wow. WOOOW.”

I dunno why, but wow seems to work well for me.

You'll sing a different tune when you're getting fouched in the twizpipe.

"Glenfarclas!" I frequently exclaim to the bewilderment of my child.

There's a lovely story of a dad who's wife said, "Lil Johhny said a bad word today. Go talk to him." Or something to that effect.

"Johnny, Momma tells me you said X. That's pretty bad, but at least you didn't say the worst word..."

"What's that?" "Can't tell you!" <negotiations> "OK, but you have to PROMISE you'll never say it in front of Momma. It's <whispers> booglashek."

Next day, all his friends were over, calling each other booglasheks.

Percy Livermore: We must rid our speech of slang. Now, besides "OK", I want you all to promise me that there are two words that you will never use. One of these is "swell" and the other one is "lousy".

Lucy Ricardo: OK, what are they?

Percy Livermore: [with emphasis] One of them is "swell" and the other one is "lousy".

Fred Mertz: Well, give us the lousy one first.

I spelled around my daughter. This worked until, between 3 and 4 y/o, she asked a preschool teacher what "F-U-C-K" spelled. The teacher asked where she'd heard it and she said her father spelled it a lot.

Twizpipe

The origin of language

What the jiggins!

(2020)

"Theres a fucking goat outside."

"No, it's just 'a goat'."

"No! It's a fucking goat!"

what do you call...

a deer with no eyes? no idea

a deer w no eyes and no front legs? still no idea

a deer with no eyes, no front legs, and no balls? still no fucking idea

Personally I’m more into sheep, but I won’t kink shame.

Inside you there are two fucking wolves