It has always amused me that swearing in English expresses a bodily function while swearing in French is a blasphemy. My French Canadian neighbours easily swear in English but serious swearing is in French. I don’t think they find the English as offensive as English speaker do.

As a kid I took part in using phrases instead of words. For instance, “Your mother wears army boots.” Your mother has a cedar chest.” It is always good to insult one’s mother.

I like languages that can use long phrases such as, “May you struggle up a long hill and then fall over the other side for a speedy decent.” or some more creative phrase.

I think that people who swear a lot are lazy speakers. I used to laugh at tradesmen when I worked in construction could use the “F” word in a sentence where it seemed to be used as every part of speech. Swearing overworked loses its power. I rarely swear but when I do people take note. I had an elderly neighbour who defended me to a man who took a dislike of me by saying, “How can you not like Robinson, he doesn’t even swear.!”

To the boys I knew it our village, I used to say they should refrain from swearing because some day they might meet a lovely your woman they really cared about. After meeting her parents and spending time with them he would find the relationship was over and they would not know why. It could be that the parents stopped it because of his crude way of speaking. Swearing may work on the street or in men’s groups at work but one should know that there are places it is just not acceptable.

I remember the first time I swore. It just came out and I didn’t even know that it happened until my friend told me that I said it. It’s hard not to regurgitate that stuff when our peers are saying all sorts of things! (Of course, in the olden days when I was growing up, we were more like 16 or 17, not 12, when all of that happened.)