Blasphemy as an insult in Italian/Spanish/Anything!

Re: Blasphemy as an insult in Italian/Spanish/Anything!


Can't think of any. All curses in Italian and Spanish sound even more insulting in English.

I do agree on the concept of blasphemy, as being very important in Italy and Spain (notice that I said Spain, not Spanish language: blasphemy pleys very little in Latin America).

Typical blasphemous Italian: "Porco Dio!", which some prefer to pronounce "porco zio", changing the meaning to "Pig uncle" instead of the original "Pig God". "Dio cane" changes the pig into a dog, and is some times pronounced as "Dio canta" (God sings).
"Madonna bucaiola": "C*cksucking Virgin Mary" (I blush even as I translate).
The Madonna is also called "porca", but I've her people change "Madonna" into "madosca".
"Dio boia" is a minor blasphemy: "God executioner".

Typical blasphemous Spanish: "Me cago en Dios", often changed to "me cago en diez", changing the meaning to "I sh¡t on ten", instead of the original "I sh¿t on God".

Welcome Kojiro, two expressions:

Sacre bleu in French--blue Jesus
Bloody in British English--blood of Jesus

I just love what little I know of the Navajo language. The concepts for the words just don't exist, so they don't even have the words. If they want to call you something worse than a yellow dog, they have to revert to English.

Now, Letty, don't you start on me again. I'm still not Native American - just worked on the Big Rez for 6 1/2 years.

French Canadians get a lot of mileage from church-related terms, used
the same way we'd use bathroom or sexual terms. "Tabernacle!" is the
equivalent of dropping an f-bomb.

They get pretty rowdy up there, I see.

Rog, I promise. No bad words from Little Letty, even in Hopi.

It's pretty funny to hear a bunch of angry drunks in Place Jacques Cartier
raging on about chalices and tabernacles.

Ab fab old fashionned blasphemy, viewed today with tenderness.

Well, Francis. It's the only one I knew that was fit to print.

Dear Letty, nice to hear you blaspheming this way :wink:

Tell you what, Francis. To redeem myself, I'll dedicate a song to you on WA2K radio.

I know that French mock Canadians for using that "medieval" expression, Sacre Bleu.

But I didn't understand, until now, why was "bloody" considered vulgar by the Brits and Aussies.
THAT one wouldn't sound dirty translated into Spanish or French.

fbaezer, I can't verify that. It just emerged from the recesses of a forgotten song.

bloody
O.E. blodig, adj. from blod (see blood). It has been a British intens. swear word since at least 1676. Weekley relates it to the purely intensive use of the cognate Du. bloed, Ger. blut). But perhaps connected with bloods in the slang sense of "rowdy young aristocrats" (see blood) via expressions such as bloody drunk "as drunk as a blood." Partridge reports that it was "respectable" before c.1750, and it was used by Fielding and Swift, but heavily tabooed c.1750-c.1920, perhaps from imagined association with menstruation; Johnson calls it "very vulgar," and OED first edition writes of it, "now constantly in the mouths of the lowest classes, but by respectable people considered 'a horrid word', on par with obscene or profane language." Shaw shocked theatergoers when he put it in the mouth of Eliza Doolittle in "Pygmalion" (1914), and for a time the word was known euphemistically as "the Shavian adjective." It was avoided in print as late as 1936. Bloody Mary, the drink, is from 1956, named for Mary Tudor, queen of England 1553-58, who earned her epithet for vigorous prosecution of Protestants. The drink earned its, apparently, simply for being red from tomato juice. Bloody Sunday, Jan. 30, 1972, when 13 civilians were killed by British troops at protest in Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

My word. I certainly did not know that.

Surely sacre bleu is sacred blue - blue referring to the sky - i.e. the heavens and is therefore basically heaven above? I could be wrong since i speak very very little french... that just makes sense to me

[edited as i copied the quote but then forgot to copy my text before submitting...]

That makes sense to you. Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with the blue of the skies. It's just an alteration of "Sacré Dieu" as many other blasphems of the same vein :corbleu, têtebleu, ventrebleu, palsambleu, parbleu.

blue bayou

Dys, do you remember a song going like this :

I wanna be loved bayou!

Was that by Buckwheat Zydego?