#expletives

Dear Stramash Anon,

Bless your soul, you made me laugh first thing in the morning.

I can assure you, Scots and Irish are more than decent people. Even if birds are flipped, tongues are taken out for impromptu walks and fucks often fly. At any rate, they should not be taken seriously or read too much into, anyways. That is perhaps more generational and means nothing serious, I can assure you and here is why:

If you foolishly travel to my country, for example, you'd be surprised to hear many 'pula'/dick (and pronounced 'poola') all across the nation, and irrespective of gender, social status and contexts. And hello 'dicks-this' and 'dicks-that' and 'my dick', 'what the dick this/that' (extreme surprise, awe or even irritation) and 'oh, how my dick hurts upon hearing/seeing/being told this' (it means 'I don't give a flying fuck', btw, expletives always travel and translate superbly). The same way as in Polish, for example, many annoying/surprising/grandiose/sudden things are 'kurwa' (whore). Incidentally, the Poles swear the exact same way as the mighty French 'putain' (anything and anyone from annoying to wonderful). It's the same mechanism as for the Greek 'μαλάκα/malaka' ('wanker', but generally speaking 'asshole', but also 'bro', LOL), the Italian 'cazzo' (where we are circling back to 'dick', because we and Italians are brothers in arms, mentality, culture, language and history) or the Spanish 'joder' (of course, 'fuck', but also 'joke', 'destroy', etc.).

All of the above and as scandalous/vulgar all of these might sound to prude ears, I can assure you they mean absolutely nothing and should tell you absolutely nothing about the (often younger) person in front of you. They are convenient speech crutches, allowing people either to shortcut lengthy explanations or spontaneously vent. Everyone gets the meaning, some judge (as you seem to do) and life goes on. I would never read too much into these, as I would never read too much into flipping the bird at someone when an impromptu pic is taken.

So, loosen up, Anon and let it be. Irrespective of you being annoyed (your prerogative), they will be there until the end of time. Only try to learn them as soon as possible with every new language you take an interest in: knowing this is not hostile, but mildly expletive, might save you many heartburns over nothing, or at least not much.

Thank you for the morning smile. I rarely refrain from using many of the above (if only in relaxed/friendly contexts, though) and I prefer an expletive to a stroke, when annoyed.

"I date two undead men. You do the math." And she wasn't implying like MEGA ULTRA FRISKY, okay. Just not, ya know, upticking at all.

I have Netflix access again. I have watched very few things in the last two years, so if you have a recommendation, feel free to suggest.

In related news I was watching the second season of The Law According to Lidia Poët/La legge di Lidia Poët and realized at some point they weren't translating a certain curse word. The reason I hadn't noticed was 1. It's pretty clearly the Italian version of my late father's favorite curse word to yell at people in traffic. it sounded so much like the French version I didn't notice when 2. The subtitles included it in Italian.

Once I did finally notice it had been going on like this for… idk. I didn't bother checking 1st season and it was pretty late in second season. I clocked multiple instances when I did notice it.

At first I thought, "Are they Bowdlerizing this?" But usually when they Bowdlerize subtitles or close captioning, they replace the word with things like "darn" or find a way to leave it out. which is infuriating, but also occasionally accidentally funny. (I went to see La Vie en Rose in the local art cinema when it first came out and laughed my ass off because they had the notoriously foul mouthed Edith Piaf saying gosh and darn when that was absolutely not what she was saying and the juxtaposition was hilarious. I got a lot of weird looks. Apparently I was the only one in the theater who knew French profanity).

Then I thought about the word itself. I don't speak Italian, but given the givens such as context, delivery, etc. I'm betting it has the same meaning. If it does, then that might have created a serious dilemma for the translators. If you do a literal translation it carries a completely different weight in English and would definitely distort the meaning that it would have conveyed in French and I'm betting the same in Italian. If you translate it based on how people use it and look for an English language curse word with similar cultural weight and usage, you need to leave direct translation behind.

What you want here is a beautifully dressed (seriously the costuming for men and women in this thing is so, so good), properly brought up upper middle class woman of the late 19th century saying a word that men were only supposed to say and never in front of ladies. If this were the 19th century, the idiomatic choice might be "Fuck!" because the literal translation is right out. Except Americans of all ages and genders say "Fuck" now. Literal translation is still way too strong in English and distorts meaning because we don't use that word as an expletive, but as a gendered insult. Most everything else I can think of like, say "damnit" isn't strong and shocking enough or has other problems. For example "Motherfucker" would shock you right out of period, by sounding to modern. "Son of a Bitch," maybe? Idk. "Fuck" might still be your best choice.

So I'm thinking they kept the word in Italian as her tone and performance carry it well enough, though not quite the level of period cultural meaning to an English ear.

Translation is hard, fam.

In this short grammar lesson, we’ll be talking about expletives—but NOT the kind that means ‘profanities’ or ‘swear words.’

👨🏻‍🎓 In grammar, expletives are sometimes called “dummy pronouns.” They occur in clauses beginning with “it” or “there” when the “it” or “there” does not refer to anything. Although very few people we know are familiar with the term in the grammatical context, they are extremely common; we bet you used dozens of sentences today that began with expletives.

For example, the following sentences start with expletives:

It is vital that you arrive to the concert on time.

There were several raucous students at the football game.

😌 Fortunately, the rules for expletives are straightforward:

When “it” is an expletive, it always takes a singular verb.

It is finally time to go home! 🏃🏻‍♀️💨💨

It is amusing that children still believe in the Tooth Fairy. 🦷🧚🏻‍♀️

It was an exhausting undertaking to organize my parents’ garage.

When “there” is an expletive, the number of the verb is determined by the number of the noun phrase that follows:

There is a place we all call “home.” 🏡👪

There were hundreds of fans in line for autographs. 😍📝

There was an error in your calculations. 🧮

There were six spelling mistakes on your handwritten essay.

Give the following questions a try:

The meteorologist claims that it ( is | are ) going to snow this weekend in Los Angeles. ☃

When we looked at the expansive menu, we learned that there ( is | are ) more than 22 different types of fried chicken. 🍗

The college tour guide candidly admitted that there really ( isn’t | aren’t ) much to do on campus during the winter holiday. 🏫👻

Last year, there ( was | were ) a surprising increase in the number of students applying to small liberal arts colleges in Alaska.

According to Nan, it ( is | are ) painfully obvious and understandable that there ( has | have ) been more accidents on the busy street leading to the new shopping mall. 🚗💥🚙

~ Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons - Modern AU - Jack~