I am swearing-impaired and and cannot mouth anything worse than an occasional "damn". I am not a so-called "prude" but I dislike swearing. As a lover of words and and the power of language, I find swearing to be simply lazy and feel we can express ourselves so much better if we stay off swear words. Add to this the fact that I can't help but think about meaning of a word and conjure images of it, every time I use it and being around swear-words is just not a pleasant experience for me whether I or somebody else around me uses these words.
Even people who are not as hardcore word-fanatics as I am, have limits as to what words they will use in front of children. The notorious f-word and all its derivatives come to mind. And yet I am aghast that people will use words such as "bummer" and "sucks" not only in the presence of but in conversations with little children, and eventually end up teaching children to use them. Do people really not know what those words are implying? I guess not, otherwise I just don't see how they do not land in the same category as the f-word.
Raising kids in a non-native environment while constantly worrying about striking the right balance.
3 comments:
I dislike the word "sucks," though to me it only half has the meaning that you are thinking of. Mostly I picture a person sucking on a lemon or a bad-tasting lollipop.
With the word "bummer" I genuinely have no idea what objectionable meaning you are thinking of. When people are sad, they sometimes say, "I feel bummed." So I've always thought of "a bummer" as "something that makes a person feel bummed [sad]." I can guess at a bad connotation that you might have for it, but until you mentioned it, it honestly never occurred to me that this word might have that connotation. I encourage my kids to say "bummer" rather than other bad words, because to me it is such a gentle word without any bad connotation. I guess I'd better re-think that.
By the way, I'd always intended to raise my kids with the idea that words are just words, and swear words don't matter at all, they are just sounds that people make, just like any other words, and at home it is okay to use them, though at school you'd better not. But then my kids came along, and the reality of parenting and swear words turned out to be vastly more complicated than I ever expected. So I've turned into my mom and made swear words against the rules at our house. I never expected that!!
Sigh....
I find that kids from swearing families swear too, and I think that is just because language is learned as a collection of phrases rather than via individual words. I haven't had to discourage my children from using swear words because they don't use them, yet. If they did, I will probably handle it same as I handle the case where they claim to "hate" something. I point out that there are many words to express the intensity of dislike and hate is at the extreme. If they use "hate" for everything they will be speechless when they come across something truly hateful :) Cuts both ways though - they catch me too if I am not careful with my words.
As far the origin of swear words I mentioned goes, from my limited knowledge of them, "suck" comes from the act of oral sex, To say "xyz sucks" means "xyz gives oral sex". "bummer" comes from anal sex, and was once used to describe a homosexual male. From their to a children's expression of disappointment - that is a long road traveled.
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