The Mommy Blog™ | Adventures from the Wonderbelly of Motherhood™

Saturday, December 06, 2003

How many languages can you swear in? And how many can you flirt in? I was driving home today, congratulating my husband and myself for having 3 kids as old as 5 who have never uttered a swear word. Amazingly, we are still at the stage where “stupid” is a daring expletive, one that brings swift, hard stares and raised eyebrows.

So then I started totting up all the swear words I’ve learned from different languages. Cursing in English is something we all do, but to do so convincingly in a foreign one takes some effort. I have been taught colorful phrases in:

Chinese
Japanese
Serbian
Spanish
French
Catalan

I have also learned to say “I love you” and other sultry, flirty things in....let’s see...huh. In all of the languages listed above, except Chinese. Wonder why that is??

The upshot is that we seem to absorb the curses and insulting bits much more readily than we do the lovey bits. On the other hand, the lovey bits are likely to be the ones we learn to pronounce perfectly out of considerable and lusty motivation. I won’t embarrass myself by making a list of my particular repertoire; suffice to say that the colorful phrases far outstrip the amorous ones (so to speak).

What was your most embarrassing usage of a foreign curse or declaration of affection? Years ago, when I was a waitress, I once recited a sweet phrase to my Serbian boss, who declared on the spot that I had total job security. He was so impressed with my pronunciation that he wanted to hear everything else I knew. I obligingly offered the other bit that my high school boyfriend from Beograd and his friends taught me, and my boss’ jaw fell onto his shoes. “I...I...I’ve never heard that word from a woman’s mouth before.” Whoops--did I tell you I can also speak respectfully to a Serbian matriarch and compliment her on her cooking??

P.S. Thanks, Viktor. Thanks a lot. It took 13 years for that little time bomb to go off, but I have to hand it to you--it was effective.

P.P.S. I still don’t know what that word means, by the way. Sasha would never say…

Thursday, December 04, 2003

Tidbits on the Kidbits

Last night (out of the blue)…

Logan: “Mommy, do you know who pulls Santa’s sleigh?”

Me: “His reindeer?”

Logan: “No, caribou! Did you know that caribou is another name for reindeer?”

This morning (picking up right where the conversation left off)…

Logan: “Why doesn’t Santa come out in the daytime?”

Me: “Well, he does visit sometimes at the mall.” [hating myself for promoting the commercialism] “If you like, we can go see him and you can tell him about the toy wildebeest you want him to bring.” [Gil’s eyebrows going up, indicating that we don’t know whether he knows that’s not really Santa]

Logan: “Well, there’s only one thing I want to say to him. I just want to ask him how his caribou are doing. And maybe he’ll ask me what a caribou is, and then I can tell him that caribou is another name for reindeer. And then maybe he’ll ask how come I know so much about caribou, and I’ll say that I have two animal books and know a lot about animals.”

Me: “........” [Now my eyebrows are up in the air alongside Gil’s]