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Swearing Doesn’t Mean You’re Limited
Some foul language to be expected.
A couple of years ago, I saw an article in an Argentinian newspaper about a man who had lived across the world in several countries, thanks to his international job. One of these countries was Finland, and he’d spent about a year there.
What caught my attention about the story was his claim that the Finnish people are so polite and well-educated they do not even have curse words. He was amazed by this, by how much smarter and well-educated Finns were than his fellow Argentinians.
I laughed out loud.“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” I thought.
This person had clearly never spoken to a single Finn in his entire time there, and only spent his time with other foreigners. But he also seemed to think people are better for not cursing.
I’ve often heard people say that if you swear a lot, it means you have a limited vocabulary.
That we use swear words when we don’t have a better way of expressing ourselves. That it’s crass and means you’re not a person to be taken seriously. That you‘re probably dumb if you have to resort to swearing.
In Argentina, where people still view Europe as being somehow better, I find that many don’t expect me to swear because of that.
