Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Speaker 1: Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, uh and Jerry's over there.
Speaker 1: So this is stuff you should know beep. Addition, are
Speaker 1: we gonna beat No? I don't think so we're above that. Um.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what. It was a joy to read
Speaker 1: this Tracy V. Wilson article. Tracy stuff you missed in
Speaker 1: history class. Used to do a lot of writing, and
Speaker 1: her articles are always she leaves no stone unturned. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the V. The V stands for very good article. It
Speaker 1: really was good. Yeah, it was very good article, very good,
Speaker 1: so very good. Did you did you notice her images
Speaker 1: in the article on the site? No, oh they were
Speaker 1: all like star Trek, Firefly, Harry Potter. What later in
Speaker 1: the article? Or was that from that other thing you
Speaker 1: sent me? Oh that was from another thing. Okay, No,
Speaker 1: I kind of just put it all in together, so
Speaker 1: I was like, man, Tracy really went for it. A
Speaker 1: lot of bombs. That was not Tracy. That was well.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of other articles I sent you.
Speaker 1: One was James Harbick wrote a good one on the
Speaker 1: BBC and another was from Rebecca roach On a On.
Speaker 1: Was that that swearing in other countries? Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: really good. Um, I'm excited about this one because I
Speaker 1: loved to curse and swear, and you folks don't know
Speaker 1: that because we've always kept our show g rated. I know,
Speaker 1: which is I'm glad we do that because I kind
Speaker 1: of stand out these days among podcasts. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: Plus it's kind of like, um, it just makes it
Speaker 1: you have to get a little more creative when you
Speaker 1: have limitations like that. I found like working within a
Speaker 1: structure or makes you think more rather than just like
Speaker 1: letting it all hang out being loosey goosey lazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm very lazy than in my regular life. Well, my
Speaker 1: wife and I both have sailor mouth. Should we be
Speaker 1: telling people this? I don't think it's fine, Okay, because
Speaker 1: this is a good lesson to kids that, um, you know,
Speaker 1: there are appropriate times to say certain things in inappropriate times,
Speaker 1: and when you're podcasting, apparently it's inappropriate exactly at least
Speaker 1: with us. But chuck. Um. One thing you might be
Speaker 1: happy to hear is that a longstanding myth called the
Speaker 1: poverty of vocabulary hypothesis is not held to be correct
Speaker 1: any longer. Well, what's the myth? The hypothesis was that
Speaker 1: people swore because they couldn't think of other words, and
Speaker 1: that you were basically lower, lower class, poorly educated um
Speaker 1: with a small vocabulary, which is why you cursed. And
Speaker 1: up until fairly recently, I think it was a two
Speaker 1: thousand sixteen maybe fifteen journal article that really put the
Speaker 1: nail in the coffin and said, nope, we tested people.
Speaker 1: The people who came up with the most swear words
Speaker 1: were also the ones who had the most extensive vocabulary
Speaker 1: elsewhere too. So the idea that you're just dumb if
Speaker 1: you if you swear a lot normally gone. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: I mean there, it spends on how you do it.
Speaker 1: Like sometimes you can tell someone I can't think of
Speaker 1: a better word, you know what I mean? And sometimes
Speaker 1: like I know some people that are just some of
Speaker 1: the best swearers. Was most creative, intelligent swears And it's
Speaker 1: like a music almost. I love it it is, and
Speaker 1: it is a music. It's definitely not just words. As
Speaker 1: we'll see, swearing is its own thing. It's kind of phenomenal. Actually,
Speaker 1: there's a hypothesis that language came out of swears originally
Speaker 1: that the first took took, Yeah, it took took was
Speaker 1: basically hit his thumb with a club against the rock,
Speaker 1: shouted something, and that became the S word as we
Speaker 1: know it today. Well, Tracy, one of the first things
Speaker 1: she points out was a thought super interesting and that
Speaker 1: it's a very paradoxic, paradoxical thing, and that they are
Speaker 1: a taboo. But it's not a taboo that people avoid.
Speaker 1: It's one of the few taboos like everybody, not everybody,
Speaker 1: but many, many people in brace right, I think like
Speaker 1: seventy eight percent of men. And we're talking for the
Speaker 1: most of this show about sort of Western countries except
Speaker 1: at the end. But as far as we know, and
Speaker 1: we being like humanity, uh, swearing is universal. Here we
Speaker 1: go se of men and fifty eight percent of women
Speaker 1: swearing in public. It's not even in their private life. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah. And apparently that's a longstanding understanding of swearing,
Speaker 1: is that men do it more than women. And back
Speaker 1: in the seventies there was a Berkeley linguistics researcher named
Speaker 1: Rebecca lack Off, and um, she noticed that women tended
Speaker 1: more to use what are called minced oaths, which is
Speaker 1: saying like fiddle sticks instead of the F word, basically
Speaker 1: talking like ned flanders in places where men would have
Speaker 1: cursed otherwise um. And she surmised that it was because
Speaker 1: women are taught from a young age to be polite
Speaker 1: and preferential, um, whereas men are allowed to curse and
Speaker 1: kind of let it all hang out. But that just
Speaker 1: put women in an awkward situation or damned if they do,
Speaker 1: damned if they don't, uh situation. And that if they
Speaker 1: are polite and deferential, they're treated like a fractional person um.
Speaker 1: But if they transgress and and curse, they they've broken taboos.
Speaker 1: And like in Western society, it's way worse for a
Speaker 1: woman to curse than a man, at least in public
Speaker 1: or may be even private, which is a double standard
Speaker 1: that we need to do away with. Agreed, because it's
Speaker 1: much like the First Amendment episode where I got all
Speaker 1: rile up against obscenity. The idea that some words can't
Speaker 1: be said because it's taboo just irks me to no
Speaker 1: end as well. I don't think it's a big deal,
Speaker 1: but I do respect that others do, and I really
Speaker 1: do try to curb my how loud I curse in public?
Speaker 1: Public in public's Um, I really do. I try to, like,
Speaker 1: and this isn't just since I've had kids. Have always
Speaker 1: just sort of tried to be aware. Maybe it was
Speaker 1: my Baptist upbringing, but um, it's bad of a mouth.
Speaker 1: As I have, I've always tried to just sort of
Speaker 1: be aware of my surroundings because I never wanted to
Speaker 1: be that guy that was making someone else feel bad
Speaker 1: or whose parents had to like shuffle their kids away
Speaker 1: from me because of the language I was using. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: I've had a hard time with Emily. Yeah, yeah, she's
Speaker 1: just she doesn't now she's louder and doesn't just she's
Speaker 1: just not a She's in the moment, you know. She's
Speaker 1: very free spirited, and I'm always like, oh, you know
Speaker 1: there's kids right out there, can you keep it down.
Speaker 1: She's like, if it f that kid, if that kid,
Speaker 1: just it. Um. But Tracy just has a lot of
Speaker 1: little tidbits here at the beginning. I think we should
Speaker 1: mention because they're just interesting. One is that people, and
Speaker 1: I found this to be true when I worked in
Speaker 1: at a Mexican restaurant. We all learned the curse words first,
Speaker 1: and when you learn a new language, it's one of
Speaker 1: the first things you learn if you learn through immersion
Speaker 1: rather than in a classroom, are colloquially colloquialisms and curse words,
Speaker 1: although she says curse words and swear words are different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we should you want to say, with the differences, so, um,
Speaker 1: most people use them interchangeably. But a curse word is
Speaker 1: where you're basically hexing something. You're you're calling for someone
Speaker 1: to be well damned, yeah, or anything good. Idea like
Speaker 1: F this window that I can't get open, that's a
Speaker 1: curse on that window, exactly, you're right, um. Whereas swearing
Speaker 1: is kind of different. It's like by Odin's raiding, where
Speaker 1: you're invoking the name of like a deity or something
Speaker 1: religious or whatever, and you're doing that to like give
Speaker 1: weight to your your words, your or I swear to
Speaker 1: God as a swear and technically, if you are a
Speaker 1: if you're a pious type, swearing to God, it's going
Speaker 1: to be as bad as saying F that window, if
Speaker 1: not worse. Actually the worst is you know, if you
Speaker 1: say g D. I remember growing up and as a
Speaker 1: church kid, that was that was the worst of all
Speaker 1: swear words. Yeah, right, you know, taking the Lord's name
Speaker 1: in vain? Yeah, and that can be and most basically
Speaker 1: all words, will you swearing curse interchangeably like any normal
Speaker 1: human being. But um, most most swear words are all
Speaker 1: swear words I believe can be broken down into two
Speaker 1: category and one of them is deistic, where it involves
Speaker 1: a like a higher authority, God, religion, something about that, right,
Speaker 1: and um. The other is visceral, and that is basically
Speaker 1: everything else it involves body parts, body function. It's funny
Speaker 1: they really do break down into this. Yeah, basically everything
Speaker 1: does it related to the body? Are related to God?
Speaker 1: Pretty interesting? Yeah it is. And and again that seems
Speaker 1: to be universal. But what one culture emphasizes another culture
Speaker 1: might not. And even within the same culture over a
Speaker 1: period of time. Uh, words can change. Emphasis on words
Speaker 1: can change. Like, for example, in the nineteenth century, you
Speaker 1: did not say bull as in look at that bowl
Speaker 1: over there, yes, because it was associated with sexual virility.
Speaker 1: So you would say, look at that brute cow over there,
Speaker 1: or look at that sea docks, anything but bull because
Speaker 1: it was a bad word at the time. And then
Speaker 1: now it's like someone would look at you like, what
Speaker 1: what the Hell's the sea docks. Is that why bs
Speaker 1: is has bull in front of it. I wonder if
Speaker 1: it's like a particularly virulent type of of fallacy or lie,
Speaker 1: because I don't see why else it would. That's what
Speaker 1: I thought too. Tracy also says that UM, no one
Speaker 1: really knows because cursing came before writing what the first
Speaker 1: swear words were UM, but researchers agree. And this I
Speaker 1: thought was super interesting is that um they called it
Speaker 1: word magic, early forms of word magic, or where they
Speaker 1: came from, which um basically means, especially in cultures that
Speaker 1: didn't have writing, they believe that words had a lot
Speaker 1: of power and you could curse something like we said,
Speaker 1: like words could be really good or words could be
Speaker 1: really bad, and that swearing kind of evolved out of that, right,
Speaker 1: which is just awesome. I love it. It is um
Speaker 1: And there is a good example of this. Apparently. Our
Speaker 1: word for bear here in English is rooted from the
Speaker 1: Germanic word for brown, and it was based on the
Speaker 1: pagan Germanic taboo against saying the name of a wild
Speaker 1: animal because it might make that wild animal appear because
Speaker 1: of word magic. So that's why we say bear today.
Speaker 1: So interesting because something like ursa would have been. It
Speaker 1: would have made the bear appear and killed everybody, and
Speaker 1: it would have been your fault because you didn't say brown.
Speaker 1: He said, ursa. Did you ever hear the for unlawful
Speaker 1: carnal knowledge acronym? That's completely not true. Um that the
Speaker 1: F word is old, very old recording in English since
Speaker 1: the fifteenth century, and they found some roots of it
Speaker 1: back in Middle Dutch f o k k e n
Speaker 1: was to thrust or copulate, Norwegian f u k k
Speaker 1: a was copulate, and in Swedish f o uk meant
Speaker 1: penis uh. And apparently even though it was around, it
Speaker 1: wasn't really used in common speech though much It was
Speaker 1: like a word in English. Yeah, but it wasn't really
Speaker 1: used as a curse word until much later on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the I think the sixteenth centuries when it first
Speaker 1: appears in writing, and even then it seemed kind of casual. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just a casual. I've got another one. You're ready. Zounds.
Speaker 1: You know that word, uh, zounds? I think like Shaggy
Speaker 1: used to say it a lot, He said, zinks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: somebody said zounds Encyclopedia Brown. I don't know, so zounds
Speaker 1: sounds like that yeah. Is Um, it's related to God's wounds.
Speaker 1: So you're saying God's wounds, Yeah, invoking a deity, So
Speaker 1: that would be a deistic curse. Wow. I can't wait
Speaker 1: till the end when we go around the world. Some
Speaker 1: of those are really funny. Um, should we take a break, Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, we'll take a break and talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about why people swears skulk Alright, So this makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. There's a lot of there's a
Speaker 1: line of thought that says that swearing eventually it comes
Speaker 1: to take the place of crying. Yeah. I thought this
Speaker 1: was there's a lot of anecdotal evidence. It makes perfect sense,
Speaker 1: makes total complete sense. Yeah, because when you're a kid,
Speaker 1: you cry about things, and then when you grow up
Speaker 1: here in the West, you're, for some reason taught not
Speaker 1: to cry anymore, especially little boys, which is totally us,
Speaker 1: says Rosie Greer. Yeah, I cry all the time. Uh,
Speaker 1: And so that swearing becomes a what they call an
Speaker 1: instinctive response for if you're upset, or if you're afraid,
Speaker 1: or if something bad happens, if you're frustrated, and that
Speaker 1: just kind of takes the place of crying. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: again both makes it tremendous. Do you swear while you're crying?
Speaker 1: Because no, I don't do the ugly cry. We should
Speaker 1: probably get a judgment call from our legendary producer Jerry
Speaker 1: about is it okay for us to say if it
Speaker 1: in place of actual bad words here Jerry says, yes,
Speaker 1: we need a ding ding ding. So Um, that makes
Speaker 1: total sense to me that you learned to swear. And
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why it makes total sense to
Speaker 1: me is that swearing is a way of letting off
Speaker 1: pressure valve suddenly and quickly, almost involuntarily, right, um. And
Speaker 1: if you can do it out of anger, you can
Speaker 1: do it out of frustration, you can do it out
Speaker 1: of shock, surprise, pain, um. And yeah, and and at
Speaker 1: least in the context of our society, it would be
Speaker 1: weird if you cried in all those situations of an
Speaker 1: adult when you can get it over with just by
Speaker 1: saying shouting the S word or the F word or
Speaker 1: something like that. You know. Um. And Actually, there's a
Speaker 1: linguist named Jeoffrey Nowmberg. I probably screwed up his name,
Speaker 1: but he had this great description of swear words. He said,
Speaker 1: swear words don't describe your feelings. They manifest them, which
Speaker 1: is absolutely true. I've seen it put as like a
Speaker 1: quick verbal hand grenade. Um. It encapsulates a feeling and
Speaker 1: in in like a really potent condensed form. It's true.
Speaker 1: So bam um. Another really cool um thing that that
Speaker 1: Tracy wrote about was that um they do a lot too.
Speaker 1: They can establish a group identity, They can make you
Speaker 1: feel like a part of a group. UM. They can
Speaker 1: express like intimacy or trust with someone. They aren't just
Speaker 1: regular words beyond shock value and humor, which are all valid,
Speaker 1: but beyond camouflaging your fears which is valid. They really
Speaker 1: can Like I remember, I remember in our one of
Speaker 1: our first editorial meetings and how stuff works years ago
Speaker 1: when our former boss who gave us the the charge
Speaker 1: to do stuff you should know, dropped f bombs in
Speaker 1: the meeting. And and this was the first kind of
Speaker 1: like my stupid chicken killer software job that I had.
Speaker 1: I was like a frat house, so that didn't count.
Speaker 1: Like the language and there was terrible, But this was
Speaker 1: my first like real job where yeah, where I thought like,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm in my first like meeting and he
Speaker 1: starts dropping f bombs and I immediately felt a kinship
Speaker 1: and I was like, all right, this guy is doing something.
Speaker 1: He's laying this out to the room, and that means something.
Speaker 1: You know, it wasn't a casual thing. If you drop
Speaker 1: an F bomb in a meeting like that, you're you're
Speaker 1: telling people something. Yeah, like it's okay to use that
Speaker 1: language here, or this is what kind of person I am.
Speaker 1: It really gives off a lot of social cues. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I've always loved them for it. It really does.
Speaker 1: It's also um it also kind of presents the person
Speaker 1: of higher authority on on your level. You know, it
Speaker 1: can turn people off, though I did think about that, like, man,
Speaker 1: I wonder if there's people in here that are offended
Speaker 1: by this? Well it is, there's a real um. I mean,
Speaker 1: foul language can be offensive, and the this really great
Speaker 1: article by Rebecca roach On Aon basically posits that it's
Speaker 1: offensive because when you are using foul language in front
Speaker 1: of somebody, you know that there's a chance that it's
Speaker 1: going to offend them, and you're doing it anyway. So basically,
Speaker 1: purposefully creating an atmosphere where someone probably will be offended
Speaker 1: is the whole reason why bad language is offensive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's agreed upon between the two parties, Like,
Speaker 1: there are certain words that if I use in this conversation,
Speaker 1: you might get offended or you might feel more included. Right,
Speaker 1: And because I know that you might get offended, and
Speaker 1: I'm doing it anyway, I'm saying to heck with your offense,
Speaker 1: which again creates the offensiveness in the first place. It's
Speaker 1: oh wow, what could you It's a dirty word. Um, well,
Speaker 1: I guess we should talk about social response a little bit,
Speaker 1: because that's kind of where we're headed. But um it
Speaker 1: didn't like obscenities and dirty words weren't even really looked
Speaker 1: it that way until after the eighteen hundreds. Now, there
Speaker 1: were taboo words for sure, but they weren't considered dirty.
Speaker 1: It was just taboo like don't invoke Odin's raven right.
Speaker 1: But like, the word profanity didn't come around till the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, which is really interesting. Yeah, you know, and
Speaker 1: originally profan the and blasphemy meant the same thing. They
Speaker 1: both had to do with basically insulting the sacred um,
Speaker 1: and then over time they started to diverge. Blasphemy for
Speaker 1: me still means the same thing, whereas profanity now is
Speaker 1: a general catch all for for what we would call
Speaker 1: swear words or curse words are dirty words. Right, Even
Speaker 1: though there's a in all cultures, there's a definite hierarchy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of you know, if your kid says d A M N,
Speaker 1: not the biggest deal, No, just maybe to bed without
Speaker 1: dinner for a few nights. And if your kid is
Speaker 1: dropping F bombs, you know that it ranks or worse.
Speaker 1: You know, some people think the F bomb is the
Speaker 1: worst thing you can do. That there, Yes, that's just
Speaker 1: playing wrong. I'm sorry, at least in this day and age. Yes, Um,
Speaker 1: that hierarchy you talk about seems to fall into a
Speaker 1: couple of categories. Even though have a hierarchy is universal,
Speaker 1: what is at the top of the hierarchy is not. UM.
Speaker 1: One of the things that frequently is found at the
Speaker 1: top of the hierarchy around the world is UM, moms
Speaker 1: your mother. There are plenty of very different cultures around
Speaker 1: the world, UM where insulting your mother, particularly either a
Speaker 1: sexual act with your mother or UM bringing up your
Speaker 1: person's mother's genitalia UM is the is the worst. It's
Speaker 1: the worst of the worst. Oh yeah, I remember, like
Speaker 1: I said in college, when I worked at that Mexican place.
Speaker 1: We learned all the course words first, and the guys
Speaker 1: in the kitchen. I was like, man, you guys talk
Speaker 1: about each other's mom more than anything I've ever heard
Speaker 1: in my life. It was remarkable, and that must be
Speaker 1: And I guess in Um, I guess, is Spain listed
Speaker 1: or Spanish languages? Well, it's a it's Latin languages, Latin
Speaker 1: based languages, so Spanish would definitely fall under that togory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but also um, I believe Mandarin, um Arabic, some Arabic
Speaker 1: languages just languages around like like really disparate cultures have
Speaker 1: said like leave the moms out of this. Well it
Speaker 1: was also funny too because she followed up with um.
Speaker 1: Sometimes in Bosnia it's uh, your father, it can be
Speaker 1: a really big insult or grandfather, um in Albanian your family, Turkish,
Speaker 1: your extended family. And finally Mandarin, which is your ancestors
Speaker 1: to the eighteenth generation. There it is man that is
Speaker 1: the best swear on the planet. F your ancestors to
Speaker 1: the eighteenth generation. I wish I knew how to pronounce this.
Speaker 1: It's just that's as good as it gets. Cow needs
Speaker 1: a zong sheba dae oh you know we this is
Speaker 1: available in China. Yeah good, I'm gonna learn how to
Speaker 1: say that, like for real, little kids in China listen
Speaker 1: to this. The whole classics point. I need to learn
Speaker 1: how to say very sorry. Then gasping is universal too.
Speaker 1: But speaking of swearing at work, um, supposedly swearing at
Speaker 1: work makes up three of the conversation. That's what it said.
Speaker 1: That sounds low to me. I saw a two thousand
Speaker 1: and sixteen study that found that women curse more than
Speaker 1: men at work. More women admit to cursing at work
Speaker 1: then man, but frequency wise, men curse more. So if
Speaker 1: the average man who curses at work is placed beside
Speaker 1: the average woman who curses at work, the man's gonna
Speaker 1: curse more frequently. But if you fill the room with
Speaker 1: the women who curse at work and the man who
Speaker 1: curse at work, there'll be more women. Does that for explained?
Speaker 1: Really confused? Well? And then apparently among millennials, sixty six
Speaker 1: percent of millennials say they curse at work, and then
Speaker 1: of baby boomers curse at work, which if you put
Speaker 1: that together, comes out to be a hundred and twenty.
Speaker 1: So that makes like zero sense. If you fooled me. Um,
Speaker 1: if you're talking about the law. Depending on where you are,
Speaker 1: there may be some arcane laws on the books that
Speaker 1: prevent you from cursing in public. Um, but it's definitely
Speaker 1: you know, we did one on free speech recently. It
Speaker 1: definitely does not qualify as protected speech. It depends what
Speaker 1: can Yeah, alright, So like if you're just walking down
Speaker 1: the street and you say, if you pig to a cop,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get arrested, but there's a pretty good chance
Speaker 1: that your case is going to get ultimately thrown out
Speaker 1: if you, Um, if you were in Pennsylvania, you are
Speaker 1: going to well, depending on the town, and you curse
Speaker 1: in public, you say, f the Steelers, Oh man, you
Speaker 1: made you you you should count your lucky stars if
Speaker 1: you make it safely to jail, unless you're in Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: well there you go. Um. Apparently in Pennsylvania they were
Speaker 1: arresting people left and right for um, well citing them,
Speaker 1: giving them citations for cursing in public, and UM, it
Speaker 1: finally got to the point where the A c L
Speaker 1: You got involved and said, what are you doing. You
Speaker 1: can't do this. This is protected speech. This is curse
Speaker 1: in public, and it's a. It's a gray area. Actually,
Speaker 1: like states, there are states, like you said, that have
Speaker 1: some laws on the books, and apparently one of them
Speaker 1: is Pennsylvania, and they were enforcing it, and I don't
Speaker 1: know if they still are or not, but pretty recently
Speaker 1: they were, um, they were giving people citations for it.
Speaker 1: And in Michigan they had a law overturned as recently
Speaker 1: as two thousand two where it was illegal to cuss
Speaker 1: in front of women and children. And some guy was
Speaker 1: canoeing down the Rifle River. His canoe was overturned. He
Speaker 1: was in the water cursing up storm and there were women, children,
Speaker 1: elderly there. He he was arrested and um taken to jail,
Speaker 1: and the Michigan Court of Appeals said, no, this is
Speaker 1: a hundred year old law. While and the guy overturned
Speaker 1: his cannete like give him a break, right exactly, give
Speaker 1: the guy a break, and he um he got off.
Speaker 1: His case was thrown out and they said, we're this
Speaker 1: law of null and void. By the way, so there
Speaker 1: is speech protection and it is taken to extend to
Speaker 1: the state level. But again it's a gray area because
Speaker 1: if you did that on TV, you could certainly be
Speaker 1: fined and that would be upheld because we've long agreed
Speaker 1: that there are certain situations where you shouldn't curse because
Speaker 1: kids might hear it. But what's the difference of doing
Speaker 1: it on TV and doing it in front of a kid?
Speaker 1: Only the courts can say, well, yeah, and that's an
Speaker 1: FCC thing. And there are certain words, like you know
Speaker 1: George Carlin's famous words you can't say on television. Um,
Speaker 1: but those are rules more than laws, aren't they Or
Speaker 1: I guess yeah, I guess they are rules, rules and regulations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but they are upheld. Yeah. But like private organizations
Speaker 1: and like if you're in a store or a movie
Speaker 1: theater or at work, like they can they can prevent
Speaker 1: you from doing that stuff. Can you can be asked
Speaker 1: to leave? Um, you can be asked off a plane,
Speaker 1: you know stuff hopefully while it's on the ground. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're a company, you can. Yeah. It's
Speaker 1: like in the mall episode, I think we talked about
Speaker 1: where First Amendment protection doesn't extend to private area. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can have a policy, um yeah, and it can
Speaker 1: be like some people can consider that a hostile work environment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you have you know, a real potty mouth boss.
Speaker 1: It makes everybody feel uncomfortable because cursing can go. You know,
Speaker 1: it's one thing to say you know bs or F this,
Speaker 1: but if you like get really creative with your curse words. Well,
Speaker 1: Plus there's a difference between F this and F you,
Speaker 1: especially coming from a boss. Sure, so yeah, you can
Speaker 1: switch it really is. It's the best. Um, all right,
Speaker 1: should we take a break and talk about the brain?
Speaker 1: Yess sk sk So we're back, ready to talk about
Speaker 1: the brain. Got the top of my skull removed and
Speaker 1: Chuck has finger in the ventral dorsal interior postulate. If
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken, I thought this is where it got
Speaker 1: really interesting. Yeah, because it supports all that anecdotal evidence,
Speaker 1: all of it. Yeah, alright, so the parts of the brain, um,
Speaker 1: the cerebral cortex. I guess we should go through all this. Huh.
Speaker 1: I was gonna break it down to the big line
Speaker 1: at the end, but we'll go through it all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta build it up where showman. If anything that
Speaker 1: the cerebral cortex has pre motor and motor areas. They
Speaker 1: control the speech and writing. It's kind of like the
Speaker 1: higher function. And then we talked before about Wernike's area. Um, jeez,
Speaker 1: we talked about that a bunch. I feel like, well,
Speaker 1: it's pretty interesting it is, uh. And they recognize and
Speaker 1: process words spoken words, and then you have your prefrontal cortex,
Speaker 1: which like helps regulate your what's your social behaviors and stuff.
Speaker 1: It's a higher, higher function. It's all these things. Was
Speaker 1: about to say, you're working together, but they're kind of
Speaker 1: not when it comes to cursing, right when it comes
Speaker 1: to language, they're all working together, but like we said before,
Speaker 1: swears there something different. They're separate, yes, and scientifically in
Speaker 1: fact they are. Yeah. So they they involve different parts
Speaker 1: of the brain than language processing. UM. The limbic system,
Speaker 1: which is part of your reward system or the basis
Speaker 1: of your word system, but also has to do with
Speaker 1: housing memory UM, has to do with regulating emotion, basic behaviors. UM.
Speaker 1: And apparently they think that in primates and some animals,
Speaker 1: vocalization is based in the Olympic system, just like like
Speaker 1: that thing that Tim Allen does that would be limbic
Speaker 1: system based, weird, like oinking bark he does. I've literally
Speaker 1: never seen anything, Tim Allen. I'm not about to do it.
Speaker 1: So you're gonna have to go look it up on YouTube. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then the basil ganglia, which is motor motor function, yeah,
Speaker 1: and impulse control. Those two things which have basically nothing
Speaker 1: to do with language processing, higher processing and humans are
Speaker 1: what governed swear words. Yeah, Like Tracy says that they're
Speaker 1: the scientists think that it all takes place in those
Speaker 1: lower regions. It's all emotion and instinct, and that the
Speaker 1: brain doesn't even process a swear word like a word
Speaker 1: like as what are they called phone ms phonemes, Yeah, phonemes,
Speaker 1: Like the parts that make up the word. The curse
Speaker 1: word is just the word as a whole as far
Speaker 1: as the brain is concerned. Like when you hear the
Speaker 1: word articulation, there's a part of your brain in the
Speaker 1: left hemisphere. The region is going to work taking articulation
Speaker 1: emphasis you put on it, putting it together, running it
Speaker 1: against your memory banks or context or whatever, and saying, oh,
Speaker 1: I know what you just said. But if somebody shouts
Speaker 1: the S word, those parts of your brain are not
Speaker 1: springing into action. It's the parts of your brain that
Speaker 1: are involved in experiencing, in recognizing emotions, The very very
Speaker 1: ancient parts of your brain that are involved in which
Speaker 1: gives credence to that hypothesis that language evolved out of expletives. Well,
Speaker 1: and also in that one article you sent the theory
Speaker 1: that it's not even a theory, just kind of the
Speaker 1: thought that a curse word isn't even a word so
Speaker 1: much as it is like a yell yes, I mean,
Speaker 1: it could might as well just be yeah. It's just
Speaker 1: you've got four letters, and if you think about it,
Speaker 1: it makes uttering complete sense, like even the worst of
Speaker 1: the worst, you know, where you're involving somebody's mom in
Speaker 1: the worst possible way. You're when somebody says that, even
Speaker 1: when they're especially I should say, when they're saying it
Speaker 1: to insult you specifically, your brain doesn't dial up that image.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to know. You're not thinking about the
Speaker 1: actual meaning of the word. You're responding to the emotional
Speaker 1: punch and the gut you just took from that word,
Speaker 1: Like you know what that word means. I mean, the
Speaker 1: thing they mean on a on a very emotional level,
Speaker 1: like you have it stored away in that sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because most times curse words almost always there aren't to
Speaker 1: be taken literally, right like when uh in the one
Speaker 1: who was the guy who wrote that one, Uh, that
Speaker 1: that you sent from the BBC James Harbick. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: talking about the F word, they're like ten different ways
Speaker 1: you can use it. Well, that was Stephen Pinker. He
Speaker 1: was refrained, Okay, yeah, and none of them are you
Speaker 1: should take literally, and no one does take them literally.
Speaker 1: You just know what it means if you say it
Speaker 1: or F or F you you're not literally saying engage
Speaker 1: in sex with this thing, you know. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: think the person was a weirdo who just topped you
Speaker 1: if they did at your command. Well, which is another
Speaker 1: reason why we let people that are just learning to
Speaker 1: speak English off the hook when they say curse words,
Speaker 1: because they don't understand the difference between the literal meaning
Speaker 1: and the expression, right, So no offense is intended, right, right,
Speaker 1: so that social contract is not there yet exactly. It's
Speaker 1: just hilarious when they do it accidentally. It really is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: was it? What was it? Stripes to speak English? You know.
Speaker 1: Framus is teaching them very good stuff. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: they've done f m r I studies to that show
Speaker 1: that functional magnetic resonance imaging tests uh, to show that
Speaker 1: higher and lower parts of the brain can struggle with
Speaker 1: each other when they swear. And apparently the people who
Speaker 1: really pride themselves and being super educated and very literate people, uh,
Speaker 1: they respond to slang and illiterate quote, illiterate phrases the
Speaker 1: same as they do swear words. And this one is
Speaker 1: weird to me. Um. They've done studies where you identify
Speaker 1: the color or word is written in, not the word,
Speaker 1: but the color, and the swear word distracts them from
Speaker 1: the color of that word. This's is crazy. They literally
Speaker 1: exist in their own space. Yeah, they are their own
Speaker 1: thing for sure, you know. Yeah, and you remember them
Speaker 1: supposedly you remember swear words four times better than other words.
Speaker 1: It's nuts. But what makes it, I think what's super
Speaker 1: interesting to me is that there's their universal and there's distinctions,
Speaker 1: but they're also you know, you can divide most things
Speaker 1: in most swear words into just a couple of different
Speaker 1: categories across the board, you know, but there they're not
Speaker 1: given thought, but they're based on things that you learn.
Speaker 1: So for example, chuck starting to go around the world,
Speaker 1: shall we alright, are we there yet? So? In uh
Speaker 1: French Quebec, it's an extraordinarily catholic Um society and basically
Speaker 1: all of their swear words have to do with the
Speaker 1: Catholic Mass, like the chalice, the tabernacle, the host um,
Speaker 1: the these literally these words like you say tabernacle and
Speaker 1: it's that's bad man, that's a really bad, bad word.
Speaker 1: And it has to do with the idea that you're
Speaker 1: bringing the sacred into um. You're basically blaspheming and it's
Speaker 1: a it's a big time taboo. But the idea that
Speaker 1: that's a learned like you have to, like you don't
Speaker 1: look at a a tabernacle and a true church as
Speaker 1: a kid without being you know, the first time you
Speaker 1: were walking to a church and say that's the holiest
Speaker 1: thing there is. I understand everything there is to know
Speaker 1: about it so much so that I can break a
Speaker 1: taboo by saying that word. You have to learn that.
Speaker 1: But the idea that that when you do learn it,
Speaker 1: it's stored as an emotion in your brain, as a
Speaker 1: motor function, rather than as a word that your higher
Speaker 1: cognition refers to or brings forth. It's just astounding to me.
Speaker 1: It is it's like a parallel process to learning language. Absolutely, um,
Speaker 1: there are languages where uh like it's different in a
Speaker 1: lot of countries, but it's also the same. Like when
Speaker 1: you talk about like the feces. Uh, there are many
Speaker 1: different languages that use the word feces there whatever word
Speaker 1: for it as a swear word. Um, including English of course, UM, French, German, um,
Speaker 1: they all have Albania, They all have words for feces
Speaker 1: that are curse words. But then it's not arbitrary. I
Speaker 1: guess it just spends on how it, you know, came
Speaker 1: to be in that country. But in Sweden, which is
Speaker 1: you know, in that neighborhood, Uh, you can say skit
Speaker 1: when you're annoyed, but it doesn't count as a curse word, right,
Speaker 1: like you could They said you could say to run
Speaker 1: a grandmother. Yeah, so so it's a curse word. But
Speaker 1: the the importance, the emphasis that of a taboo that
Speaker 1: it breaks depends on the culture. Yeah, or like another
Speaker 1: kind of like in Polish they'll use cholera, and other
Speaker 1: countries use types of disease like canker in in the Dutch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: isn't that crazy, Yeah, the canker meaning cancer, So you
Speaker 1: you are basically wishing cancer on somebody, which is pretty awful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be a curse that's not done here, But
Speaker 1: if you did do it in in you know, normal
Speaker 1: discussion or even an argument here in the West, there'd
Speaker 1: be like a record scratch, a needle scratching off a record,
Speaker 1: be like, what did you just say? That was the
Speaker 1: worst thing that's been said to me in months? But
Speaker 1: you just have a word for it. Yeah, I never
Speaker 1: really thought about that. That That would be terrible thing to
Speaker 1: say it if you said that just in a sentence
Speaker 1: to someone in English, especially if you were like jabbing
Speaker 1: your finger in their chest while you're saying it. You know,
Speaker 1: that's right. I know. We have a lot of listeners
Speaker 1: in Sweden, uh, Swedish um people apparently the same with
Speaker 1: finn Finland and uh, Norway and Denmark. They put a
Speaker 1: lot of emphasis on the devil. Oh yeah, so like
Speaker 1: some of their worst swear words are um based on satan,
Speaker 1: hell um, the devil, that kind of thing. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you don't want to you don't want to bring that up,
Speaker 1: or else you might offend your hosts in Sweden. Prostitution
Speaker 1: apparently a lot of cultures. Uh. And this this theory
Speaker 1: makes sense. Process it's defire wife's exclusivity in a man's ownership,
Speaker 1: which is why a lot of words people will use
Speaker 1: for prostitute can be a swear word against somebody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and apparently cultures that where bringing someone's mother into it
Speaker 1: is is the is the top of the hierarchy will
Speaker 1: also have um words for prostitutes, like plenty of words
Speaker 1: for prostitutes, and those will be extremely bad words as well.
Speaker 1: So it's like those things kind of go hand in hand, yeah,
Speaker 1: which from what I've seen, has to do with the
Speaker 1: patriarchy creating the moral hierarchy, right, because it's such a
Speaker 1: male view of things, like you're my mom, so you're
Speaker 1: the most sacred thing around, and you're a prostitute, which
Speaker 1: means I can't control you. So invoking those things are
Speaker 1: the two worst things you can talk about. And then
Speaker 1: our last step to me chuck in Japan, yes, bacca
Speaker 1: Bacca means basically idiot, but it you don't call people that,
Speaker 1: it's a really bad word, which I think is so sweet.
Speaker 1: I love that country. Idiot that's bad, yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think about how much how often we call people idiots
Speaker 1: here in the US. Yeah, but that's bad though. I
Speaker 1: remember my mom team like, don't don't say that. Word.
Speaker 1: Oh she was right. Yeah. Still she's not even Japanese,
Speaker 1: she's some Tennessee a little Japanese in it, maybe so
Speaker 1: Japanese streak. UM. So I guess we will finish up
Speaker 1: here with a little bit on um. What can happen
Speaker 1: when your brain is damaged. And we've talked about a
Speaker 1: little bit of this stuff before, but there's some pretty
Speaker 1: interesting things uh. In terms of brain injury UM. Something
Speaker 1: called aphasia UH is a condition where you can lose
Speaker 1: your ability to speak or pronounce words because of disease
Speaker 1: or brain damage. But UM A phase A, PHASEX have
Speaker 1: an interesting thing. They can return to their ability of
Speaker 1: automatic speech, which is just like saying things like um
Speaker 1: and uh uh. But the other thing that comes back,
Speaker 1: or swear words, which ties all back into the thing,
Speaker 1: is they exist as their own in their own category,
Speaker 1: almost like non speech exactly. So that's one of the
Speaker 1: first things that can come back um or never go away,
Speaker 1: yeah or never go away. And when they um, their
Speaker 1: ability pronounced words can evolve while they're recovering, but the
Speaker 1: swear words stay the same. Right Like apparently you can
Speaker 1: have a hemispherictomy on the left of the left lobe
Speaker 1: where a substantial part of the left lobe goes away
Speaker 1: and you can't talk any longer, but you can say, yes,
Speaker 1: we're just fine. That must be startling, I'm sure you know. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: and we did. We did a great episode on Tourette
Speaker 1: syndrome quite a while back, and we talked about corporalia
Speaker 1: and that is um. I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: have this image of someone with turette, you know, just
Speaker 1: constantly screaming swear words. And it's actually a very small
Speaker 1: number and it's that's actually called copper laia, not turette,
Speaker 1: and um, a very small number of people with GTS
Speaker 1: exhibit copper lawya, right, very very very small. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's I think it even I think you even grow
Speaker 1: out of it in most cases too. Right. Apparently younger
Speaker 1: males are the ones who are more likely to have
Speaker 1: that as a tick with Tourette syndrome. But it also
Speaker 1: makes sense in that um swearing can be viewed as
Speaker 1: a motor function with a motion attached, right, Yeah, And
Speaker 1: a tick is a has to do with the motor function,
Speaker 1: whether it's your head twitching or shouting the S word
Speaker 1: a few times. Yeah, still a tick, um My last
Speaker 1: thing here is I think Pinker, I think it was
Speaker 1: really interesting and that he noted that swear words were
Speaker 1: often most often just very uh just the sound itself,
Speaker 1: you know, being real, just harsh, and that that contributes
Speaker 1: a lot to their function, like when you get hurt
Speaker 1: or when you're just trying to exclaim something loudly, like
Speaker 1: the F word, it's as that very sharp k at
Speaker 1: the end um. And if you expressed anger using gentler
Speaker 1: sounds like he says wiffy and slush, it's just he
Speaker 1: compares it. What do you say, It's like slamming a
Speaker 1: door fitted with a compressed air hinge. It's just not
Speaker 1: the same thing, right, There's something about those sharp quick
Speaker 1: words ends and kay's and teas, you know that our
Speaker 1: staccato that just sort of provide that visceral you know release. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think yeah that was Rebecca Roach who use the
Speaker 1: analogy with the hydraulic which is perfect its wify door. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: But but we should finish on Pinker's um seven functions
Speaker 1: of swearing. All right? What are they? They? So? I
Speaker 1: swear word? No, I'm sorry. Five functions that we could
Speaker 1: make up another two swear words. They can be used descriptively. Uh,
Speaker 1: I can't give an example of that one. Idiomatically. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's ft up abusively f you Yeah, emphatically, this is
Speaker 1: an amazing yeah. Um and cathartically, which is f right,
Speaker 1: which it makes swears pretty interesting things. Yeah, and um,
Speaker 1: I mean Tracy puts some tips in there for when
Speaker 1: you have children on how to regulate that and explain things.
Speaker 1: But um, you know, just a parent the way you
Speaker 1: want a parent apparently though you're not supposed to laugh,
Speaker 1: that's impossible. Yeah, laugh and clap and pat him on
Speaker 1: the head. Yeah, by my toy. Yeah, my kids at
Speaker 1: the age where she repeats everything. And I hurt myself
Speaker 1: the other day and let out an F bomb and
Speaker 1: she said it right after me. And there's nothing funnier. Wow.
Speaker 1: Do you have it on tape? No? Um, But she
Speaker 1: does say the word fox, the animal fox. Um, she
Speaker 1: says that as the other word, and we do have
Speaker 1: that on tape. It's funny. I'd like to see that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll show it to you. It's um, it's good. And
Speaker 1: you know, it's just a reality that we curse in
Speaker 1: my household. And you know, my kids probably gonna be
Speaker 1: one of those kids that curses earlier than other kids.
Speaker 1: But I'm hoping to kind of cross that bridge and
Speaker 1: be like, hey, listen, can't say these things in school.
Speaker 1: You can't say him in front of teachers. I remember
Speaker 1: when a teacher would curse, how like no shocking that was.
Speaker 1: I don't think I ever experienced no like the teacher
Speaker 1: on a bad day that the class is just pushed
Speaker 1: and they would just break down and scream a curse
Speaker 1: word that never happened. Oh man, I had. It happened
Speaker 1: a couple of times, and it is talk about like
Speaker 1: the social contract. Nothing will make a bunch of kids
Speaker 1: like straighten up faster than hearing you. They're just like,
Speaker 1: oh man, like Mrs So and so, has we've pushed
Speaker 1: her too far? Or when a kid curses at a teacher,
Speaker 1: there was also that like oh boy, yeah, that's huge,
Speaker 1: like trouble. Yeah. So yeah, I'm hoping to teach my
Speaker 1: daughter it's too pick and choose. Yeah, maybe she'll grow
Speaker 1: up to be like Red Fox make money off of
Speaker 1: the cursing. Maybe so or Sarah Silverman, Yeah, who's like
Speaker 1: the modern Red Fox. Well, she definitely has made a
Speaker 1: career out of breaking taboos with language for shock shock value.
Speaker 1: She's great. Yep yea. So it's Red Fox so too
Speaker 1: r I p uh red Fox not Sarah Silverman's. If
Speaker 1: you want to know more about Red Fox there Silverman swearing.
Speaker 1: Any of that stuff. You can type those words in
Speaker 1: the search part how stuff works dot com. And since
Speaker 1: I said search parts, time for listener mail. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: call this notable Canadian filibuster. You folks may have noticed
Speaker 1: we had a Saturday episode on filibusters. And that's a
Speaker 1: new thing we're doing called s Y s K selects,
Speaker 1: where we we republished a Saturday episode that we think
Speaker 1: was great or relevant. Um, in case you missed it.
Speaker 1: And um, thanks for the support on those apparently support
Speaker 1: we mean thanks for listening, right yeah, yeah, they're still free. Um.
Speaker 1: So Blake listened to the filibuster one and he wrote
Speaker 1: in about a Canadian filibuster. Hey, guys quite enjoyed the
Speaker 1: episode about filibusters. Although I've worked for several years at
Speaker 1: various legislatures throughout Canada can tell you that filibustering is
Speaker 1: not unique to the U. S. Senate. My favorite example
Speaker 1: of the filibuster took place in the Canadian Senate. Parliamentary
Speaker 1: proceedings in Canada are recorded and published verbatim and hands
Speaker 1: aard uh. Canada being a bilingual country means that the
Speaker 1: hands are hands. Art is available in both English and French,
Speaker 1: meaning that staff not only have to transcribe everything said,
Speaker 1: but translators also need to translate English speeches into French
Speaker 1: and vice versa for official publicity. I'm sorry, publicly available record.
Speaker 1: Why is this topical because during one particularly contentious filibuster
Speaker 1: believe related to trade agreement in the late eight nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: one senator stood and read the entirety of his autobiography
Speaker 1: into the record. As you can expect, this took quite
Speaker 1: a bit of time. That not only did it delay
Speaker 1: passage of the bill, the common mythology to the senator
Speaker 1: also to this in order to get a free, professional
Speaker 1: quality translation of his autobiography, which was subsequently published in French. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's from Blake Evans. That's that's a good one, Blake.
Speaker 1: Thank you for the Canadian history lesson. We don't get
Speaker 1: enough of that down here. Um. I have one. I
Speaker 1: have a call out for Canadians. I've always just made
Speaker 1: fun of it as fake Thanksgiving, but I realized I
Speaker 1: never have figured out why Thanksgiving as celebrated a month
Speaker 1: or so early, well early compared to the US in Canada,
Speaker 1: so let us know exactly that's a different way of
Speaker 1: looking at it. Yes, okay, So if you want to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us so let us know, you
Speaker 1: can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast
Speaker 1: or join me josh Um clark Um. You can join
Speaker 1: and Chuck on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant, or
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know, send us
Speaker 1: an email of the Stuff podcast at how stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com and has always joined us at home on
Speaker 1: the web Stuff you should Know dot com for more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics because at how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com