Cuss

I love the process of learning a new language. I learn it like a baby learns to communicate. Lots of grunts and gestures until finally a pattern emerges. But I also like there are cuss words that, for whatever reason, are very easy to remember in a new language. There must be a linguistics paper somewhere that describes why we find a way to store and recall these words far more readily than useful things like "I'm sorry".

But when these words cross over into common colloquialisms, it's even more fun. I learned early when I started coming here that the word "whore" used to be used as an emphasis adjective a decade or two ago: "whore far", "whore big", "whore fast", "whore pretty". It made me laugh to here this. Not something to be used in a business or family setting... just reserved for trusted friends. But then I heard other word substitutions to help tame down the emphasis. In English, we might substitute the word "shoot" for a certain expletive. But because the word "scheibe" is close enough to the same expletive in German, one will say "window" instead.

Now I'm told the Swiss kids use the word "mega" to emphasize: "mega far", "mega big", "mega pretty", or just "mega" on its own to cut down on the number words.

Mega culture.